Donald Trump went on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show Monday night to once and for all say whether he flipped or flopped on immigration, landing somewhere sort of in between. He will, he said, continue to do what President Obama is doing, but "perhaps with a lot more energy."
"The first thing we're going to do if and when I win is we're going to get rid of all of the bad ones," Trump said. "We've got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're going to get them out, and the police know who they are. They're known by law enforcement who they are. We don't do anything. They go around killing people and hurting people, and they're going to be out of this country so fast your head will spin. We have existing laws that allow you to do that." […]
"As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process," Trump said. "What people don't know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush, the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I'm going to do the same thing."
So about that mass deportation? Kind of sort of, with "energy." This version of Trump was quick to shoot down O'Reilly's suggestion that he would also create detention centers for undocumented immigrants tied up in the deportation process. "Bill, you're the first one to mention 'detention center.' You don't have to put them in a detention center. ... I'm not going to put them in a detention center. No." Fact check: The immigration plan Trump released at the beginning of his primary campaign a year ago includes "detention—not catch-and-release." But that was a year ago. How could anyone expect Trump to remember what he said a year ago?
Lest he lose his appeal to the racist xenophobes populating his fan base, he told a crowd in Ohio "[d]on't worry. We're going to build the wall. […] That wall will go up so fast, your head will spin. And you'll say, 'You know, he meant it.' And you know what else I mean? Mexico is going to pay for the wall."