To say Donald Trump ‘double-downed’ last night on his border rhetoric would be an understatement. He went full anti-illegal immigration throttle, and then some. ‘There will be no amnesty,’ he said, and he promised to deport criminal illegal aliens within one hour of his arrival in office. ‘We will build a great wall along the southern border,’ he said. ‘And Mexico will pay for the wall, 100 per cent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.’ He also invited on to the stage a group of women whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants, the ‘Angel Moms’ — a typical, mawkish Trumpian touch. ‘If you don’t vote Trump, we won’t have a country,’ said one of the Moms.
The speech comes as a great relief to Trump’s biggest fans, who had been troubled by an apparent softening in their candidate’s immigration talk. There have been reports that, what with his sudden trip to Mexico and an apparent rapprochement between him and the Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump was moving towards some sort of moderate pro-amnesty position. It was thought — and even apparently briefed out by the Trump campaign — that last night’s oration would be a formal ‘coming out’ of a gentler, kinder Trump, the opposite Trump to the one large parts of the American right have fallen in love with.
Ann Coulter, arguably America’s most famous immigration hawk, seemed to have been confounded by Trump’s apparent pivot on the issue last week. She has just published a book called In Trump We Trust, in which she says the one thing that could scupper Trump’s election campaign would be if he flip-flopped on amnesty. Last night, her faith was restored. As it turned out, the speech was less a flip-flop, more a flip-flip. ‘I think I’ll watch this speech every night before going to bed so that I will sleep like a baby,’ she said. ‘Trump’s immigration speech is the most magnificent speech ever given.’
And of course, Trump’s opponents in the media are going bananas and screaming racism. But Trump is playing a more subtle game on immigration than apoplectic liberals realise. The truth is, in electoral terms, he gains more than he loses by promising zero tolerance for illegal alien criminals and forced deportation for people who have snuck over from Mexico. The stress on pursuing and removing ‘illegals’ appeals to most Americans. And Trump has moved away from the ‘Mexican rapists’ line he deployed at the beginning of his campaign. Last night he emphasised that stronger border control could be beneficial to both the US and Latin America, and he recognised that most immigrants are ‘good people’. Like a lot of what Trump says, it sounds stupid but is actually clever.
Just as in Britain, attitudes in America towards immigration have hardened radically since the 2008 economic crash. Trump speaks to that change in popular sentiment more directly than the journalists who scream racism every time a politician talks tough on border sovereignty.
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