The Slatest

Trump Betrayal of Ann Coulter Timed Perfectly to Release of Ann Coulter Book About Always Trusting Trump

trump coulter1.
Donald Trump and Ann Coulter.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images and Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters.

Donald Trump’s waffling on the question of what to do about undocumented immigrants passed a critical milestone on last night’s episode of Hannity when the Republican nominee said he’s considering the idea of not deporting gainfully employed undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for a long period of time. From the transcript (Trump is directing his questions to Hannity’s live audience):

You have somebody who’s terrific, who’s been here 20 years. Can we go through a process or do you think they have to get out? … Tell me. I don’t know. You tell me.  … So now we have the person 20 years, upstanding person, the family’s great, everyone’s great. Do we throw them out, or do we work with them?

You’ll note that this position—of not deporting undocumented individuals who are otherwise upstanding citizens—happens to be the one advocated by Trump’s greatest nemesis, President Barack Hussein “ISIS” Obama. Indeed, it’s a position that hard-line conservative activists have a name for: amnesty. And Donald Trump has been vocal for years about hating amnesty.

In the primary:

Donald Trump’s most ardent far-right fans also hate amnesty. And one of the most prominent of those fans, Ann Coulter, actually published a hagiographic book this week called In Trump We Trust in which she stated explicitly that the one thing Trump could never be forgiven for is changing his position on immigration:

For the record, Trump told Sean Hannity that he was not considering “amnesty as such.” But that’s what every Republican who supports the granting of legal status to some undocumented immigrants says; indeed, prominent immigration hard-liner Steve King, a Republican congressman from Iowa, answered in the affirmative when a CNN host asked if what Trump is considering was “tantamount to amnesty.”

What it definitely is, unambiguously, is a reversal of Trump’s previous position. Trump, in a February debate:

We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out.

Then: “They will go out.” Now: “Do you think they have to get out? … I don’t know.” Yeah, who knows?

Either way, Ann Coulter—whose book-launch party was Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.—is NOT HAPPY.

She’s being sarcastic, as one will do when one is let down by one’s nationalist goon hero-savior; there’s more on her feed. She’s even implying that she might cancel her book tour (though she says she will still ultimately continue to support Trump because of the “blind loyalty” he earned from her by giving his “Mexican rapist speech”).

Meanwhile, Twitter’s Daniel Lin has a suggestion for what Trump might call his next publishing project:

Sounds about right. Sorry, Ann Coulter.

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.