MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Back here in the U.S., President-elect Trump appeared on "Meet The Press" Sunday. It was his first network TV interview since being reelected. On his signature issue, immigration, he reiterated his promise to deport people living in the U.S. illegally. He said he'd start with criminals, then, if necessary, families with mixed immigration status.
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DONALD TRUMP: I don't want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back.
MARTIN: Trump also said he is open to giving legal status to people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as dreamers.
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TRUMP: These are people that have been brought here at a very young age, and many of these are middle-aged people now. They don't even speak the language of their country. And yes, we're going to do something about the dreamers.
KRISTEN WELKER: What does that mean? What are you going to do?
TRUMP: I will work with the Democrats on a plan.
MARTIN: We wanted to get a sense of how all this might play out in Congress and potentially with his base. So for this, we called someone who knows the inner workings of Congress and who generally agrees with Mr. Trump on key issues. That's Republican strategist John Feehery. He served as press secretary to former speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. Good morning, Mr. Feehery.
JOHN FEEHERY: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: OK, so let's start with immigration. What did you take away from the comments we just heard, particularly in areas where he'll need to work with Congress?
FEEHERY: Well, obviously, he thinks he needs to do bipartisan. I mean, there's a lot of things he can do just through executive order. There's some things he can do through reconciliation, which means Republicans only. But the biggest chunk, when it comes to immigration to make permanent change, he has to get bipartisan coalition with Democrats in the House, and he needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass it. And dreamers is the best way to do that because that is the hot topic that, you know, we've been thinking about for years. How do we take care of these folks who've been here since they were kids and never been to their home country? And it seems like it's inhumane to just kind of send them back. But, you know, some Republicans want that to happen.
MARTIN: I was going to ask you about that. Do you think that he could get buy-in from the Republicans on this?
FEEHERY: He can get buy-in from some Republicans, but other Republicans, he can't get buy-in. And I think he has to have a conversation with his own deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who I think is not too excited about this idea. The Republican base is pretty hardcore on immigration these days, and, I mean, I think they want to send a lot of people back home.
MARTIN: And remember with that family separation, you know, policy, which arose because of, you know, a reinterpretation of the law. It was deemed that if you had crossed over illegally, you were a criminal, and therefore, you know, children would be separated from their parents. It was tremendously unpopular. Even, you know, Republican former first lady Laura Bush, you know, wrote an op-ed about it. It was tremendously unpopular. What is the sense of that now? Do you think that Americans would be willing to tolerate something like that or even the idea of families being, you know, sent back even if they're sort of mixed-status families? What's your sense of that now?
FEEHERY: Well, my sense is that what Trump is focused on first is sending back violent criminals and then kind of working his way down. And we'll see how far he gets along that process. I think it's pretty unpopular to send mixed families. I know that Trump said it, and I think that there's some sentiment with Republicans that we need to kind of get illegal people out of this country no matter what the situation. But as you know, it becomes - even when President Obama deported 3 million people, it became kind of politically unpopular. So - and there's an economic part to this also, which is there's a lot of people here who do a lot of important things for our economy. So you want to make sure that you're doing things that help the country but don't undermine the economy. And so that's the balance that Trump has to achieve.
MARTIN: Let's talk a little bit about those cabinet positions. They're facing confirmation headwinds, you know, in the Senate. I know your expertise is mainly in the House, but I did want to get your take on this. We heard Trump yesterday defend his nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. You've worked in Congress. Which nominees do you think still have work to do to get through the Senate?
FEEHERY: Well, I think there's opposition to Hegseth, but I think it's kind of, you know, the Trump folks have done a pretty good job of putting a lot of heat on Republicans to approve him. I think his biggest challenge is kind of demonstrating that he has the ability to kind of manage the huge defense bureaucracy. I think that that's kind of the underlying thing. Can he really bring the necessary change to the bureaucracy, which is very difficult to do, and you need to have some expertise on how to kind of get, you know, get rid of bureaucracy. I think that Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard have - both have some serious issues, but I think Patel is in better shape than Gabbard. There's a lot of folks who have problems with Tulsi Gabbard.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, as briefly as you can, after watching the interview yesterday, do you see differences between Trump 1 and Trump 2?
FEEHERY: It seems more - much more normal. There's normalization of Trump in a good way that - the interview with Kristen Welker I thought was what you'd expect from typical presidents, and I thought it was contentious but not chaotic. It was a good interview.
MARTIN: John Feehery is a Republican strategist and lobbyist. Thanks so much for talking with us.
FEEHERY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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