That’s what Mexicans saw on Wednesday: two sides of the Republican candidate.
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“Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation”, Trump charged in the highly anticipated speech, which took place hours after he met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. While illegal immigration from Mexico has been slowing and the US crime rate has been declining, he paints a picture of undocumented immigrants streaming across the border and overwhelming countless neighborhoods with violent crimes.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said: “It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it”.
While his immigration speech didn’t live up to the hype of being a monumental day in his campaign, nor did Trump pivot in a substantial way as many politicians would, he did entertain. Not any more. Remember, under a Trump administration, it’s called America first.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies haven’t softened, and he has every intention of ripping families apart and deporting as many illegal immigrants as possible as quickly as possible.
But Trump’s speech made one thing clear: He’s not changing from being an illegal immigration hardliner. “It is deeply unpopular with voters, and profoundly un-American”.
Still, Trump laid out a series of tough policies to tackle illegal immigration when he delivered his speech in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night.
In an email to Trump campaign advisers and Hispanic outreach staffers at the Republican National Committee, Ramiro Pena, a Texas pastor who also serves on Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council, voiced his disappointment with the speech and said, “It is hard to [imagine] how I can continue to associate with the Trump campaign”.
Trump outlined a 10-point plan including a 2,000 mile long wall along the U.S. -Mexico border, zero tolerance for criminal aliens, blocking funding for sanctuary cities and hiring 5,000 more border patrol agents.
Donald TrumpDonald TrumpClinton to begin flying with press next week: report Trump will “assess” more deportations after reaching first goals Clinton camp slams Trump’s “insulting and cowardly” black voter outreach MORE on Thursday claimed Mexico’s president “acknowledged” that a wall on the border will be built, although there’s still some negotiating to get him to agree to pay for it.
With the meeting held behind closed doors, it was impossible to know who was telling the truth.
The comments were in stark contrast to the show of diplomacy hours earlier in Mexico, where Mr Trump called Mr Pena Nieto his “friend”.
The former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate raised the possibility as he tweaked the Democratic presidential nominee for not meeting with Mexico President Peña Nieto like her GOP rival Donald Trump did this week.
Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, said it was “epochal, historic and unprecedented”, while Richard Spencer, president of the white-nationalist think tank the National Policy Institute, tweeted “Trump is back in a big way!”
Back on American soil, Trump addressed directly a question he sidestepped when asked in Mexico. “One hundred percent. They don’t know it, but they’re going to pay for it”.
“After that, the conversation moved on to other topics and unfolded in a respectful manner”, he added in another tweet. The candidate is deeply unpopular in Mexico due in large part to his deriding the country as a source of rapists and criminals as he kicked off his campaign. “We set up the borders, we control immigration, you levy a charge to come into the country”.
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He said any person living in the country illegally who is arrested for any crime whatsoever will immediately be placed into deportation proceedings.
