Throughout this tortuous presidential campaign, Donald Trump has regularly embarrassed Republicans with his inability to articulate routine conservative positions on a wide variety of public policies. His most enthusiastic supporters have zealously defended him regardless. The reason can be summed up in a single word: immigration. Ann Coulter concisely exemplified the tendency in one notorious August 2015 tweet: “I don’t care if . . . Trump wants to perform abortions in [the] White House after this immigration policy paper.”
Examples could be multiplied. Sure, Trump has expressed alarming support for nationalizing the health care system, but build that wall. Maybe in the past, Trump had written in his books that he was okay with banning commonly used rifles, but he’s pledging to round-up 12 million illegal immigrants taking jobs from Americans and send them home!
Of course, over the years (and sometimes even in the same day) Trump has flip-flopped on everything—up to and including his support for Hillary Clinton. So what made his supporters think he wouldn’t do the same on immigration? It was no doubt a classic case of the triumph of hope over experience. And to be fair, many thoughtful immigration hawks, rightly concerned about the rule of law and border enforcement, have been fully aware that Trump might undermine their cause.
And in an August 24 town hall hosted by Sean Hannity, that appears to be exactly what he did. Hannity asked if there would be exceptions to his deportation stance, and here’s what Trump said: “No citizenship. . . . Let me go a step further—they’ll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there’s no amnesty, as such, there’s no amnesty, but we work with them.” But allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the United States, provided they pay taxes, is precisely what most immigration hawks would describe as “amnesty.” In one fell swoop, Trump went from being borderline draconian on immigration to articulating a position on immigration hard to distinguish from that of Marco Rubio or even Jeb Bush. Suffice to say, Trump supporters are not happy.
In particular, Ann Coulter has been on a tear. She had just released her latest book, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!, the day before Trump flipped on immigration. If the title doesn’t give one an acute case of schadenfreude, here’s a quotation from the book: “There’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies.”
After the flip-flop, Coulter was uncharacteristically sarcastic towards her hero on Twitter and lamented on MSNBC that “this could be the shortest book tour ever.” But of course, disappointment and anger are the logical outcomes if you put your trust in Trump. If you believe anything the man says, we’ve got a bankrupt casino in Atlantic City to sell you
