Donald Trump Doubles Down On Hard Line Immigration Policies
After some two weeks in which it seemed like he might be moderating, Donald Trump doubled down on the most anti-immigrant portions of his immigration plan.
After more than a week of seeming to suggest that he was softening on several parts of his immigration plan, including an apparent flip-flop on the issue of deporting people in the country illegally only to revert to his previous position, Donald Trump doubled down on his largely unrealistic immigration plan in a speech in Phoenix, Arizona that followed a day trip to Mexico City and a private audience with the President of Mexico:
Donald Trump, who has made maligning illegal immigrants from Mexico a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Wednesday — striking a remarkably subdued and cooperative tone as he faced a world leader who forcefully opposes his signature proposals.
Yet just hours later in a major speech on immigration in Phoenix, the Republican presidential nominee had returned to the aggressive tenor that has defined much of his campaign. Repeatedly raising his voice to a yell, he said that “anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation,” and he vowed to crack down especially hard on illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes.
With less than 10 weeks until the election, Trump increasingly has tried to adjust his pitch to appeal more to moderate voters, as polls show he has fallen solidly behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton nationally and in battleground states. However, the visit here and the speech in Phoenix could provide a jarring contrast for voters and send a confusing message about the kind of president he would be.
Trump said at the joint news conference in Mexico that he and Peña Nieto didn’t discuss who would pay for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, despite his long-standing vow to compel Mexico to foot the bill. He and Peña Nieto avoided direct confrontation in front of the cameras, airing their differences on immigration, border security and trade in cordial tones.
But later, Peña Nieto tweeted: “At the beginning of the conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall.” The Trump campaign did not immediately comment on the apparently conflicting accounts.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller issued an opaque statement Wednesday evening saying the meeting “was not a negotiation. . . . It is unsurprising that they hold two different views on this issue, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.” Peña Nieto spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said that the president told Trump, “Mexico won’t pay for the wall,” but that his comments did not spur a discussion.
The address in Phoenix was considered a chance for Trump to clarify whether he still wants to forcibly deport all of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants after sending mixed signals recently. He left that question unanswered — dismissing it as irrelevant — while also strongly suggesting that he would push to deport as many people as possible.
“The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants,” Trump said, arguing that “only the out-of-touch media elites think the biggest problems facing American society today is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don’t have legal status.”
He said that undocumented immigrants seeking legal status would first have to leave and try to return lawfully — a process that can take many years under current procedures. Trump said that he would have “zero tolerance” for illegal immigrants who have committed crimes beyond their immigration violations.
“We will issue detainers for illegal immigrants arrested for any crime whatsoever,” he said, going further than other Republicans who have called for felons to be deported. Later, he said he would create a “deportation task force” to deal with “the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants” who have “evaded justice.”
He also proposed an”ideological certification” test to ensure that immigrants share Americans’ values, and promised not to issue visas to people coming from parts of the world where “adequate screening cannot occur.”
Oddly enough, the one thing that seems to be have been left unresolved during Trump’s meeting with Mexican President Nieto was the central premise of Trump’s immigration plan, the supposed border wall that Trump’s claims he will build and which, he says, Mexico will pay for. It has been a highlight of nearly every Trump stump speech since he entered the race, and is clearly popular among his supporters, although not so popular among the American people. When asked about the issue of the wall at the conclusion of the meeting, Trump answered seemingly rather meekly at a joint press conference with Nieto that the issue of the wall and who would pay for it had not come up during the hour-long meeting between the two men, and Nieto did not contradict him publicly at that point. Given the fact that the wall has been central to Trump’s proposals for more than a year now, and that the issue of the wall and Trump’s claim that Mexico would pay for it has been a point of controversy in Mexico since it first became public, this seemed implausible, though. That’s why it wasn’t surprising that, after the joint press conference ended, President Nieto stated that the wall and payment for it had been among the first things that he had discussed with Trump:
Donald Trump’s outwardly friendly visit with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto hit a wall on Wednesday evening as the two sides issued contradictory accounts of the meeting.
The dispute centered on Trump’s campaign pledge to force Mexico to pay for a barrier along their shared border. After his private sit-down with Peña Nieto, Trump told reporters at a joint press conference that they had set the issue aside in favor of a conversation on trade, immigration, and security.
“We did discuss the wall; we didn’t discuss payment of the wall,” Trump told reporters at a brief press conference alongside Peña Nieto after their meeting. “That will be for a later date.”
Peña Nieto declined to address Trump’s statement from the podium, but his office rushed to counter Trump’s version of events after the press conference ended, creating confusion about the content of their discussions.
“At the start of my conversation with Donald Trump I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” Peña Nieto tweeted in Spanish from his official account afterwards. “After that, the conversation moved on to other topics and unfolded in a respectful manner.”
Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller issued a follow-up statement saying the joint meeting “was not a negotiation” over the wall and that such talk would have been “inappropriate,” but he added no further details corroborating or denying the Mexican president’s revised account.
In his speech, though, Trump went back to the old script, and made it clear that any talk of softening should be forgotten:
In Phoenix, Mr. Trump responded to Mr. Peña Nieto with the hectoring language that has long been part of his strategy to whip up his crowds.
“Mexico will pay for the wall, believe me — 100 percent — they don’t know it yet, but they will pay for the wall,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re great people, and great leaders, but they will pay for the wall.”
Mr. Trump had billed the Phoenix speech as a major address on immigration, and many Republican leaders and voters had hoped for more clarity about his positions. Mr. Trump outlined several steps that he would take to deport criminals and those who overstayed their visas and end so-called sanctuary cities, while saying that “the one route and only route” for others to obtain legal status would be “to return home and apply for re-entry.”
“We will treat everyone living or residing in our country with great dignity — so important,” Mr. Trump said, noting that the status of most illegal immigrants was no longer a “core issue” for him.
The rest of the speech was standard Trump fare as far as immigration is concerned. So-called ‘sanctuary cities’ would be eliminated, he claimed, even though Court rulings have made it clear that there is little that the Federal Government can do to force local jurisdictions to enforce Federal Law. There would be a ‘Deportation Force” in the form of a vastly expanded ICE force inside the Department of Homeland Security, although it’s unclear where the money for this will come from. At least in the beginning, Trump claims, deportation proceedings will concentrate on people who have committed the most violent crimes but he also didn’t leave out the possibility that people who have not broken the law would also be deported. Indeed, according to one estimate, even the most conservative interpretation of Trump’s deportation policy would mean the deportation of more than six million people. Finally, Trump made clear that under his plan that the only way people in the country illegally could ever hope to gain legal status would be if they left the country, returned to their country of origin, and applied for legal status there. In other words, after weeks of a very public debate about whether or not he would be moderating either his tone or his policies when it comes to immigration, Donald Trump doubled down on his previous position last night and made clear that there would be no moderation going forward.
Among other things, last night’s speech makes one wonder what the last two weeks were really all about. During that period, it seemed as though Trump was actually beginning to recognize the political, international, and practical obstacles to the immigration red meat he had been throwing to crowds since entering the race for the Presidency. Principally, of course, it seemed as though he was recognizing reality in at least some sense of the word and, perhaps, listening to the advice of supporters who warned that his hard line tone on immigration was hurting him with Latino voters, which is putting his campaign in jeopardy in states such as Florida, Virginia, Georgia, and Arizona. Instead of moderating, though, Trump has chosen to double down on his previous position, and it’s unlikely he’ll change position from here with less than ten weeks to go until the election. Already, there has been some negative blowback, with several Latino Republicans who had endorsed Trump now saying they are likely to pull their support in the wake of Trump’s speech last night.
Several major Latino surrogates for Donald Trump are reconsidering their support for him following the Republican nominee’s hardline speech on immigration Wednesday night.
Jacob Monty, a member of Trump’s National Hispanic Advisory Council, has resigned, and Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said in an interview that he is “inclined” to pull his support.
“I was a strong supporter of Donald Trump when I believed he was going to address the immigration problem realistically and compassionately,” said Monty, a Houston attorney who has aggressively made the Latino case for Trump. “What I heard today was not realistic and not compassionate.”
He withdrew from the board following Trump’s speech in Phoenix, which was heavy on calls for border security and emphasized that all immigrants in the country illegally were subject to deportation.
“When we met [earlier in August] he was going to approach this issue with a realistic plan, a compassionate plan, with a plan that was not disruptive to the immigrants that were here that were not lawbreakers,” said Monty, one of the Latino leaders who met with the candidate at Trump Tower recently, a gathering at which Trump reportedly softened his tone toward undocumented immigrants already in the country. “He didn’t deliver any of that.”
Aguilar was once a Trump critic who earlier this summer set aside his qualms about Trump’s rhetoric toward Hispanic people, and organized a letter of support signed by himself and other prominent Latino conservatives. Since then, he has repeatedly defended Trump in media appearances, as has Monty. Neither plans to support Hillary Clinton.
“It’s so disappointing because we feel we took a chance, a very risky chance,” Aguilar said. “We decided to make a big U-turn to see if we could make him change. We thought we were moving in the right direction … we’re disappointed. We feel misled.”
If this is typical of the reaction of Latino and moderate voters, then Trump may end up losing more from the past two weeks of seeming moderation than he might have gained. As I noted earlier this week, polling indicates that most Americans do not support the more militant elements of Trump’s immigration position, and yet it was those positions that he doubled down in his speech in Phoenix. How this impacts Trump’s campaign is something we’ll just have to wait and see.
The only way this makes sense to Trump and his team is if he believes the media is truly this stupid and utterly committed to horse-race coverage, despite his manifest unfitness for any public office.
Unfortunately, the media truly IS this stupid, as he caught out several venues and even the New York Times, who had prewritten their stories anticipating a yearned-for “pivot,” in light of his trip to Mexico.
However, in Arizona, Trump just provided more red meat, and doubled down on the ethnic cleansing of America. Now the media is in a bind, having anticipated a genteel Republican pivot but instead getting more white nationalist inchoate rage.
Note that the media will be lambasting Trump for not following script, as opposed to his proposed policies of militant ethnic cleansing. However, for “balance” they will note that HRC has note allowed a DC establishment media press conference in 270 days, and this makes their jobs harder, so they will be having an emo sad moment because Democrats are not letting them eat caviar and sip champagne on the Campaign bus.
This is journalism in America.
I really don’t see why anyone would stop supporting Trump after last night’s speech. His positions have not changed, he has no positions. He seems to have no beliefs beyond what he feels like doing at this point in time. He has certainly not become any less honest than he has been in the last year and a half of this presidential election process.
The only reason to support Trump is to honestly believe that the only time he is telling the truth is when he says what you want to hear. You have to have known by now that he will say anything to anybody at any time. This has been true since before the primaries and will continue to be true until (and after) the election. So if you supported him yesterday, you should support him today. He has not changed.
Usually when someone is invited into someone else’s home, politeness goes along way.
However, that being said, when you are Donald J. Trump, and you are leading the type of people you are. Who think Obama has for the past eight years gone around on some sort of apology tour. Obviously this means $hitting on your neighbors living room rug, like Trump did, is going to and has been met with thundering applause.
@Andrew:
And even with that, what did he actually get? Squat. As John Podesta put it, “he didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and then lied about it.”
It’s amusing to note that yesterday afternoon, before the Phoenix speech, that the Trumpkins were insistent that “the wall” and the deportation force were only metaphorical, not literal. Now Trump is saying that both are literal.
Well, he did say he’d make heads spin, didn’t he?
Whatever. DDSS.
We’ve been rubbernecking at roadkill for months.
It’s refreshing in a way that Trump has decided to go with the message that brought him, rather than “pivoting” to a “softer” position that he doesn’t believe in. Mainstream Republicans are angry at him for this, but I appreciate the forth right, in your face racism and xenophobia. You don’t have to go around unmasking this toxic stuff the way you do with mainstream Republicans post Reagan.
What Trump has done is once again present the voter with a crystal clear choice. It’s ether Clinton or the racist, xenophobic demagogue who can’t be trusted with Presidential power.For dinner, it’s either steak or cyanide.
Now those who are considering voting third party to “send a message” or “to vote their preference, regardless of the consequences” there is a similar, clear choice. It is now the duty of every rational, patriotic American to vote in a way that keeps Trump away from the Presidency and the nuclear codes. It’s that simple.This is not a matter of saying you won’t settle for the lesser evil, or that you will vote only for the candidate that mirrors your ideology. Things have gone too far for that kind of dilettantism . You’ve got to do your job as a voter and keep a monster out of White House. Literally, the future of the USA is at stake.
Last night, Ann Coulter Tweeted: “I hear Churchill had a nice turn of phrase, but Trump’s immigration speech is the most magnificent speech ever given.”
If she’s not joking, and I suspect she isn’t, this woman desperately needs help.
@Mikey:
For reasonable people, yes that is true. Trump got bupkis from this.
The trip was not for reasonable people, though.
Apparently Trump gave two different speeches. The one I saw had almost no resemblance to the one described above.
Roger Simon summed up the one I saw pretty well, including Trump’s 10-point plan.
In the last week or so, Trump’s traveled to a major disaster and met with a foreign head of state, while Hillary’s in full Nixon-in-the-final-days mode. Both can be argued as “presidential,” but I don’t think Hillary’s is the kind of “presidential” that wins votes.
Leaves the impression that there was no mention of “payment of the wall” during their meeting. DT then goes on the suggest that the discussion will occur at a later time.
I don’t know how DT can say (or suggest) that the he and Peña Nieto decided to discuss payment at a later date and simultanously say they didn’t payment (at all).
I think that Peña Nieto was surprised by Trump’ s assertion that payment was not discussed and quickly decided not to blurt out ‘ What he just told you is a lie’. – That would have been an international incident.
I’m not sure that Trump would have been that restrained or diplomatic.
@Andrew:
No, it wasn’t.
Neither was the Phoenix speech. It did get a warm welcome from its intended audience, though.
@Jenos Idanian: Of course you didn’t recognize it when it was accurately described, dearie. Is anyone surprised by your opinion?
@grumpy realist: Isn’t it your turn to check on Hillary in her bunker, sweetheart? She’s overdue for that oil change…
@Mikey: I went to read that Vox article, but I got distracted by their in-depth, thorough, even ground-breaking explainer of dick pics. Someone get the Pulitzer people on the phone, stat!
@Jenos Idanian: You don’t get to escape how well the shoe fits by complaining about the color of a shirt they have on sale.
@Mikey: Tell you what, Mikey: instead of subcontracting your thinking out to the Juicebox Mafia, why don’t you explain — in your own words — what’s so radical about Trump’s ten-point plan? Hell, here are just a few of Trump’s radical, divisive, hate-filled proposals:
1) End “catch-and-release.”
2) Zero tolerance for criminal aliens.
3) End “sanctuary cities.”
4) Cancel Obama’s Executive Orders regarding immigration.
5) Suspend issuing new visas where we can’t adequately screen applicants.
6) Insist that other countries accept their citizens when we deport them.
7) Turn off the “jobs and benefits” magnet that make it appealing to come here illegally.
(Points shamelessly lifted, renumbered, and tweaked from Roger Simon)
All those points boil down to “enforce the existing laws.” Just how is that such a bad thing?
@Jenos Idanian: Your white-supremacist-beloved guy proposed this stuff, you tell me how he makes it work.
I’m pretty happy we’re already at the lowest level of illegal immigration we’ve seen in 40 years and have a net-negative immigration rate from Mexico, both thanks to measures put in place by the Obama administration. If you believe we need to do more, then fine, but don’t pretend Trump is doing anything besides pandering to racists.
@Jenos Idanian:
And when Trump contradicts himself on any or all of these points, which, going by his track record, will probably happen during the next 48 hours, what then?
It’s nice to see that you are as delusional as Trump is…I hope you have the alcohol ready for November 8th when you will be needing to drown your sorrows…
I saw some news sites showing “Trump Softens Immigration Position”. So there are some wildly differing opinions on this. But maybe the news people should say “Trump talks immigration”, gives the text of the speech, and let the American people who can read make up their own minds.
I am finding a big difference between the networks and the local news outlets on this kind of stuff.
I also wonder why the big focus on immigration. It seems that there are other things they need to focus on. (The Russia – Turkey-Iran association).
“Remember the Alamo !”
@Mikey: Your white-supremacist-beloved guy proposed this stuff, you tell me how he makes it work.
Mikey, you SO don’t wanna go there.
Because if you keep bringing up “people who like Trump” and try to get me to defend them, then I’ll start bringing up “people whom Hillary and Obama have liked” (notice the difference there?) and see how you like defending them. People like Saul Alinsky (Hillary wrote a thesis about him), Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright, the Saudi royals (one of whom claimed to have been a major financial backer of Hillary’s campaign), and so on.
Trump had better leave those Mexicans alone.
All in all, no free bricks for his wall.
@Jenos Idanian: If Trump were actually serious about cutting down on illegal immigration and getting the illegal immigrants here out of the way, he would be coming up with a plan that addressed the two major points:
1) a high percentage of “illegal immigrants” are people who have overstayed their visas. How are you going to track them down without turning the US into a place like Czarist Russia?
2) Deal with the demand problem: why has not a word been said about punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants? Why don’t we hold them responsible for hiring people “under the table”? Why don’t we make it that employers have to check the validity of everyone they hire (as well as their own) and provide a sworn affidavit together with their tax forms each year that they only hire legal people? Why don’t we have an automatic fine of $100,000 for everyone who is caught hiring or using illegal labor?
Get rid of the demand, and the illegal labor will vacate itself.
But Trump hasn’t said anything about either, just gone on and on about “getting rid of the illegals” and “building a big, YUUUGE wall and make Mexico pay for it!”
It’s nothing. It’s street theatre for the rubes, and you’ve fallen for it. (Once again.)
OK, I’ve had enough playing nice with Our Hosts because, as a guest, I should be polite, but Doug, I’ve had enough.
@grumpy realist: Turn down they “grumpy” part, and embrace a little “realism.” Trump addressed both points.
Biometric entry-exit visa tracking will let us know when they’ve come and gone, and “turn off the jobs and benefits magnet” includes going after the employers.
Now it’s your turn. Offer a spirited defense of “sanctuary cities,” and why they shouldn’t be stripped of any and all federal funding as a response to their flagrant flouting of federal law.
I gotta go do some things, so take your time. I’ll check in later.
@Mikey:
That fact that we’ve had net-zero illegal immigration to this country for nearly 7 years evidently means nothing to conservatives including @Jenos Idanian:
@Jenos Idanian: Unless you put GPS locators on all the people coming in on visas, biometric tracking when they enter and leave the country isn’t going to do a bloody bit of good. Someone doesn’t leave the US when his visa expires, surprise, there’s a hell of a lot of land for him to roam around in. The entire goddamn US, in fact. How are you going to find him?
And a statement such as “turn off the jobs and benefits magnet” is nothing more than a bumper-sticker. HOW is he planning to do it? WHAT is he planning to do? HOW is he going to implement it? My god, I put more thought, analysis, and planning into my comment above than we’ve heard from Trump on the entire damn topic!
@al-Alameda:
It has been made extremely clear that the only conservatism that small c conservative Trump supporters are concerned about, is saving the illusion that white people are better in every single way over everyone else. That is it.
Everything else is window dressing to shine the spotlight off this core fact of the Trump/Pence run for the White House.
Every other policy has been said in the past by other Republicans, policies that are already in place, or rhetoric already said. Nothing about Trump is original, except maybe the hair.
@Andrew:
Even the hair isn’t original. Google “troll dolls” and check the images.
I know all about troll dolls. Used to have a few in my younger years. However, I never met anyone’s troll doll with a massive comb over such as Trump. Seems cruel to do to an inanimate object.
@Andrew:
Ever seen a pic of Trump when his hair is blowin’ in the wind? Troll City.
Slightly OT: NBC and MSNBC will host a “Commander-in-Chief Forum,” with Matt Lauer officiating, on September 7. Trump and Clinton will have an hour each to explain their policies.
What’s the over/under on Trump having gone through at least three different permutations of his immigration stance by then?
@CSK:
I have yes, his picture is a classic one. Nicholas Cage’s hair in the wind was better. Trump can not even win a hair in the wind competition.
@grumpy realist:
I think Trump should come out for workplace raids. Maybe starting with his own hotels and golf courses. Then onto the nannies and maids of the wealthy. Then move on to nursing homes and home health aides. Finally, the construction trades. Of course, that will put a halt to the building of the wall.
@Jenos Idanian:
“Extreme Vetting” and “ideological testing” both apply to LEGAL immigration policy. Satisfied?
@Jenos Idanian:
OK, I’ll bite-not for Jenos , but for the readers.
OK, that’s easy , because there is no such thing. The process is “catch-due process-deport.”You just don’t round up a bunch of brown people, label them “illegal” and truck them across the border, which is what folks like Jenos have in mind. You actually have to PROVE people are here illegally, which means they get a hearing, according to the US Constitution.
So there is zero tolerance NOW. Convicted criminals are generally deportable once caught. Indeed, Obama’s executive order is all about putting the priority on deporting criminals and scheduling deportation of otherwise law abiding illegal aliens since later, despite talk of it granting “amnesty”.
Again, legally, no such thing. Sure some mayors declared their cities “sanctuary cities”, but since the federal government carries out immigration law enforcement, such declarations have no legal meaning. No one has been able to point out a difference in immigration law enforcement between “sanctuary” and “non sanctuary” cities.
See (2). What Trump is suggesting as an impossible to carry out version of Obama’s executive order, anyway.
Is there any evidence that the US government is issuing visas where they can’t adequately screen applicants?Again, this seems a non issue. I do note the Obama Administration seems to have done a better job than the Bush Administration,who let in 19 al Qaeda conspirators and failed to keep track of them while they carried out a complex and long running plot to hijack airliners, etc.
Er, how exactly? What happens if they face a well founded fear of persecution in those countries? It’s not that simple as usual.
Well, ,more can be done here, but aren’t you talking about burdening the “job creators” with costly reporting “regulations?”. It’s been known since forever that effective employer sanctions are the key to stopping illegal immigration, but generally, whenever this is mentioned , big business and big agriculture lobbyists swing into action, there are meetings with various legislators, and the matter gets tabled indefinitely. I also note that none other than Donald Trump has been accused of hiring illegal foreign labor, so maybe he should look in the mirror.
I’d be very careful if I were a contractor working on building this wall……. bearing in mind DT’s penchant for not paying suppliers
@stonetools: Yah, it’s let’s go after the illegals except for my wife, my models, my workers….
@grumpy realist:
“Biometric tracking” sounds so so tech and modern, till you realize that it’s absolutely useless in 99 per cent of cases involving illegal immigration , which usually involves a farm worker, construction worker, janitor , and nurse’s aide being paid off the books by some contractor.
Oh, and speaking of realism , I notice Jenos doesn’t talk of how Trump is going to build a tall, impenetrable, “beautiful” wall across 3,000 miles of river and desert, and how he is going to force Mexico to pay for it. Maybe Jenos is taking the time to figure out how Trump is going to do that. He might be gone for quite some time.
@stonetools: I was going to offer the hot take that everything Trump outlined is either (1) being done now, (2) in the works now, or (3) factually and legally impossible. I think you said it better.
@Jenos Idanian:
Oh come on, how long can you possibly masturbate for? Ten minutes, tops?
P.S. I won’t be surprised if the “both sides do it” media horse-races us into a Brexit situation. Americans are idiots and the media is their enabler.
Sometimes I think we deserve the asteroid.
@Jenos Idanian:
While we’re waiting on you to explain your idiot candidate’s latest excreta, let me add this question:
On which side of the Rio Grande do we build the wall? Simple question, should be a simple answer. Are we going to invade Mexico and seize a few thousand yards of their territory or are we going to wall the river off from Americans, including farmers and ranchers that rely on it.
a) We’re going to seize Mexican territory.
b) We’re going to cede the Rio Grande to Mexico.
@Bob@Youngstown:
Yes, but only the brown illegal immigrants.
@Jenos Idanian:
I see our local conspiracy theorist is in full-on delusion over the walking Cheeto.
Like every school yard bully when confronted…Trump backed down in the face of the Mexican President. And like the little buddies of bullies always do…Jenos is right there pretending like nothing happened…while everyone else is laughing.
Jenos…you’ve always been a sad little feller…freeloading on health care, etc…today, however, marks another level lower for you.
I have a few questions myself.
If we find an Irishman that has overstayed his visa, is the gov’t going to fly him back across the pond individually or are we going to hold him in some kind of concentration camp until we have enough Irishmen to fill a plane?
Will this law even apply to white people? What if (as a US Citizen) I confess to being here illegally from New Zealand, can I get a free flight “home”?
Will the Deportation Force require a warrant to search my home if they suspect me of harboring Ecuadorians in my attic? Will I be charged with a crime for harboring said Ecuadorians?
What if someone who is suspected of being here illegally refuses to cooperate, i.e. refuses to tell the Deportation Force where they came from? Will they have to stay in the concentration camp until they ‘fess up? Or will we just send them all to Mexico? If that is the case, where will we send white people who refuse to cooperate? Mexico? or Asians, also to Mexico?
Well, I am all for Trump continuing with this approach, and so should say all Democrats . Here is one WAPo pundit’s take:
FSM make it so. According to Vox, the Dems even have a shot at the House.
@michael reynolds: Obviously, we’re going to build it going right down the middle and guard it with sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads!
It’s no wonder that Trump has basically vamoosed completely out of real estate and is doing nothing more than selling his “brand” around. Or at least was. (Cross off Mexico and South American countries from your list, dude.)
And it’s no wonder that his followers who follow him around like lost sheep are from the, ahem, not so successful part of the population.
What was the old comment? Young soldiers worry about strategy, old soldiers worry about logistics.
Trump never worries at all about how realizable his projects are, which is why he keeps constantly failing.
@Jenos Idanian: Please explain how the “deportation force” will work. How do they catch the illegals? Do they stop everybody on the street with a brownish skin and ask them for their papers? How do they transport them back to their country of origin in a way that preserves their family structure and keeps their property from being looted by their Anglo neighbors? How many enforcement agents will be needed? Who does all the work that the illegals do?
We’re talking about something right up Heinrich Himmler’s alley, and I don’t give a damn about Godwin’s law.
@Jenos Idanian: Hey, it’s not Jeremiah Wright’s fault that America’s white supremacists are all 100% behind Trump.
Obama has had great success dealing with illegal immigration. As has already been mentioned, Trump’s proposals are either already superfluous or all-but-impossible to implement.
But they do provide lots of red meat for his racist and xenophobic supporters, which is the actual point anyway.
@Pete S:
Well of course not…and you can see by the comments of Jenos that the dupes cannot be un-duped. They just double down on their dupidity.
The important thing is; why would anyone would START supporting Trump after yesterdays drubbing at the hand of the Mexican President, and last nights speech?
There are a bunch of independents and undecided Republicans out there, and Clinton would do well to capture them. Trump is helping her. And I’m damn happy to see it.
@grumpy realist:
And he markets his “brand” mostly in blue states with his golf courses and buildings, all of which are losing customers as a result. I know I would have had no problem playing at a Trump golf course before his birtherism and presidential run. No way I would set foot on one now.
Who in their right mind would license his name now?
@Mikey: Not to mention that Trump flat out endorsed the Obama administration’s approach… was it last week? (He’s flopped so many times that a trout on a riverbank would be jealous.)
Where was Jenos then? Crickets. But now Trump’s all “WALL!1!!eleventyone!!!11!” and the alt-right is back with “Hooray! Trump will delete the illegals!”
The Wall is completely irrelevant, because it´s relatively easy to overstay a visitor visa. And It´s not like Nogales-AZ and Los Nogales-CH-Mexico aren´t basically the same city, stretching across the border.
You´d need things like a National ID card(And number) and work regulations to curb illegal immigration. Any other thing is a distraction.
@Andre Kenji:
That is the true slogan for Trump/Pence 2016
Squirrel!
I particularly liked the Univision headline:
Trump deja la piel de cordero en México y muestra los comillos en Arizona al hablar de inmigración
Trump leaves his lambskin in Mexico and show his fangs in Arizona in his immigration speech.
@C. Clavin: I was mostly wondering about the Latino Republicans referenced towards the end of Doug’s post. I genuinely do not understand why after 18 months of Trump’s lies, insults and inability to understand a policy proposal well enough to articulate it twice in a row, last night’s speech would be the last straw. Outside of media who have been hoping for Trump to try and make this a closer race, who was surprised by anything he said?
@Pete S:
All groups, including minorities that ought to know better, are capable of stupidity. It’s an equal opportunity affliction.
@CSK: I would expect nothing less from the healthiest individual ever to run for president!
Heh, remember when Obama was mocked as a “messiah” with sycophantic followers? Regardless of whether that’s true, in this case it honestly feels like the candidate himself is asking people to say these exact words.
This is a guy who thinks showcasing the percentage of time the audience spent appluading his speech is an effective ad. In a word: sad!
@Pete S:
Pete Wilson is standing up waving his arms,”No, No, No!!!”
@michael reynolds: I’m starting to be pretty gloomy about the possible final result. This is starting to feel like Europe just before WWI, where everyone was convinced there was no possibility there would be any war again…
Stupidity should really, really hurt. Looks like we’re going to have to learn that lesson all over again. There should be NO REASON why Trump’s support is as high as it is. He hasn’t released his taxes (which all other candidates have since Nixon), he insults everybody, he makes promises he never lives up to (we’re still waiting for the proof that those loans to your campaign you made have been flipped over into donations) and YET the media STILL keeps wanting to turn this into a horse race.
I get the feeling the US media would be willing to watch the total destruction of the US provided they could televise it from their tall towers and sell the videotape.
Oh well. Either Trump is going to lose, or he’s going to win, make an absolute mess of the presidency, trash the US economy, cause us to lose all status in the world, and we’ll dwindle back down to where our anti-intellectual, entertainment-obsessed. boorish “culture” is in equilibrium with. Subsistence farming is my guess. We’ve had a good run living off the brains of the European intellectuals and top-notch immigrants who have been immigrating to the US since before WWII. After Trump is done with us, we’ll have the reputation of a dumpster fire.
@Pete S:
Well, actually, a bunch of his so-called Hispanic Advisory Panel have quit after last nights speech.
They include Jacob Monty who said this:
@C. Clavin:
And, of course, Jenos swallowed.
@grumpy realist:
You’re that old?
Curses…all my fantasies dashed…
@C. Clavin: I got a brain dump from A.J.P. Taylor.
@Jenos Idanian:
Please explain how this is done without a vast expansion of the power of the federal government. I thought you guys were kind of against that…
@michael reynolds :
Two other things that rarely gets brought up:
(1) the current walls are being proven ineffective since border agents regularly find tunnels that bypass it completely. It’s simple logic: can’t go over, go under. How exactly does Trump plan to deal with that?
(2) This is earthquake, hurricane and cyclone territory (depending on where you are in the line). What kind of foundation is he thinking they’re going to be able to use across desperate landscapes that needs to not collapse on itself the second the ground begins to shake or the winds howl? Build it cheap and it will be a rubble field shortly. The desert is unforgiving enough as it is but natural disasters will punch a hole in the wall so often it will be an expensive patchwork security nightmare.
@grumpy realist:
I think the good thing about that speech is that it clarified issues for those moderate Republicans and independents who are thinking of voting third party or sitting out the election because they can’t vote for horrible Hillary. Now that it’s Labor Day and Trump remains Trump, they have to decide whether they are truly going to allow into the White House a racist, authoritarian buffoon with the capability of fvcking things up beyond GWB levels of ineptitude.
I have to think that our local libertarians or even your boy Rod Dreher at TAC must be seriously thinking that they have to pull the lever for Hillary, even in secret.
@grumpy realist:
I was feeling that way as well a few months ago. It was affecting a book I was writing because I couldn’t get a feel for what kind of world it would be released into.
But I don’t think Trump will win. The highest he’s ever polled is still lower than the lowest Hillary has ever polled. He’s not gaining, she’s fading. He’s stuck at a max of 44%. Her lowest is basically 46%. So the question is, which of these two can increase support between now and November?
Personally, I’d rather be playing Hillary’s hand. Here’s why:
1) Hillary has an organization, Trump does not.
2) Hillary has a robust GOTV, Trump does not.
3) The map has a Hillary bias. She can lose basically all the current battleground states, and still win.
4) Obama, Warren, Biden, Bernie, Michelle and a number of Republicans, are weapons she can deploy to soothe the base, sweet talk labor and reassure ‘moderate’ Republicans.
Most importantly, the less people see Hillary the more they hate her. When they actually see her – as SecState, testifying before the House GOP’s kangaroo court or at the convention, her numbers go up. Unless she completely botches the debates, she’ll beat Trump there.
Or not.
@C. Clavin:
That is what is driving me crazy. Why would last night have been a tipping point? He has said a lot worse during the campaign so far. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad to see the spell broken for any of his supporters.
@michael reynolds:
You are not wrong, but it is really disheartening to think that 40% of the population is this dumb. Hopefully it is just sunstroke from the hot summer we have been having and his support will diminish through the fall.
@stonetools:
I’m reading Rick Pearlstein’s great book “Before the Storm” about Barry Goldwater’s rise, thinking it might shed a bit of insight on our current connundrum. A few things have really stuck out to me. (I’m only a third of the way through, so please forgive me if what I’m about to say is directly contradicted in the book later.):
1. While Goldwater had extremist views, and in the context of today’s world his ‘states rights’ view of civil rights is abhorrent, he comes off as actually a pretty honorable dude. Desegregated his department stores in the 20s (!), was loyal to a fault even with those he disagreed, was a true believer and not an opportunist, etc. In other words, Trump is no Goldwater.
2. (Relevant to your post) Goldwater’s (and Buckley’s) rise created the human infrastructure needed to make the conservative movement real. His campaign(s) took highly motivated, intelligent conservatives and taught them how to build organizations, craft national messages, compromise to reach goals, and take the long view of success when facing short term defeat.
Trump’s campaign is the complete opposite of this in every effect.
At the moment the GOP needs to–has to–create a new generation of leaders to combat the human infrastructure Obama, Hillary, and Bernie have created over the past decade, Trump is doing everything possible to not just turn away talented folks, but to actively destroy institutional knowledge.
The GOP is going to come away with a serious personnel deficit going into future national elections. If they are lucky, their state parties (which are much stronger, over all, than Democratic state parties) will have the tools in place to identify and cultivate young guns. If not, Trump is destroying the infrastructure the GOP has been creating since 1960.
Sad!
@grumpy realist:
So does that make you Young Grumpystein?
Clinton raised $143 million…in August. $62 million for her campaign, and $81 million for the DNC/state parties.
That is an enormous one-month haul.
@Jen:
Think of all the companies Trump could tank with $143 Million!! All the contractors he could stiff! He must be soooo jealous.
@Pete S:
Remember the George Carlin classic: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and then think that half of them are stupider than that.” That explains the 40%. FWIW, I think Trump’s roof is probably close to that.
I also think that the third party support will melt away, as the voters realize how high the stakes are. That support will mostly go to Hillary, IMO.
@Andre Kenji: “Remember the Alamo !”
@grumpy realist:
For the last few weeks I’ve trying on the analogy that Trump is like Kaiser Wilhelm, a buffoon of the first order, whose bluster and incompetence stumbled Europe into the horrors of WWI. Not sure the analogy fits. Maybe Mussolini is closer. When someone make the Hitler analogy I just cringe. Too far.
@Scott:
Of those Mussolini is closest, but he is more an unholy combination of Berlusconi and Boris Johnson. or maybe Geert Wilders.
@CSK: I really should go rent and watch that movie in honor of Gene Wilder. I do miss that man.
(Latest movie I watched was a documentary on the making of Intersteller. Interesting interview with Kip Thorne)
Off to translate some more Japanese. Zya mata…
@Grumpy Realist: I have been watching “The Magnificent 7”, the original movie directed by the incomparable John Sturges, with an all star cast. A story of the cooperation and respect involving a group of Americans and the citizens of a small Mexican town.
Excellent script, acting, music, stunts, and directing. Timeless.
Guess what? Didn’t I predict upthread that Trump would flip on his speech last night within 48 hours? He did it already, telling Laura Ingraham she would see a “definite softening in his immigration policy.
@CSK:
Well, he’s an old man and a cycle of hardening followed by unexpected softening is one of the fairly common consequences of age.
doug: “After more than a week of seeming to suggest that he was softening on several parts of his immigration plan, including an apparent flip-flop on the issue of deporting people in the country illegally only to revert to his previous position,….”
‘Apparent’? Going from ‘Build the WALLL’ to a virtual wall?
Going from deporting 11 million people to ‘a process’?
“If this is typical of the reaction of Latino and moderate voters, then Trump may end up losing more from the past two weeks of seeming moderation than he might have gained. ”
Gosh, a week of not sh*tting on them, and they don’t support him? I guess that they are just ungrateful.
@Jenos Idanian: You have no idea who Saul Alinsky was, do you? You’ve just heard his name uttered as a curse word by the morons you follow so often you assume he’s some kind of cross between Hitler and Stalin. When in fact he was someone who dedicated his life to improving the lot of the poor and the middle class — even the white middle class your candidate pretends to care about.
As for the rest of your list, Jeremiah Wright is a Christian preacher who has expressed justified anger at the way blacks are treated in this country, Van Jones is a former White House aide who expressed some political views your ilk didn’t like. And your crap about the Saudis has as much relation to reality as anything else from that hack site.
I have no idea why you’d think either Obama or Clinton would have any problem acknowledging these three people is beyond me. Except, of course, that as usual you have no idea what you’re talking about.
@michael reynolds: Well here in Texas they chose to steal the land from US citizens through eminent domain. There’s even a golf course that is technically in Mexico as a result..
@Jenos Idanian: ” Offer a spirited defense of “sanctuary cities,” and why they shouldn’t be stripped of any and all federal funding as a response to their flagrant flouting of federal law.”
The point of a “sanctuary city,” you moron, is to make sure that people living in that city don’t fear the cops more than criminals, so that they come forward when they are victimized instead of hiding in the shadows knowing that if they complain about the really bad people they’ll be jailed and deported. It’s a way of doing what your man claims he wants, which is to target the real criminals.
By the way, are you still pretending you’re not all in for Trump as you post message after message lathering his ass with your tongue?
DT has no shame when it comes to lying about immigration
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/08/factchecking-trump-on-immigration/
@Concerned UK Citizen: Donald Trump hasn’t really bothered much with facts his entire campaign including the primaries. The only one more disconnected from the truth in the primary was Ben Carson.
He’s just a series of distortions and outright lies. Like some of the stuff my loud and proud conservative facebook friends post..
What a totally unexpected development.
1) Trump outlines his immigration policy that says, essentially. “let’s enforce the current laws.”
2) Legal immigrants look carefully at the plan, realize it doesn’t affect them in the slightest, shrug, and go on with their lives.
3) The left completely loses their shit and deploys Plan A (yell racist!) and Plan B (start frantically lying to whip up hysteria).
Whoever could have seen that coming? Besides, of course, pretty much anyone.
@wr: Oh, look, wr’s giving Alinsky the Full Tongue Bath With Optional Happy Ending. How… nauseating.
And your spirited defense of “sanctuary cities” sounds vaguely familiar. I wonder why… oh, yes, it’s akin to that behind Arizona’s SB 1070. And the end result was a ruling that immigration law is the sole provenance of the federal government, and no state or local body can overrule it.
Consistency is way, way too much to expect from you.
@Jenos Idanian:
Hahahahahahahahaha! That you–a sycophantic and credulous supporter of the single LEAST honest Presidential candidate in the entirety of American history–could even think of accusing the left of this is the utter pinnacle of both irony and chutzpah.
I have to give credit where it’s due, though, you’ve just added some fabulous comedy to my day.
Well at least SOMEONE in the media accurately identifies what was happening in Arizona….
The World War I analogy may be more apt than we suspect. Actually, I think DT is more like Nicholas II (with more brains, less humility) when he starts talking about what he’d do in the Middle East. ISIS is like the Serbians in 1914 – in a weak position, but with a powerful backer (Russia then, Saudi Arabia now). Whoever gets elected in November is going to having to proceed with caution to avoid starting another conflagration. Somehow, I don’t see DT as being a person who proceeds with caution when making any decision.
@Mikey:
“and Plan B (start frantically lying to whip up hysteria).
Hahahahahahahahaha! That you–a sycophantic and credulous supporter of the single LEAST honest Presidential candidate in the entirety of American history–could even think of accusing the left of this is the utter pinnacle of both irony and chutzpah.”
And a supporter of the candidate who has spent most of his campaign trying to whip up hysteria to gain support, as well.
@michael reynolds:
I suspect the problem is even more, ah, pressing amongst short-fingered vulgarians.
@Jenos Idanian:
Do you know what a brain-dead cult member you sound like?
Perfect Master says “round ’em all up! Yay!”
Perfect Master says, “don’t round ’em all up! Yay!”
Perfect Master says “drink Kool-Aid! Yay!”
Moron.
@michael reynolds: To quote from an incident in history: “Who rules in Berlin?”
The William II analogy may be even more appropriate than you realize….
I’ve said this so many times that I’ve lost track of how many times and I’m getting bored with it, but it remains so, so true: if Trump is such a bad, bad person, why do you have to make up shit about him? Why can’t you make your points by simply saying the truth?
I have a few theories:
1) It’s OK to demonize someone when they really are a demon. They’re so awful that they’re defamation-proof.
2) It’s how you recognize each other. Simply recognizing the target’s flaws isn’t enough; it’s almost a competition to see who can come up with the worst things to say about the target.
In this case, Trump’s plan 1) is only concerned with illegal aliens, and 2) almost entirely focused on enforcing existing laws. But that isn’t properly inflammatory, so let’s just make up shit!
@Jenos Idanian:
No one is making up anything about Trump. . . except Trump.
His lies are legion. As a liar Trump is to Hillary as Derek Jeter is to one of the kids from the Bad News Bears. He is the living god of lies. He lies so constantly that people keeping track of his lies cannot keep up. He lies so much that it’s infinitely easier to count the times when he accidentally says something true. God knows we’ve all given up expecting consistency from this bloated, crude, stupid, ignorant, childish, pathetically needy, narcissistic old psychopath.
You are full of sh!t all the way up to your ears, Jenos. You claim to care about truth and you support the world’s champion liar, and then, just like Cheetoh Jesus, you accuse truth-tellers of lying on the brilliant Trumpian principle of “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”
You support the same man who is supported by Putin, ISIS, the American Nazi Party and the KKK. That’s your guy. Those are the people standing with you. So shove Saul Alinsky (about whom you know fwck-all) right up your Trump-hole, Jenos. You have zero credibility, you have zero standing to accuse anyone of anything.
FWIW, Check out Maddow’s piece on Lincoln/Whigs/No-Nothings and it’s application to the events of today. It was first aired after Trump’s immigration speech and then repeated again on Thursday night.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-nativist-speech-follows-dark-us-pattern-755626563851
@Jenos Idanian: Shorter Jenos: I have no idea who Saul Alinsky is, but I’m going to keep saying the name because people at right wing sites say he’s icky and that’s all the information I need about anything.
@Jenos Idanian:
Sanctuary cities have noting to do with “overuling” federal immigration law. Cities can choose not to use municipal resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Pretty simple. Trump, like Bush before him, wants a vast increase in the size, power, and cost of the federal government, combined with a reduction in personal privacy and individual rights.
People like you seem to be unequipped to understand this, and simply swallow whole whatever line the GOP happens to be pushing at the moment.
Since we have several sanctuary cities in my neighborhood, I thought I would share this photo of the burnt out socialist wasteland hellhole that is California with Jenos. The consequences of our tragic policies are very clear…
I’d respond, but 1) it’s already being held up in moderation, and 2) I’m busy reading (elsewhere — it won’t be broached here) that Hillary’s defense to the FBI is that she’s too brain-damaged to have had any criminal intent behind all her lies.
@Jenos Idanian: You fail to recognize that the majority of us here on this board as well as the majority of Americans have already concluded that Alex Jones is a lunatic. So go ahead and read on then regurgitate his nonsense. It only makes you the fool.
@Bob@Youngstown: Alex who?
Hillary ADMITTED the brain damage — she told the FBI that she doesn’t remember a lot of things because of her 2012 concussion. It’s on the record.
But keep spinning. It’s all you got, and still a damned sight more than Hillary has.
@Jenos Idanian: With such a definition then everyone in existence is brain damaged…
Seriously.