Extreme Trump, from Mexico to Phoenix

“I just landed, having returned from a very important and special meeting with the President of Mexico,” Donald Trump told a crowd in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night, as he began what he promised would be a very important and special policy address on illegal immigration. He said he’d liked his host, President Enrique Peña Nieto, “a man who truly loves his country—Mexico.” Trump pronounced the name of that country as if the object of Peña Nieto’s affection might not be obvious to his audience, and then added, “And, by the way, just like I am a man who loves my country—the United States.” Trump gave the cheers that followed a double thumbs-up and an asymmetrical smile. As political odysseys go, Trump’s hop over to Mexico didn’t add up to much of a journey, in terms of political risk or philosophical or even rhetorical evolution; neither did his speech, which mostly repeated his warnings about how Hillary Clinton and her ilk had handed over innocent Americans to murderous illegal immigrants for their own corrupt purposes. Any late-hour hopes anyone might have harbored for anything very different—outreach to Hispanic Americans that went beyond vague protestations of Trumpian love, for example—would have wilted in the Phoenix night. But Trump himself was having, by his measure, a pretty good day.