Donald Trump went on his first non-golfing foreign travel of the 2016 election and returned a changed man. Gone was the candidate who talked about all those good-hearted “illegal immigrants” who have lived honestly in the US for decades. Gone was all the talk of them paying back taxes to get legal status. Gone was the kinder, gentler Trump.
Instead, the Republican nominee delivered an immigration speech on Wednesday night with all the sweetness of the Sex Pistols, the brevity of Fidel Castro and the brains of Archie Bunker.
This was, in the nominee’s words, “a detailed policy address” on immigration. Not to be confused with his declarations on the subject in a billion primary debates, TV interviews and midnight tweets.
So in place of “a deportation force” to forcibly remove 11 million undocumented immigrants, Trump described a “deportation task force” to merely eject 2 million “criminal aliens”.
This feat will take place with remarkable speed on his inauguration day next January. “We will begin moving them out as soon as I take office,” he explained, speaking from a teleprompter. “Day one. My first hour in office. Those people are gone … The crime will stop. They will be gone. It will be over.”
You may scoff at such promises, but this was no hyperbolic overstatement for the sake of a few votes. Trump assured us this speech would be different. “Today, on a very complicated and difficult subject, you will get the truth,” he said.
Now unlike lots of other policy stuff – such as whether Russia has invaded Ukraine or whether you can really win a trade war with China – it’s fair to say that Trump knows a thing or two about immigration.
His first wife was born in the Czech Republic, and his third wife was born in Slovenia. His own family (original name: Drumpf) came from Germany, settling in the US a little more than a decade before the first world war.
And yet, Candidate Trump proposed what he called “ideological certification” of immigrants to check their real intent. That was the only way to weed out criminals and terrorists, who somehow blended into one giant alien blob in his combed-over cranium.
Trump painted a portrait of a nation overrun by hordes of unassimilated aliens stampeding across the southern border, determined to butcher innocent Americans.
Never mind that most undocumented immigrants enter the country by plane and overstay their visas. Never mind that Barack Obama has deported more people than any other president, and more than every president in the 20th century combined.
The US government apparently knows about all these criminal aliens, often detains them, but just keeps on releasing them back into society to wreak havoc. “We’re like the big bully that keeps getting beat up,” Trump lamented. “Didya ever see that? The big bully that keeps getting beat up.”
No, we’ve never seen that – except in one presidential candidate’s recent trip to Mexico.
Trump thinks of himself as a tough negotiator who knows the art of the deal. So when he travels to Mexico to confront the leader of a country that he thinks is ripping us off with bad trade deals, and sending its bad guys over the nonexistent border, we know exactly what to expect.
A polite and friendly conversation that doesn’t discuss his plan to force the Mexicans to pay for the wall he wants to build.
This is clearly a cunning negotiation tactic. He has already confused the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who told the world that Mexico would not pay for the Great Wall of Trump. “I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” the president said bluntly.
Trump himself had a different take. “We did discuss the wall,” he said. “We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That will be for a later date. This was a very preliminary meeting. I think it was an excellent meeting.”
Other people hear “no” and think it means “no”. Other people negotiate by trying to move the other side closer to their own price. Other people speak up in a discussion.
Not Trump. He negotiates by saying the discussion never happened. That’s what “very preliminary” means. An “excellent meeting” is one where you lull the opposition into a false sense of victory.
“Today was the first part of the discussion, and a relationship-builder between Mr Trump and President Peña Nieto,” said Jason Miller, a senior communications advisor to the nominee. “It was not a negotiation, and that would have been inappropriate.”
More appropriate was what came out of Trump’s mouth when he returned to the land of the free. “We will build a great wall along the southern border,” Trump told his cheering supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. At this point, he walked across the stage and applauded himself.
“And Mexico will pay for the wall. 100%. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.”
No, they clearly don’t know it. But there were some clues left by some Trump staffers. As the candidate finished his speech, the loudspeakers played one track from his carefully curated campaign playlist. The classic Rolling Stones number: You Can’t Always Get What You Want.
- This article was amended on 1 September 2016. A previous version said Melania Trump is Donald Trump’s second wife. She is his third.
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