So, I was wrong. All week we’d been hearing about the “softening.” Even Trump’s most trusted brain trust — Sean Hannity’s studio audience — seemed to be saying as much. Kellyanne Conway had been hinting as best she could that we’d be seeing a lot of growth on the candidate’s part. Trump himself seemed to be very clear that he was going to sound tougher while proposing something weaker. His bizarre, yet successful, trip to Mexico yesterday, only seemed to reinforce the pivot on immigration away from mass deportation. So as he shouted his way through his 10 point plan, I kept expecting a sotto voce unwinding of the mass deportation part (I may have made some jokes to this effect on Twitter). Mark suggests below that Trump did exactly that. I assume he means that by having an agenda that prioritizes criminals etc. Trump is going to tackle the issue of non-criminal illegal immigrants already living here later and piecemeal. Ok. As a policy matter, kicking that can down the road and doing border security and the other easy and doable things first makes total sense to me.

But as a political matter what I heard was something different than any backing off from mass deportation. Yes, he did seem to be saying that he wouldn’t, day one, send out the mass deportation police and boot everyone out (he did say he’d create a deportation force of sorts, though). But he did make it clear that he thinks they all have to go. Or rather, he made it clear that he wants people listening to think he wants them all to go. That is certainly how much of the press heard it. Look at the headlines: “Trump Recommits to Mass Deportation in Fiery Immigration Speech​” (NBC), “Trump says he will build wall and begin mass deportations” (Fox News Latino), “Trump Doubles Down on Deportation​” (US News & World Report). And so on. Some outlets did hear Trump saying he was backing off of mass deportations, but not many. Moreover that doesn’t seem to be the way Trump’s own Hispanic advisors heard it either. And it’s definitely not the way Hillary Clinton and the Democrats will portray it between now and the election.

Trump said, “Anyone who is in the United States illegally is subject to deportation.” Whatever you think about the legal or policy merits of that, and similar statements, this means that every TV interviewer will now be asking Trump, Conway et al. “So you would throw out this old couple whose kid died fighting for our country?” Or “Would you really deport this Stanford valedictorian?”

I agree with many of the points Mark and Rich made below about the substance of the speech. But politically, I don’t think it will end up helping him with the voters he’s in dire need of winning over — not Hispanics and blacks (that outreach has always been a ruse), but college educated and suburban white women.