Donald Trump, a parking cone with emotional issues, spent last week indicating that he might be open to “softening” his stances on immigration. Turns out that didn’t feel as tingly in his bathing suit area, so now we’re back to this:
That tweet was sent Tuesday morning, and it represents yet another tonal and policy shift in the campaign of a hopelessly confused man who’s in way over his head.
How’d this happen? Six days ago, Trump told enraged hammerhead shark Sean Hannity that he’d be willing to “soften” his positions on immigration somehow, after meeting with Latino leaders:
“I did,” Trump replied. “I had a great meeting with great people, great Hispanic leaders, and there could certainly be a softening because we’re not looking to hurt people. We want people — we have some great people in this country. We have some great, great people in this country but we’re going to follow the laws of this country and what people don’t realize — we have very, very strong laws.”
That collection of moderately humane word salad made everyone angry, particularly when he turned to Hannity’s audience and tried to poll them on what they thought: “No. 1, we’ll say throw out. No. 2, we work with them,” he told the audience, because that’s how this works. (That didn’t work.)
Trump’s new half-change of heart led to a baffled round of headlines as well as some truly amazing writing on the right, like this National Review piece that said conservative hawks are confident Trump “will land on a sensible immigration policy — even if the events of the past week have made clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
In truth, this is nothing new: Trump has previously made weird immigration waffles, like suddenly saying highly educated immigrants are fine, or first proposing that we ban Muslims, then refusing to clarify whether he still thinks we should ban Muslims. Now, as everyone stares at the TV and exasperatedly mutters “What the hell,” the candidate is promising to set everything straight once and for all, in what’s being touted as a “major immigration speech” on Wednesday in Arizona. He’s expected to clarify whether he has any actual thoughts in his brain or merely a series of hate-filled squirrels chasing each other around a darkened golf course.
