Trump's chumps
by digby
Dara Lind at Vox calls out the political press for being Trump's chumps on immigration. (Actually she was very polite --- I'm the one who is calling them chumps.)
Political reporters think they’re being skeptical of Trump. But they’re playing into the campaign’s hands.
Reporters who are familiar with immigration policy get it. Benjy Sarlin at NBC News,Elise Foley at the Huffington Post, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, Miriam Jordan at the Wall Street Journal, Julia Preston at the New York Times — they’ve all written articles that explain the policy thinking behind Trump’s plan, and they’re not getting distracted by every word said by someone with a title on the Trump campaign.
But some political campaign reporters, who hear immigration buzzwords but aren’t necessarily familiar with how they fit together, are convinced that there’s somehow more to the plan. That’s why they seize on every comment made by a Trump surrogate, and every perceived inconsistency between one day and the next.
In general, when it comes to covering Donald Trump, it’s fair to assume that he has no idea what he’s talking about — that his ideas are inconsistent and make no sense. And that’s probably, in part, what’s motivating reporters to focus on apparent inconsistencies on Trump’s signature issue: Even on immigration, the issue that won him the nomination, he doesn’t have a firm stance.
But it’s not actually a sign of a skeptical attitude to think that Donald Trump secretly supports legalization. It’s exactly what Trump surrogates like Rudy Giuliani want the press to believe.
The fact is that you don't have to be a specialist or even a journalist to know that Trump and his surrogates are playing games. Trump's campaign is based entirely around aggressive anti-PC, anti-foreigner, nationalist machismo. He's not "softening" anything and his big immigration speech in Arizona should have disabused anyone of that notion. He was quite clear in the detail but even more obviously in the attitude.
I honestly don't understand why the press is so eager to cut him slack on this. I guess they're being fed info from contacts within the campaign. But it defies common sense and the reality before our very eyes. Trump isn't complicated. He says it himself:
Buhleeeve 'im.
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