Yesterday, Donald Trump met Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in a bid to look presidential, a credible negotiator. He said later they didn’t discuss his plans to “build a wall” between the two countries. But then Nieto said they did discuss it–to tell him in no uncertain terms Mexico wouldn’t pay for it–making Trump (and the people trying to professionalize his campaign) look bad again.
Trump immediately abandoned his newly-centrist wanderings on immigration to deliver a thumping anti-immigrant speech that delighted white supremacists.
The afternoon’s sudden volte face took many by surprise, but none so much as the New York Times, which had just published an article describing Trump’s Mexico trip as an “audacious attempt to remake his image”—only to rewrite much of it as quickly and quietly as possible in light of his renewed shrieking at Latinos.
It’s a sharp lesson to media who think they can trust Trump to stick to something long enough to try and build a comeback story around it: he can’t, you can’t!
The strange day’s strangest thing, though, was the above hat, seen on surrogates such as Rudy Giuliani: “Make Mexico Great Again Also.” Who’s gonna pay for that?