Old Trump vs. New Trump: The Great Immigration Debate
New Trump sounds a lot different from Old Trump on immigration. Watch them debate each other here.
Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/ The Daily Beast
For 14 months, Donald Trump’s views on immigration were perfectly, horrifyingly clear. Illegal immigrants were rapists and drug dealers, he would form a “deportation force” to send them all home, and they would have to come back in legally through a “big, beautiful door” in his giant, imagined border wall.
Then came this week.
At a town hall hosted by Sean Hannity on Wednesday, Trump's impenetrable certainty began to crack. He hedged. He softened. He literally declared “I don’t know” on his signature issue, and shamelessly took a poll of the audience to see which immigration policy would be most popular. Taken all together, it was a powerful—if muddled—counterpoint to the earlier, more brutal positions that launched Trump into national politics.
So why not bring them together? Here, in this video, are both Old Trump and New Trump, battling each other in what may be the most spectacularly ill-informed immigration debate of our time.