Aides: Trump might rethink vow to deport
Comments signal new try to broaden candidate’s appeal.
A day after Donald Trump met with a group of Latino supporters, top aides suggested Sunday that the GOP nominee may be reconsidering his signature campaign promise to round up and deport 11 million people who are in the country illegally.
His new campaign manger, Kellyanne Conway, was asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if Trump still wants a “deportation force” to remove everyone in the country illegally, as he has vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail.
“To be determined,” she said.
Trump is “wrestling” with how to remove those in the country illegally, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a close adviser to Trump on immigration matters, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Apprehending and removing the estimated 11 million people who either entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas would cost about $400 billion and could reduce the U.S. gross domestic product by $1 trillion, according to a study released this year by the free-market think tank American Action Forum.
Trump has never explained how he intended to find, detain and deport millions of people, many of whom have built businesses and families in the U.S., or how he would pay for it even if it passed judicial scrutiny.
The aides’ comments were the latest sign that Trump’s newly installed management team may be trying to broaden his appeal to stem his steady fall in the polls with less than three months until election day.
Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally.
After a tumultuous stretch of gaffes and falling poll numbers for Trump, top GOP campaign and party officials insisted Sunday that their presidential nominee is getting back on track and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by around Labor Day.
Clinton campaign officials dismissed the idea of a changed Trump as nonsense. Conway said that the campaign would work more closely with RNC officials and try to expand the map of competitive swing states from seven or eight to 10 or 11. “Donald Trump is back in Hillary Clinton’s head,” Conway said.
Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, disputed such claims. “We’re not seeing a pivot. Donald Trump himself said this was not a pivot. He wants to double down on letting Donald Trump be Donald Trump,” Mook said.
Mook kept up his criticism over Trump’s connections with Russia, arguing that despite the departure of Manafort amid questions regarding his work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine, Trump should offer an accounting about his own ties to Russia.
“There are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race,” Mook said.