President Donald Trump gave his base a shock Sunday, telling “60 Minutes” he’s having second thoughts about his hardball approach to immigration enforcement. Asked how immigration affected the Republican Party’s midterm performance, he told interviewer Ross Douthat, “I think I got an A-plus for closing up the border.” But then he said the verdict was mixed, adding: “I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that—that created one violation or breaking of the law: that was that they came into the country illegally.”
“I think it might be too tough, yeah,” he concluded when pressed by Douthat. “That hurt me.”
Yet two years ago, Trump’s promises to reverse the flood of illegal immigration unleashed by Joe Biden helped him win reelection—and win every battleground state to boot. And as dismal as last Tuesday’s results were for the GOP, exit polls show voters trusted Republicans more than Democrats on immigration, 45 percent to 43 percent. Republicans were a solid majority—57 percent—of those who rated immigration enforcement “crucial” to how they voted. Those core Republicans won’t reward the president, or the party, for going weak.
But Trump sent another signal shortly after the midterms that ought to reassure immigration hawks when he announced Stephen Miller, a staunch restrictionist, would replace Susie Wiles as White House chief of staff.
MAGA wasn’t wiped out in last week’s Democratic tsunami—just as Trump wasn’t swept out of public life by the 2020 election. He knows how to make a comeback, and that’s what he’s planning here. But it’s a dangerous gambit: Trump wants to soften his image and the Republican Party’s, but he has to do it without capitulating to the Democrats, who have not changed a whit since the Biden years.
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