Donald J. Trump turned his back to the crowd and stared at the screen. Eerie music rang out. For the next minute and a half, the former president and the audience in Atlanta stood, silently watching clips of news reports about illegal immigrants who committed horrific crimes.
As the montage ended, Trump said out loud what he had been telling his advisers privately for weeks. It was Trump’s idea that immigration was “number one.” 1” to be issued for the 2024 election.
“It trumps the economy. To me, this trumps everything, not even close,” Trump said about immigration after playing the video Tuesday night. “The United States is now an occupied country, but November 5, 2024 will be America’s Liberation Day.”
In the final weeks of the campaign that the former president has waged more or less since his first year in office, Mr. Trump is gutting himself, doubling down on the rhetoric he believes won him the 2016 election and capitalizing on immigration. And borders are central to his final message to voters.
These intuitions are at odds with the data and some of his advisers.
Trump told aides he defeated Hillary Clinton on the border issue in 2016, but the border was “fixed” in 2020 — due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, and illegal immigration has decreased dramatically – and as a result, the border line could not be used as is. The Question Against Joseph R. Biden Jr. Immigration has become a stronger political message than ever before under the Biden-Harris administration, which experienced record levels of border crossings and helped defeat the administration’s attempted bipartisan border security bill. I believe that Passed.
But neither public nor private surveys support Trump’s racial theory. Voters often rank the economy and high cost of living as the most important issues.
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