As you might have gathered, I’m a fan of the substance of Trump’s Arizona speech. But the feel of the event — the setting, some of the rhetoric, the delivery, etc. — was completely off.

Trump doesn’t seem to understand that every time he shouts, he’s turning off the suburban women he needs. And he doesn’t get that defensive politics is very important. What do I mean by that?

Well, when you’re Bill Clinton and people think you are a rogue and a cultural radical, you carry a fat Bible to church on Sunday mornings. When you are Barack Obama and people say don’t love the country and won’t even wear a flag lapel pin, you just put on the lapel pin. When you are Donald Trump and people say you hate immigrants, you should go out of your way to defuse the charge.

I like that Trump has highlighted the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants. But in Arizona, he should have had immigrants come up on the stage with him, e.g., “Here’s the foreman from my latest construction project, who is a hard-working and successful immigrant who supports me because he thinks everyone should come into the country the right way like he did,” etc., etc. This really isn’t hard (and it doesn’t mean compromising on substance), it just requires a little deftness and thoughtfulness.

Again, Trump isn’t losing so much on issues, as on demeanor.