There was no pivoting. There was no softening. There was just Donald Trump.
In a much heralded immigration speech in Phoenix, the Republican nominee finally put to rest any pretence that he would moderate his views for a general electorate. “There will be no amnesty,” Trump proclaimed to a cheering crowd on Wednesday.
The Republican nominee seemingly went further than that, making clear that he opposed the so-called “touchback amnesty” where qualifying undocumented immigrants could return to their home countries to apply for an expedited path to legal status.
“Those who have left to seek entry under this new system will not be awarded surplus visas, but will have to enter under the immigration caps or limits that will be established,” said Trump.
The speech came after Trump had spent weeks hinting at a softening. He even seemed to indicate in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last week that he might support a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants. He quickly backed off that statement – the result was a policy that looked like a muddled mess, as even rightwing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh admitted of the nominee: “I never took him seriously on immigration.”
There had been signs, too, of a moderate tone earlier on Wednesday when Trump met with President Enrique Peña Nieto on a surprise visit to Mexico City. At a press stop with Peña Nieto, Trump was restrained and talked about illegal immigration as a humanitarian crisis, claiming that he didn’t discuss with the Mexican president his infamous pledge that Mexico would pay for a border wall.
It turned out this was only technically true – there was no discussion, but only because the Mexican president had immediately begun their conversation by saying he would not pay.
In his Phoenix speech Trump brushed all that off. “Mexico will pay for the wall, 100%. They don’t know it yet but they’re going to pay for it.”
Trump renewed his call for what he called a deportation taskforce. Without using its title he yet again endorsed Operation Wetback, the infamous Eisenhower-era policy of mass deportation, while lamenting shortcomings. “They would drop them across, right across, and they’d come back.” Instead Trump pledged to take those he deported “great distances”.
He repeated testimonials from the parents of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants, using these to frame the issue not as humanitarian or even economic, but about crime and “the wellbeing of the American people”.
Trump did not explicitly call for the all-out deportation of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States – something he has signaled support for in the past despite even most immigration hawks opposing the idea. But he still insisted: “Anyone who enters the United States illegally is subject to deportation, otherwise we don’t have a country.”
Trump did not touch on the controversial topic of birthright citizenship, which he has also opposed in the past, even to the point of claiming this constitutional provision can be reversed with an act of Congress – a view few credible legal scholars would endorse.
The theater around the speech felt like a reversion to Trump’s rowdy ways in the primary race. “This will not be a rally speech per se,” he said at the outset. But nor was it a detailed policy rollout. Much of it comprised traditional talking points and railing against Hillary Clinton, while taking detours to mock “media elites” who viewed “global warming” as a problem.
Down to the “Make Mexico Great Again Also” hats, worn by the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, it was a return to the unpredictable showmanship that has defined Trump’s campaign. Red meat for his party’s conservative base, with nothing to attract moderate suburbanites, let alone Latinos or African Americans, who have been alienated by his harsh rhetoric.
It represented the final chapter in what has been a back and forth debate within his campaign about whether Trump should try to act like a conventional candidate or simply be himself. That debate outlasted multiple campaign managers, the Republican primary itself, and continued well into the general election.
It is now over. There will not be a more moderate Trump, there will not be a more compassionate Trump.
Instead the same candidate who announced that Mexicans are “bringing drugs, bringing crime, they’re rapists” is the one who will appear before voters in November.
