The big question this week among Trumpologists — practitioners of the new science of trying to decipher Donald Trump’s sequences of half-sentences that pass for speeches — is whether he has softened his rhetoric on immigration. I say he has, although his reasons have nothing to do with efforts to win the Latino vote.
Granted, Trump told Fox News on Monday that “I’m not flip-flopping” on immigration. And hours earlier, his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway had denied media reports that Trump was considering abandoning his proposal to create a “deportation force” to expel the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, after she herself had conceded a day earlier that such changes were “to be determined.”
But the fact is, Trump has made a big shift in his immigration rhetoric, which had been the pillar of his presidential campaign. He no longer talks about a “deportation force” or “mass deportations,” and instead stresses that his policy will be “firm,” “fair” and “humane.”
