Success in Bizarroworld

Republicans judged Donald Trump's immigration play Wednesday — which consisted of dual visits to Mexico City and Phoenix — as a success for his presidential campaign.

Two-thirds of GOP members of The POLITICO Caucus — a panel of activists, operatives and strategists in 11 key battleground states — rated the Republican nominee's meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto, followed by an evening rally in Phoenix in which he reiterated his robust immigration proposals, as hugely or moderately successful, despite the potential contradiction between the two events.

It wasn’t a unanimous verdict: a combined one-third of Republican insiders said the day was either “mostly unsuccessful” or “disastrous” for Trump. And more than 80 percent of Democrats concurred with that assessment, including 44 percent who rated Wednesday as a disaster for the Trump campaign.

But for the majority of Republicans, Trump appeared presidential and diplomatic in the foreign capital — even if some think he undermined that progress with a speech later Wednesday evening that underscored much of his hardline rhetoric on immigration from the primaries.

The day “probably helped him on balance,” said a New Hampshire Republican — who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “It put him in a POTUS-like setting, and he did not seem out of place. Leave the policy aside, the optics basically worked, and that was the real goal.”

Both Jacob Monty, a member of Trump's National Hispanic Advisory Council, and surrogate Alfonso Aguilar, the president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said Thursday that they are no longer supporting the Republican nominee. Other members of the council have suggested that they might also pull their support.

"Which is actually pretty amazing, considering the speech. It was actually very consistent and has been very consistent with his plan," Eric Trump remarked during an interview on "Fox & Friends," calling it "really interesting."

Referring to his father's meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto before the speech, Eric Trump said both men left their first talks "in a very, very good way."

Asked whether there would be an "effort" on the part of the campaign's advisers to clarify Trump's position with Monty and Aguilar, Trump responded, "Listen, I think so."

"You know, it’s very important to us, and if you look at the Hispanic community and the Latino community, they’ve largely been left behind in this country," he continued. "If you look at the African-American community it's the same thing, right? They’ve been left behind by this country in so many places. And it’s a very, very sad thing."