Trump says he’s not flip-flopping on immigration

Courtesy of donaldjtrump.com Trump on the campiagn trail in Fayetteville, N.C., March 9.

A cornerstone of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a promise to deport the estimate 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally while also building a wall along the U.S-Mexico border.

But in a meeting with Hispanic activists Saturday, Trump indicated he was open to considering allowing those who have not committed crimes, beyond their immigration offenses, to obtain some form of legal status – though attendees stressed Trump has yet to make up his mind.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s core base of support could feel betrayed.

On Aug. 22, Trump elaborated on his potentially changing stance on immigration during a phone call interview with Fox News’ “Fox and Friends”.

“We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process”, Trump said. “We are dealing with people-We have to be very firm”. “We want to come up with one a really fair, but firm answer”.

Conway said she was “very moved” by a comment Trump made that blacks are “living in poverty” and don’t have anything to lose in voting for him.

“I’m going to do the same thing”. He further described the meeting as “productive and enlightening”, and said the GOP candidate plans to speak with the group again soon. Asked whether such a force would be included in a forthcoming immigration plan, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN’s State of the Union: “To be determined”.

For example, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, the first Hispanic female governor in the country, has criticized Trump’s immigration proposal as unrealistic.

The Trump campaign said on Friday that campaign chairman Paul Manafort was resigning. So good, in fact, that he apparently told Hispanic leaders he was working on a way to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, “and that deporting them is neither possible nor human”, said Jacob Monty, a Texas immigration lawyer who attended the meeting.

Conway’s comments set off a firestorm of speculation that Trump was shifting to a more general election-friendly message.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to questions about the delay.

The campaign’s new leadership combines Bannon, a combative conservative, with Conway, a data-driven analyst who has been trying to broaden Trump’s appeal to women and independent voters. Fuentes described Trump as having been honest and said that the candidate was willing to listen to the ideas of others.

Trump can also write off a vote from Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, said, “I wanted my grandkids to see that I simply couldn’t ignore what Mr. Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world”. “There can be no exceptions”.

He also said the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation “can’t be trusted” to investigate the foundation after declining to prosecute Clinton over the email scandal.

Campaign chair John Podesta released a statement, saying, “Donald Trump’s immigration plan remains the same as it’s always been: tear apart families and deport 16 million people from the United States”. “That’s not what he is supposed to be about”. “We’re going to build the wall, folks”, the 70-year-old New Yorker reportedly said Monday at a rally in Akron, Ohio. Then she heads back across the country for more fundraising in the wealthy Hamptons area of Long Island outside NY.

What Trump said at a Hispanic roundtable in NY on Saturday “differed very little from what he has said publicly”, Conway said, adding that the billionaire also focused on the economic themes that he has made core to his pitch to voters and that he says resonates across demographic lines.