Trump open to Abrego Garcia return, not trolling on Greenland: Time interview takeaways
Trump open to Abrego Garcia return, not trolling on Greenland: Time interview takeaways
On Saturday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY White House Reporter Zac Anderson discusses some of President Donald Trump's recent comments to Time Magazine. A Milwaukee judge has been charged with federal felonies in an ICE case. Former Rep. George Santos has been sentenced to more than seven years after pleading guilty in 2024 to felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges. Pope Francis will be laid to rest Saturday. USA TODAY Wellness Reporter Charles Trepany breaks down why some people live separately from their spouses.
Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Saturday, April 26th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today we discuss some of the big takeaways from Trump's interview with Time Magazine. Plus, a judge in Wisconsin has been charged with felonies in an ICE case. And more couples are living separately.
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President Donald Trump said he's open to bringing a wrongly deported Maryland man back to the US for a court hearing, despite his administration saying Kilmar Abrego Garcia will never return to the US from El Salvador. He discussed that and more in a recent interview with Time Magazine to mark his first 100 days in office, which he'll reach next week. I spoke with USA TODAY White House reporter Zac Anderson for more.
And thanks for hopping on, Zac.
Zac Anderson:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's just start by talking about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. And this was clearly a part of this interview, Zac. What did he say? What's the latest from Trump on this deported Maryland man?
Zac Anderson:
The Trump administration has really dug in on this issue and said that they're not bringing Abrego Garcia back. But in this Time Magazine interview, Trump said he would be open to bringing him back and "retrying him." Abrego Garcia was deported without a court hearing, so the Time reporter sort of pressed Trump on whether he could get a hearing, and Trump said that he would be open to that. But he also said that he hasn't talked to the President of El Salvador about bringing him back, which would seem to be the first step.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Trump also had some pretty eyebrow-raising comments about sending Americans to foreign prisons in this interview, Zac. What can you tell us about those comments?
Zac Anderson:
That got a lot of attention when Trump said that he would potentially send home-grown, in his words, criminals to foreign prisons. There's a huge backlash to that. Legal experts say that it's unlawful. A Republican Senator went on TV and said that it was immoral. But Trump had doubled down in the Time Magazine interview. He said that he loves the idea and that he would like to use it for extreme cases of hardened criminals.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Zac, we've heard a lot from Trump about Greenland, and even Canada and the Panama Canal, and it can be hard to cut through the noise and try to figure out if he's serious about wanting to acquire these places under US control. Apparently, based off this interview, he might be serious. Is that fair to say?
Zac Anderson:
Yeah, he said he's serious. The reporter asked him if he was trolling on this, and he said no, he's not trolling. In the past, some of Trump's comments, people have questioned whether you should take them literally. And Trump said, in this case, you should, that he believes that Canada should be the 51st state. He sounded very serious about that.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. All right. So obviously tariffs have been a big, big part of the headlines here in recent weeks. Did we learn anything new about Trump's views or plans on tariffs? I think a lot of folks are trying to still keep an eye on Trump to see if he wants to walk any of this back.
Zac Anderson:
So Trump was asked if it would be a victory for him if the country still had high tariffs in a year. He said yes, it would be a total victory. Some people have wondered, there's been a lot of speculation about how much this would be permanent and how much Trump is negotiating here. He's talking to other countries saying that he wants to negotiate trade deals with them. But in this interview, he said that if the tariffs stay in place, that that would be a win.
Taylor Wilson:
Russia attacked Ukraine's capital earlier this week, and Trump and Ukraine's leader, Zelenskyy, continue to have a, I guess I would say tense relationship. What did he say to Time about what's next for Ukraine?
Zac Anderson:
The big question right now in this peace deal is how can you get these two countries to come to something that they would both agree with? And a lot of that revolves around the territory that Russia has taken from Ukraine, both Crimea, which Russia took in 2014, and some of the provinces that Russia has occupied. And Trump was asked about Crimea, and he said that that doesn't belong to Ukraine. It belongs to Russia. He also said that Ukraine cannot join NATO.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. And finally, he had some comments about taxes and potentially tax increases, Zac. What can you tell us here?
Zac Anderson:
So as part of this budget deal, this reconciliation deal that Trump is trying to use to get his agenda through Congress, taxes are a big aspect of that, and whether or not to extend the Trump tax cuts from his first administration. And some people in MAGA, notably Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief White House political advisor, have said that you should actually raise taxes on millionaires. That that would be a way to neutralize Democrats' historic advantage with the working-class and position the Republican Party even more, something that Trump has already done, but even more as a working-class party.
Trump was asked about that earlier this week, and he said he doesn't like the idea of raising taxes on millionaires, that they would leave the country. But when he was asked about it by Time, he gave a different reason for opposing it, and that's politics. He said he actually does like the idea and that he would be open to raising taxes, but he thinks that it's a political loser.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. A really interesting interview and some takeaways here from Zac. Folks can find them with a link in today's show notes. Zac Anderson covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thanks, Zac.
Zac Anderson:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
A Milwaukee County Circuit judge has been charged with two felonies for her role in helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her Local Wisconsin Courtroom. Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of obstruction of a US agency and concealing an individual to prevent an arrest. According to the complaint, she assisted Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant, avoid being arrested by federal immigration officials at the Milwaukee County Courthouse after he appeared in her courtroom for a pre-trial conference on April 18th. Flores-Ruiz is facing three misdemeanor battery counts. Two federal agents eventually chased him down outside the courthouse and apprehended him at a Downtown Milwaukee intersection, according to the complaint. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Former Congressman George Santos has been sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison. He was also ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution, according to US Attorney John Durham. Attorneys for Santos had pushed for the two-year minimum sentence set in law, citing his guilty plea last year to felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges. As part of the plea, he tearfully admitted at a prior hearing to filing false campaign finance reports, charging donors' credit cards without authorization, and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits and other acts that began years before he ran for Congress.
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Pope Francis will be laid to rest today. Tens of thousands of mourners packed St. Peter's Square at the Vatican overnight for the funeral, which got underway in bright sunshine earlier this morning. Visitors to the Vatican this week included 90-year-old Norbert and his family.
Norbert:
I served at the church for many years, so it was my wish. My children wanted me to be here on this great day.
Taylor Wilson:
Officials had estimated 200,000 people would attend, including dozens of world leaders and dignitaries. Among them, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. Francis, the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, died Easter Monday from a stroke, weeks after battling back from respiratory ailment. He was 88. You can watch today's coverage live on usatoday.com.
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More couples are living separately. I spoke with USA TODAY Wellness reporter Charles Trepany about so-called apartners.
Charles, thanks for joining me today.
Charles Trepany:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So what are so-called apartners, and how have we seen this conversation really take off as a trend on social media?
Charles Trepany:
So, apartners aren't really anything new. It's basically this term that's going around TikTok to describe people who are dating, in a relationship, sometimes married, but they live in different places. Sometimes they live just in different apartments, in different houses. Sometimes they live in different cities, different parts of the country. And the apartners say that their relationship actually thrives better when they are not living with their significant others.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So what are some examples, maybe some famous examples of relationships like this?
Charles Trepany:
So apartners aren't really anything new in Hollywood, at least. Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk are both married, and they're an example of apartners; they live in different residences. Sarah Paulson last year talked on a podcast about how the secret to her relationship with Holland Taylor is that they live in different places as well. And then Sheryl Lee Ralph from Abbott Elementary, she and her husband Vincent Hughes have lived in different states for a long time. She lives in Los Angeles and he lives in Philadelphia.
So it's interesting because I think that whether or not an apartner relationship works really depends on the people, the personalities, their attachment styles, and also what fits best into their particular lifestyle.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, I'll admit, my girlfriend and I have a version of this, largely based on sleep schedules. And I know there is still some stigma around these types of situations for some folks, but what do experts, Charles, say about whether this is healthy or not?
Charles Trepany:
I think that the way most people experience apartnerships in their own lives, whether they're aware of it or not, is through something called a sleep divorce, where couples who live together may not necessarily sleep in the same bed or in the same room. And it's not unusual at all. And it mainly stems from partners who have different work schedules, different sleep schedules, partners with insomnia, one partner's a heavy sleeper, the other's a light sleeper. For whatever reason, it's just easier and healthier for them, physically healthier for them to just get more sleep, better sleep, higher quality sleep in different rooms in different beds.
Sleep experts say this is totally normal and totally fine. Lots of couples do it. It doesn't necessarily mean that a relationship is doomed or on the rocks or has trouble. And also, experts say that it is important to know that if two partners don't sleep in the same bed but they would like to, but they're struggling because of their sleep schedules or because of sleep health reasons to do that, there are ways to overcome it.
Taylor Wilson:
Does this tell us anything maybe more broadly about modern relationships or the moment we're in? As you mentioned, this is not a new trend necessarily. But the fact that folks are talking so openly about this, Charles, what does this tell you about maybe the moment that we're in?
Charles Trepany:
I think it probably shows that people are thinking about relationships on much more case by case and individualistic terms. I think that, in general, more people are abandoning ideas about what a relationship ought to be, what it ought to look like and these molds that have been passed down from previous generations, and they're really asking themselves, "Well, what works for me and my partner, as we are individuals?"
And I think that apartners LAT, living apart together people, that's another term for apartners, they're not defining their relationship based on what other people think it should be. So I think that it's a continuation of that trend; the authenticity above all else trend.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. I think a lot of listeners will get something out of this piece, Charles. Charles Trepany covers wellness for USA TODAY. Thanks so much.
Charles Trepany:
Thank you.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Is the US sliding into authoritarianism?
Ruth Ben-Ghiat:
Mr. Trump is an authoritarian, and now he is back and things are proceeding very, very quickly. The firing of non-loyalists from the civil service, the attacks on the judiciary, the disappearance without due process of immigrants and US citizens.
Taylor Wilson:
That was NYU History Professor, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar who has studied authoritarianism over the course of the last 100 years. According to her, we should all be very concerned right now. Hear her conversation with my colleague Dana Taylor tomorrow, beginning at 5:00 AM Eastern Time.
♦
And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back Monday with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
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