Trump slates speech
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump says he’ll deliver a detailed speech on his proposal to crack down on illegal immigration on Wednesday in Arizona — but it’s anyone’s guess what he might say.
The announcement came late Sunday in a tweet by the GOP presidential nominee after days of wavering — and at least one canceled speech — on a question central to his campaign: Whether he would, as he said in November, use a “deportation force” to eject the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally. On Sunday, led by vice presidential running mate Mike Pence, Trump’s surrogates fanned out across the televised talk shows to reiterate other parts of his proposal but none could answer that question. And they wouldn’t say whether it was worrisome that such a consequential proposal remained unclear so close to the Nov. 8 election.
In one case, the chairman of the Republican National Committee refused to speak for the GOP nominee at all.
“I just don’t speak for Donald Trump,” Reince Priebus said Sunday.
It was a striking look at Trump’s leadership of a team he had said would help drive him to victory against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s tweet Sunday suggested he was poised to clear up those questions.
Trump’s campaign also announced on Sunday a $10 million-plus buy for ads to air in nine competitive states starting Monday. And late Sunday, the nation’s only African-American owned and operated national Christian television network announced that its president and CEO, Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, would interview the Republican nominee in Detroit on Saturday.
It’s been a long and sometimes puzzling journey to this point for the GOP nominee, who defeated 16 Republican opponents while promising to be the toughest on illegal immigration. 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.
But lately, he’s been exploring the issue’s complexities in public.
On Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” show, he discussed how hard it is to break up families. He suggested that maybe people who’ve been in this country for years should be allowed to stay if they pay back taxes. He insisted that such a plan would not amount to the “amnesty” that’s anathema to many core supporters of the Republican Party.
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.
But by Thursday, he was ruling out any kind of legal status — “unless they leave the country and come back,” he told CNN.
