Nobody knew whether that proposal would be part of the big speech but there was a lot of feverish speculation that Trump was planning to surprise the country with a long-awaited “pivot.” As we all know now, he didn’t mention any such possibility in the speech. It looks like the whole thing was just a ruse to fool the media into giving Trump big props in the run-up to the event.

CNN’s Sara Murray reported yesterday that the administration basically told the news anchors what they wanted to hear, what Trump officials believed “would give them positive press coverage for the next few hours.” She added that a “senior administration official” had admitted it was “a misdirection play.” Said John King:

It does make you wonder; so we’re not supposed to believe what the senior-most official at the lunch says — who then they allowed it to be the president’s name says — we’re not supposed to believe what they say? Maybe we shouldn’t believe what they say.

Yes, that’s right: The “senior-most official” at the lunch was the president himself. If members of the press don’t understand by now that Trump lies as easily as he breathes, right to their faces and the entire world, they really need to find another line of work.

This is particularly true in this case. It’s not even the first time that Trump pulled this exact bait and switch. In late August there had been a flurry of gossip that Trump was going to “soften” his stance on immigration in his first major policy speech on the issue. He first flew to Mexico for a bizarre surprise meeting and photo op with President Enrique Peña Nieto and then returned to Arizona to deliver what was anticipated to be his big pivot. It was anything but. He delivered one of his most hard-line speeches of the entire campaign that night, stunning the press corps. The most memorable line was this one, delivered with a feral snarl:

There will be no amnesty. Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. . . . People will know that you can’t just smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized. Those days are over.

One would have thought that after being misled on this subject before, representatives of the media would have shown a little bit more skepticism this time.

Trump’s big speech on Tuesday was received rapturously in the Beltway anyway, since he managed to get through it without bragging about the size of his inauguration crowd or calling the press disgusting. It was so over the top that even the White House was taken aback:

Some sources in WH are frankly surprised at how pundits are warming to the speech. Say Trump has not changed, no big shift in policy coming.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) March 1, 2017

In fact, not only was there no pivot on immigration. Trump once again took the opportunity to bash immigrants in the crude demagogic fashion he’s employed since he first descended that escalator in June 2015 and called Mexicans drug dealers, criminals and rapists. He spared the national audience the lurid reference of, say, “a woman, 66 years old, a veteran who was raped, sodomized, tortured and killed by an illegal immigrant,” but he introduced the families of three other murder victims, making the case that the country is under siege from rampant immigrant crime.