Tom DeLay, former House of Representatives majority leader, said Donald Trump must improve how he presents his plans for immigration reform.
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Trump had already scheduled an event in Arizona – despite the fact that his Arizona campaign director had said it was canceled Friday – and made clear on Twitter Sunday night what the focus of his remarks would be.
Trump in recent days has suggested he might be “softening” on the deportation force and that he might be open to allowing at least some immigrants in the country illegally to stay, as long as they pay taxes.
Some of Trump’s most prominent backers have said the GOP presidential nominee’s position remains consistent.
“The first day I will begin to quickly deport illegal immigrants criminals of this country, including the hundreds of thousands that have been released under the Obama-Clinton administration”, he said in Des Moines, in Iowa, during a rally organized by the local Republican Senator Joni Ernst. Trump wouldn’t say later in the week, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“The reign of terror will be over”, Trump added, without explaining any of the mechanics of how his policy would work – namely how he would deal with the enormous backlog in the immigration courts and the legal rights of immigrants who have been accused of a crime.
Trump running mate Mike Pence gave the GOP nominee some wiggle room on actually implementing that deportation force in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday, downplaying it as merely a “mechanism” to carry out Trump’s bigger-picture ideas. “But now he’s reflecting on it and his position is going to be known”, Priebus said. Trump even questioned whether people born in the United States to people here illegally are citizens – even though they have automatically been considered citizens since the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868. That’s what CBS’ John Dickerson asked Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday.
“I’ve had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they’ve said, ‘Mr”. Pence also did not answer whether the campaign believes, as Trump has said, that children born to people who are in the US illegally are not USA citizens.
“Well, I think the whole question of anchor babies, as it’s known, the whole question of citizenship, of natural-born Americans is a subject for the future”, he said.
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“Let me just tell you”, Trump retorted, “that Dwight Eisenhower, good president, great president, people liked him”.
