His speech has been rescheduled to Wednesday from Arizona. Per Trump’s tweet late Sunday, that event is back on. He’s been consistent on a few points, however: building a US-Mexico border wall, “extreme vetting” of new immigrants and deportations of those who commit crimes.
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Immigration issues dominated the Sunday talk shows as Trump’s surrogates, led by running mate Mike Pence, discussed his approach.
Trump has a big problem with Catholic voters. It was hard to see how he could change his positions on immigration, of all issues.
Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under George W. Bush, says the confusion that now exists about Trump’s plans for immigration underscores “the risk in electing someone whose candidacy is based on his personality and image, as opposed his experience and policy knowledge”.
In interviews last week, he said he was open to a “softening” of his policy when it came to undocumented immigrants already in the country.
The primaries are done, the conventions are over, and even the dog days of August are almost burnt away. “Moved a 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country, moved them just beyond the border”. But this wouldn’t be the first time Trump went out of his way to say something, IN ALL CAPS, that predictably hurt him.
The Indiana governor, Conway and other surrogates said the main tenets of Trump’s immigration plan still will include building a wall along the southern US border and making Mexico pay for it, no path to status adjustment or citizenship for people here illegally and stronger border enforcement.
“You’re going to see a very natural and normal guy – someone who is comfortable with who he is, not someone who’s highly scripted or nervous”, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, according to The Washington Post.
Trump has had strong views about immigration from the start, rallying for strict immigration policies during his campaign.
Asked whether the “deportation force” proposal Trump laid out in November is still in place, Pence replied: “Well, what you heard him describe there, in his usual plainspoken, American way, was a mechanism, not a policy”.
“I’ve laid out the best I could, the specific plans and ideas that I want to pursue as your president because I have this old-fashioned idea”, Clinton said during a recent speech in Colorado.
The Clinton campaign was working up a plan to paint Trump as outside the Republican mainstream even before she clinched her party’s nomination, raising some discord within the Democratic National Committee.
“He did simplify it. They know you’re going to do a good job once you’re there”. Bottom line: People will be watching.
The Clinton campaign’s challenge is to keep Trump from poisoning her presidency, writes POLITICO. “It’s like, say what’s real and get on with it”.
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Trump also made headlines during the primary for using the term “anchor babies” to describe the US-born children of undocumented immigrants – suggesting he didn’t support the citizenship status granted by the Constitution to those children.
