| The New Trump Policy: 'No Amnesty, but We Work with Them' Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Republican nominee who's now telling us he's going to allow certain illegal immigrants to stay in the country. There's no amnesty, as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them . . . Now, everybody agrees we get the bad ones out. But when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on this subject, and I've had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they've said, 'Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person who's been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough, Mr. Trump,' I have it all the time! It's a very, very hard thing. This is the guy who scoffed at all of his primary rivals when they said that deporting 11 million people would be "so tough." Hey, immigration hawks, tell me you expected Donald Trump to be polling audiences in late August about whether it was worth it to try deporting illegal immigrants who have been here for 20 years. DONALD TRUMP: Now, can we be, and I'll ask the audience, you have somebody who's terrific, who's been here -- SEAN HANNITY (HOST): 20 years. TRUMP: Right, long time. Long court proceeding, long everything, okay? In other words, to get them out. Can we go through a process, or do you think they have to get out? Tell me. I mean, I don't know. You tell me. HANNITY: Well let me -- let's do a poll. TRUMP: I'd like to know, I'd like to know. HANNITY: How many think they should go through a process that maybe give 'em a chance? Clap, we gotta hear you. TRUMP: How many people -- HANNITY: How many people think they should go? TRUMP: Do it again. "I don't know, you tell me"? Yeah, yeah, tell me again how he's the only one who's serious on illegal immigration. If you were one of those people loudly insisting that Donald Trump was the only one who was willing to stand strong, the only one who was willing to make the tough choices, the only one who was willing to stand up for the country . . . well, you should spend some time in quiet contemplation about how and why you were so easily snookered by this snake-oil salesman. Yes, this is a giant flip-flop. Back in November: "Are you going to have a massive deportation force?" Mika Brzezinski asked. "You're going to have a deportation force, and you're going to do it humanely and you're going to bring the country–and frankly, the people, because you have some excellent, wonderful people, some fantastic people that have been here for a long period of time," Trump said. "Don't forget, Mika, that you have millions of people that are waiting [in] line to come into this country, and they're waiting to come in legally." "So people will face ramifications if they don't leave, if they harbor them?" Brzezinski asked. "People will leave," Trump said. "How are you going to pay for this? Are they going to be ripped out of their homes? How?" Brzezinski asked. Trump said such an operation would be inexpensive. "They're going back where they came," Trump said. "If they came from a certain country, they're going to be brought back to that country … They can come back, but they have to come back legally." No ifs, no ands, no buts, no qualifications or hedging. It's a really, really bad time for Ann Coulter to be releasing a book entitled In Trump We Trust, when she's now declaring that he's making a colossal mistake. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies is a genuine immigration hawk, who's bothered to study the details of the issue, and one of the men I respect the most in this debate, even when I don't agree with him. He's been wary about Trump from the beginning. This morning he's disappointed, but not completely surprised. I've been joking to reporters over the past couple of days that Trump's supporters wouldn't be likely to abandon him unless he embraced Chuck Schumer's immigration policy. Guess what! . . . Trump on Hannity Wednesday lamely repeated the lies of the anti-borders crowd: It's not really amnesty! They won't get citizenship! They'll pay back taxes! (Schumer's been running that con for 30 years.) Even his constant talk of a border wall seems to be his version of the Gang of Eight bill's phony Corker-Hoeven amendment. Trump didn't need to "soften" his immigration position — he needed to define a coherent one and stick with it. His immigration platform has been on the campaign website for months and makes no mention of either mass deportation or amnesty. All he needed to have done was say that his freelance talk of deporting all the illegals was a gut reaction to the breakdown of our immigration enforcement system, but that further study and consultation showed that the more practical approach was to take the steps called for in his platform to shrink the illegal population over time. In response to the insistent "But what about the illegals?!" questions, he should simply have said that it is a secondary question that won't even be discussed until the illegal flow is stopped and reversed. That's it. It's not rocket science. Mark argues that if Trump loses, the explanation won't be that he was too tough on illegal immigration. That's not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely right, either. Trump's previous position either helped put him in this bad position way behind Clinton, or didn't help him mitigate it much. Then again, Trump has so many flaws, it would be unfair to pin his enormous disaster of a campaign so heavily on his immigration position. Maybe the coming weeks will offer a bit of evidence one way or the other — if Trump sinks further, abandoning his supporters on their core issue suggests a near-amnesty position is political suicide . . . but if Trump actually improves his position in the coming weeks . . . does that mean that amnesty is more popular than mass deportation? Or was the Trump team hoping for a "only Nixon could go to China" effect? Were they thinking that Trump had established himself as tough on illegal immigration for so long, he would be the only one who would be trusted to sort through the illegal population and deport the most dangerous ones? The 'Fight Song' of the Powerful and Privileged Over on the home page, I observe that Yahoo News feels the need to assure us that Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," the tune adopted as the campaign theme for Hillary Clinton, "inspires hatred from some outsiders, but some Clinton campaign staffers insist they've grown to love it." "'Fight Song' is an anthem. 'Fight Song' is a way of f***ing life," one staffer is quoted as saying. "It un-ironically brings me joy." Of course, "Fight Song" is about a previously silenced underdog who's finally willing to stand alone, no matter how unpopular her stand might be. Hillary Clinton is pretty much the opposite of all of that — an enormously powerful and well-connected heavy favorite, who focus-group and poll-tests every public statement, and who shifts with the political winds and pressures of the moment. Much like Michelle Martel's children's book, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead, the Clinton campaign has decided to invent a dramatic narrative of beating the odds. Everybody wants to be the Rebel Alliance; nobody wants to be the Galactic Empire. Clinton is the precise opposite of a person who has been ignored and shunted aside. The media would love to ask her more questions at press conferences. Everything we've seen indicates Clinton doesn't want to tell us what she really thinks, unless she now just instinctively thinks in bland, focus-group-tested answers. Another lyric declares, "I don't really care if nobody else believes", but it's obvious Clinton does care what we, or at least the majority of the voting public, think. Even if one argues that Hillary Clinton isn't singing the song herself, her surrogates arguably fit the song even less. At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, actress Elizabeth Banks introduced the song and told us, "This is for Hillary." 
Mandy Moore, Aisha Tyler, Connie Britton, Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel, Julie Bowen, Rob Reiner, Eva Longoria . . . these are not plucky underdogs facing long odds, either. These are successful Hollywood and music stars, singing that nobody's going to keep them down anymore, no one's going to silence them, no one's going to ignore them. Who's silencing them? The studio executives that won't give them a larger share of the residuals on DVD sales? No one at the Democratic convention recognized the irony of a song about the underdog being sung by a group of people who have more advantages, privileges, money, wealth, fame and power than almost anyone who hears it. This is the Richest 1 Percent declaring proudly that no one's going to keep them down. Of course not, because they're not down! By any standard — talent, appearances, connections, charisma — these are arguably the least-kept-down people in America. "This is my fight song, take back my life song . . . " Who are these people taking their lives back from? The Republican candidate who's struggling to get more than 40 percent in swing states? The brutal, draconian, economic austerity enforced under House Speaker Paul Ryan? These people live the lives least affected by what happens in Washington. They took back their lives a long time ago. They live lives beyond the concerns of higher taxes, being audited, affording a higher health insurance premium, depending upon the Veterans Administration for health care, or relying on Foggy Bottom to send additional security to their far-off post in unsafe territory. These celebrities are now happily play-acting the concept of taking back their lives from imaginary foes. The idea that Hillary and her wealthiest, most famous supporters taking back their lives doesn't make a lick of sense, but it makes Democrats feel good, and caters to their self-image as young upstarts overthrowing the oppressive old order. They tell us they've still got a lot fight left in them. I guess that's easier to say when your idea of fighting is writing a big check and attending a glamorous fundraiser. ADDENDA: I'm scheduled to appear on CNN at 11 a.m. this morning, on a panel, discussing the state of the race. | 
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