Politics –
Mexico, Immigration,
and Donald Trump

Following a visit to Mexico earlier in the day, Donald Trump has for once and for all settled the issue of who will pay for his proposed border wall and clarified his controversial policy on immigration  — or did he?  Um… no, he did not!

Politics
It was a whirlwind Wednesday for “The Donald,” that began with a hastily arranged and ill-prepared trip to Mexico City to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto. His day was a “whirlwind” because the trip was so quick and so short, most airlines would compare it to a pit stop meant to allow passengers to change planes.

The official purpose of Trump’s trip was to discuss the proposed border wall that he has long claimed he will build and then bill to Mexico. However, the trip was more of a photo-op meant to show some of America’s “less intelligent” voters that he is a supposed “world leader” who is on top of foreign policy issues, while genuinely reaching out to those American voters who have immigrated from Mexico. Or, to put it simply, it was all a political sham from a professional flim-flam man!

“Who pays for the wall? We didn’t discuss,” Trump reluctantly disclosed to a reporter during a news conference following the meeting in Mexico City. “We did discuss the wall. We didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That’ll be for a later date.”

However, President Peña Nieto was not at all reluctant in his conflicting response, saying that he and Mr. Trump did, in fact, discuss the wall and who would pay for it — and that he “made it clear” to Trump it wouldn’t be Mexico.

“At the start of the conversation with Donald Trump, I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall,” the president said after segueing into Spanish and ripping the man he once compared to Adolph Hitler on trade, immigration, guns and more. For his part, Trump stood idly by looking somber and confused, but later saying that Mexicans were “spectacular” people when it was finally his turn to talk.

Oh well, Donald, so much for credibility.

“What we saw today from a man who claims to be the ultimate ‘deal maker’ is that he doesn’t have the courage to advocate for his campaign promises when he’s not in front of a friendly crowd,” Clinton campaign manager John Podesta said. “It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it.”

Ouch!

In a botched attempt to save face and justify Trump’s failure to address the very issue he traveled to Mexico City to discuss, a Trump spokesman came to the rescue.

“It was not a negotiation, and that would have been inappropriate,” Jason Miller said. “It is unsurprising that they hold two different views on this issue, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.”

Arizona’s controversial conservative Sheriff Joe Arpaio also chimed in with his defense of “The Donald.”

“What difference does it make?” Arpaio told CNN’s Jake Tapper of Trump’s failure to discuss financing the centerpiece of his border plan. “The wall’s important no matter who pays.”

That was only half of Trump’s whirlwind day — and it went further downhill from there.

Politics
Initially saying that he would be harsh on illegal immigration, then softening his plans and promising there would be no deportation force, Donald Trump made yet another flip-flop on Wednesday during a policy speech that returned to his previous plans to deport 11 million undocumented migrants.

In a move that clearly had the stamp of new campaign chief Steve Bannon of Breitbart News written all over it, the Republican presidential nominee re-upped the harsh immigration rhetoric from his primary campaign, vowing “no amnesty” for “illegals” living in the United States and promising to build a “beautiful” and “impenetrable” border wall that Mexico would pay for — only hours after he failed to even discuss it and Mexico’s president made crystal clear his country would not pay for it.

“This election is our last chance to secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and reform our laws to make your life better,” Trump said in his Phoenix remarks, presenting a murky position that seems to change almost every other week.

During the speech, Trump (yet again) said he will create a “deportation task force” within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. He promised to boost the ranks of enforcement agents to enforce existing laws. He vowed that any undocumented immigrants who are caught crossing into the U.S. will be “detained until they are removed from our country” and sent back to their country of origin. He then promised to repeal President Obama’s executive orders shielding so-called Dreamers from deportation.

Instead of broadening his support beyond the radical white base that propelled him to the GOP nomination, Trump has returned to “singing to the choir” and has failed to realize his base is simply not large enough to secure a win in November.

His controversial return to very narrow positions that can’t possibly win a presidential election among a general electorate only fuels the notion that Donald Trump doesn’t really want to be President of the United States. Instead, it promotes the theory that he is merely cultivating a cadre of Alt-right Americans who will blindly follow him to a potential Trump TV network, or whatever media venture his sham of a presidential candidacy is concocting.

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OK WASSUP! discusses politics, including
Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico and immigration speech.