hope will be this truce that will last. i would argue fox can t afford an open, you know, hot war. well, but the calculation early on is they went into this was that trump can t on ford it, right? in some ways, they seem to be two of the most uncontainable personalities in american public life who are now essentially eyeing each other with a kind of strategy of containment. and i think what roger ailes would hope for fox s sake is that trump s poll numbers collapsed. his that s his power, politically speaking. then ailes can sort of have open season, fox news can start attacking him openly without fear of a backlash. but as long as trump s poll numbers are 20-plus, if fox goes to war with him, that is sort of his base of support. that s their audience. the audience as we saw turned on megyn kelly after the debate. so really, you know, trump holds the cards as long as his poll numbers stay elevated. we should say the audience some portion of that audience turned on her, right?
have no choice. you have no choice. it turns out while trump is putting this issue back in the news, his position, which may sound extreme, is already totally mainstream within the republican presidential field. turns out rand paul co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to terminate birth right citizenship back in 2011. rick santorum called for it to end in a column this past may. these three said they d support reexamining the policy. even bobby jindal who himself became a natural-born u.s. citizen eligible to run for president thanks to birth right citizenship, tweeted last night, we need to end birth right citizenship or illegal immigrants oichlimmigrant s. now, jindal s parents were here legally, but it s not all clear how that distinction would actually play out or be enforced. trump s plan to end birth right citizenship deals with immigration policy going forward. the real kicker is his plan for the 11-plus million undocumented
immigrants already here living in the u.s. in his own words, they have to go. trump is positioning himself the head of what we ll call the round-them-up caucus, the part of the party that s perfectly comfortable telling millions of americans we re coming for your friends and loved ones and colleagues and coworkers. we re going to lock them up and throw them out of the country. then there s the nominally more moderate ring of the party which is arguing not that trump s approach is wrong, but that it s just impracticable. unrealistic. or as jeb bush told the washington post, quote, a plan needs to be grounded in reality. obviously, there s some ideas that have merit, but the majority of it is really not a workable plan that could ever pass congress. donald trump s eight-page plan is gibberish and unworkable. what he s not doing is embracing a workable system. while that may be correct on the merits, it might not be as extreme as trump s rhetoric as they pointed out on this show l
with hillary clinton. look, i don t believe you change hearts. i believe you change laws. and things get rough on the campaign trail. oh, no! all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i m chris hayes. for the second time since entering the presidential race, donald trump is setting the agenda on immigration policy for the republican field. while his surge to front-runner status began with warnings about mexican rapists and demands to build the yugest most secure wall on our southern border, trump s new immigration plan released over the weekend calls for an end to birth right citizenship as the principle enshrined in the 14th amendment by the republican party after the civil war that anyone born in the u.s. is automatically a citizen. you want to get rid of birth right citizenshipcitizenshipshi. you have to, yes. they re having a baby and all of a sudden nobody knows you
donald trump s immigration proposal is the nativist party motif regurgitated on steroids. it is anti-christian, anti-ronald reagan conservatism, and anti-latino. with his rhetoric, obtaining the white house in 2016 requires me to declare two words. good luck. let me ask you this. when you hear i mean, it s striking to me when i think about how this would hit my ears if i were someone who was of a community that had a lot of immigrants. some people say we want to round these people up. they ve got to go. we might even deport, as trump indicated, american citizens in the family. and then other candidates, the so-called moderates, not saying that s morally obscene, not saying that s a crazy idea that s a violation of some of our basic principles and constitutional guarantees, but rather, well, it s unworkable. it s impractical. what does that send? what do you hear when you hear unworkable, impractical in response to this?