Trump steps away from hardline stance, towards improved ratings

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump is pivoting for sure.

He has all but dumped his earlier hardline position on 11 million illegal immigrants. He wanted to throw them all out, but now he says they can stay.

Sure, the Republican nominee won’t make it easy. They will have to pay back taxes. But gone is talk of a tough immigration policy, with a “deportation force” thrown in, on which he built his campaign.

“No citizenship,” Trump said in a TV interview. “they’ll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty”.

That’s what his party rivals such as Jeb Bush had argued for during the primaries, but got steamrolled by Trump’s harsher rhetoric. Bush campaign staff tweeted out reminders on Thursday.

After months of running a freewheeling, indisciplined campaign, Trump has been remarkably on message lately. He has stuck to the written script scrolling down the Teleprompter, resisted the temptation to ad-lib, and reached out to African Americans and Hispanics.

His reversal on immigration is an attempt to mend fences with Hispanics, who account for 17% of the population, and who also form the bulk of the population of illegal immigrants.

He also tried to court African Americans asking them to give him a chance, arguing Democrats, who they have supported for years, have only taken advantage of them.

He called Clinton a “bigot... who sees people of colour only as votes.”

Clinton hit back shortly, saying, “He’s taken a hate movement mainstream, he’s brought it into his campaign.”

But whatever Trump is doing is working. His poll numbers are improving. Though he still trails her in the RealClearPolitics average of nations polls - by a reduced margin of five points - he is tied with her in a Los Angeles poll.

The Republican nominee, who prides himself in calling the Brexit vote right, was joined by Nigel Farage, the British politician who spearheaded the exit movement.