A week after new campaign leadership was installed on August 17, Donald Trump infamously softened his deportation plans in a town hall in Austin, Texas with Sean Hannity on August 24. On the 22nd Trump had already postponed his speech on immigration planned for that week in Colorado. Panic struck some of his core supporters.
Suddenly Trump was the center of a hubbub, as he had been so many times before, over whether his followers would finally abandon him because of the immigration waffling.
Within two days he received an invitation from the president of Mexico Pena Nieto to come for a visit. That was the 26th. The same day he also said it might be two weeks instead of one before he would give his immigration speech.
Was the invitation offered because of the "softening"? Or maybe Trump just lucked out on the timing.
In either event, by the 30th Trump accepted the invitation of Nieto, and visited him yesterday the 31st, after which he delivered the immigration speech ahead of schedule, in Arizona, in which an expanded deportation force is tasked with focusing on the criminal illegal presence in the United States, not on the 11 million illegals as a whole. The meeting with Nieto elevated Trump's profile as a serious leader on the foreign stage, and the granularity of the immigration speech impresses just about everyone on the right who is familiar with the issues.
The country, and especially the media, were riveted by these events, and Trump was able to get his message out on the subject of illegal immigration, by-passing the media filter, in a way he hasn't been able to since the debates ended in March.
Combined with improving poll numbers at the same time, Trump is successfully building woefully needed momentum to kick off September.
There appears to be method to the madness.
