Trump’s message on border remains
It’s easy to get lost in the latest twisted chapter of the presidential race — the tale of two privileged white candidates arguing over who is the bigger bigot. But if you did, you’d miss something of actual significance. Like how Donald Trump claims he’s “softened” his position on immigration. Don’t believe it. He hasn’t. The myth of Trump’s softening toward undocumented immigrants started last week when Trump’s chief media masseur — Fox News commentator Sean Hannity — asked him at a town hall in border state Texas if there was “any part of the law that you might be able to change that would accommodate those people that contribute to society, have been law-abiding, have kids here?”
“There certainly can be a softening because we’re not looking to hurt people,” Trump replied. “We want people — we have some great people in this country.”
Many focused on Trump uttering the word “softening” to presume that his position had actually softened. But it hasn’t. He didn’t take back calling for a deportation force to herd 11 million undocumented people out of the country. He didn’t offer anybody a pathway to citizenship. He still opposes birthright citizenship, which includes 3 million to 5 million people born in the U.S. to foreign parents.
And while he has publicly toned down his demand for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” — that position is still on his campaign
website.
Trump’s immigration crown jewel remains building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that — say it all together now — Mexico will pay for. Thinking of tunneling under the wall? “We’re going to have ‘tunnel technology’ ” Trump told CNN last week without, of course, elaborating.
Alas, Trump remained soft on immigration for only about a day.
Not long after softening up to Hannity, Trump toughened again with Anderson Cooper, telling the CNN host that his position was actually “hardening.” Nope, he said, no possibility for legalization unless undocumented immigrants leave the country first and then come back.
The bottom line to this immigration zig-zag?
“There’s no policy change that I’ve seen,” Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, the immigration advocacy organization funded in part by Silicon Valley tech leaders, told me.
Trump isn’t trying to moderate his position to appeal to Latino voters — who support Clinton by a 73-to-22 percent margin, according to an NBC/ Survey Monkey poll last week. That ship sailed shortly after Trump stepped off an escalator at Trump Tower and called Mexican immigrants “rapists.” He’s trying to appeal to rightleaning suburban white voters who usually vote Republican but find him so odious that they’re flipping to Clinton.
In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won among white female voters by a 56-to-42 percent margin, according to exit polls. Now, Trump trails Hillary Clinton 43 to 42 percent, with that same group according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Overall, he’s not doing as well as Romney did with whites — and that’s not a winning formula for a Republican in 2016.
Trump says he’s going to come out with a more detailed immigration plan sometime this week. Perhaps it will even be written down.
“Trump doesn’t have a policy right now,” Schulte said. He’s just “trying to sound more reasonable to suburban voters. This is all just political.”
So don’t feel bad if you’re confused by Trump’s immigration policy shuffle. Everybody is. Because when you have no policy — only an endless, improvisational reshuffling of sound bites — it’s hard to keep track of what your latest position was. Even for your representatives.
Here’s what Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson told CNN when asked about her boss’ seeming flip-flop on his signature issue.
“He hasn’t changed his position on immigration,” Pierson said. “He’s changed the words that he is saying. He’s using different words to give that message.”
Step back and let that slice of genius sink in so you can fully appreciate it. Trump’s policy hasn’t changed — he’s just using different words to describe his policy. Different words that could mean something different ... until they don’t.
You got to love Pierson, who may be the best mouthpiece to shamelessly deliver Trump’s ever-morphing oracle. This month, she was asked on CNN to explain Trump’s accusation that Obama is the “founder of ISIS.”
“Remember, we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem,” Pierson said. When asked to clarify that, she said, “That was Obama’s war, yes.”
History buffs — and anybody with a functioning prefrontal cortex— will remember that the U.S. war with Afghanistan started in 2001, when George W. Bush was president and Obama was in the Illinois state Senate, plotting how he could convince someone to make a movie about his first date with Michelle called “Southside With You.”
Sorry. Much like Pierson, we digress. Let’s now return to listening to two privileged white people arguing over who is the bigger bigot.