Once a choker, always a choker. That was Donald Trump’s line — sometimes misspelled — about a Republican primary opponent. Now the Democrats are trying to turn it against Trump on getting Mexico to pay for his proposed border wall.
“It turns out Trump didn’t just choke, he got beat in the room and lied about it,” Hillary for America Chairman John Podesta said in a statement last week, referring to conflicting accounts of whether Mexico would pay for the wall.
But aren’t the Democrats supposed to think Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border is a bad thing in the first place? In the same statement, Podesta called the wall “outlandish” and also chided him for blowing “the first opportunity to make good on his offensive campaign promises.”
The episode once again raises questions about whether Trump is mainstreaming his controversial ideas despite all the criticism they attract. His supporters often say he is shifting the Overton window, the range of acceptable public discourse. Some of his critics agree.
“Trump has done it [widened the Overton window] better than any American politician in living memory,” writes Felix Salmon. “He has singlehandedly sidelined elite legislators and media barons as the arbiters of acceptable conversation.”
Salmon doesn’t entirely mean this as a compliment, claiming “we now live in a world where a major-party presidential nominee is happy to sound indistinguishable from an insurrectionist gun nut at a Texas barbecue after a few beers.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said Trump not only “flung the window open but shattered all its glass.” As pertains to the border wall, the Republican nominee’s call to build one at Mexico’s expense could make other hardline immigration positions appear moderate by comparison.
In his joint appearance with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump defended the wall with little pushback. Nieto didn’t contest Trump’s recollection of whether the wall’s funding was discussed until hours later, passing up an opportunity to do so in real time.
Delivering a highly anticipated immigration speech in which he did not back down from the tough positions he took during the Republican primaries, Trump said Mexico would help with aspects of the wall-building beyond financing.
“Towers, aerial surveillance and manpower to supplement the wall, find and dislocate tunnels and keep out criminal cartels and Mexico, you know what, will work with us,” he declared. “I really believe it. Mexico will work with us.”
The paragraph before that? Trump proclaimed of Mexico and the wall, “They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it.”
“Trump has a way of popularizing these concepts in a way that most politicians couldn’t,” said a Beltway immigration analyst. “I’m just not sure the wall is the most important component of it.”
There are other examples. The details of Trump’s call for curbing Muslim immigration have evolved. One thing hasn’t changed, however: The idea is more popular with rank-and-file GOP voters than Republican elected officials.
House Speaker Paul Ryan memorably said, “This isn’t conservatism,” shortly before Republican primary voters regularly told exit pollsters they supported the ban by more than 60 percent.
Yet not everyone thinks Trump is gaining traction for his immigration platform and other ideas. Some argue the exact opposite. Michael Tesler, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, cited polling data suggesting Trump was making the border wall less popular.
The Pew Research Center found support for the border wall was the same when Trump declared his candidacy in 2015 as it was in 2007 and 2011, but it dropped 10 points this March. “In CBS/New York Times polls, public support for ‘building a wall along the US-Mexico border to try to stop illegal immigration’ also dropped — from 45 percent in January 2016 to 39 percent in July,” Tesler wrote in the Washington Post last month.
That would make a certain amount of sense. Trump appears to have the firm support of 35 to 40 percent of the electorate. Tying a policy position too closely to Trump can limit its appeal to those hardcore supporters. It can also do the opposite, based on the uptick in Republican opposition to free trade this year.
When the polls tighten, it is frequently because Hillary Clinton drops rather than due to any big Trump gain. So Trump’s popularity (or lack thereof) seems pretty stable at this point. At the same time, he has continued to dominate the conversation.
“If even the Democrats making fun of him have to talk about the wall like it’s a real thing, that’s something,” said the immigration expert.
