President Moderating on Immigration?

Is this a TACO moment, or Trump going somewhere he always intended? 

TACO, as you know, is the Democratic Party acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” implying that all Trump’s zigs and zags on things like tariffs are evidence that their Nazi authoritarian self-proclaimed king is actually a paper tiger who talks big and chickens out when push comes to shove. 

WATCH: Trump just hit a home run with his response to a reporter’s snarky question.

Reporter: “Wall Street analysts have a new term called the TACO trade.. Saying ‘Trump Always Chickens Out on tariffs'”

Trump: “You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now… pic.twitter.com/Ld5Y6RCdjf

— George (@BehizyTweets) May 28, 2025

It’s a tactic that hasn’t worked, mainly because, first of all, it makes no sense given the whole “authoritarian fascist” argument the Democrats make, and because chickening out is not exactly Trump’s brand. It has been pretty obvious that Trump is following a talk tough negotiating strategy–your first offer is always unreasonable, and then you cut a deal. 

Begin by kicking out and deporting the worst of the worst. The productive ones will need to get in line behind the immigrants that came here legally.

— General™️ (@TheGeneral_0) June 12, 2025

NEW: President Trump says an executive order is potentially coming, allowing some illegal immigrants to stay in the country so farmers don’t run out of workers.

“Our farmers are being hurt badly. They have very good workers.”

“They’ve worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be great. We’re going to have to do something about that.”

“We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have…”

“We’re going to have an order on that pretty soon. We can’t do that to our farmers…”

I’ve long suspected that a similar impulse has driven Trump’s immigration policies. He is trying to scare people away from border crossings and push people to self-deport–both of which are happening–while moving toward a more discriminate deportation policy in the United States. That is consistent with his “the worst are first” policies, as well as his rounding up other illegals if they are caught in the net. 

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: President Trump is starting to carve out exceptions to mass deportations. He clarified his Truth Social post this morning about farm laborers, saying, “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back.” He included hotel and hospitality workers… pic.twitter.com/wksKuO8F7k

— Plein Crazy (@PleinCrazy) June 12, 2025

Dealing with labor shortages in a few targeted industries, like agriculture and hospitality, can easily be done with something like the Bracero program, and that is what Trump is hinting at here. 

If this comes as a surprise to you, you are very naïve

Migrant workers are a huge part of the agricultural & hospitality industries (among others). If you really thought Trump was going to massively disrupt those sectors by deporting half their workforces, dunno what to tell you pic.twitter.com/TfoKN9Akuv

— Reaganite 🫡❄️🇺🇸🇬🇧 (@emperoreaganite) June 12, 2025

None of this should be surprising, although I suspect that many of his supporters who have been especially enthusiastic about deportations of all illegals will be (temporarily) angry. But making moves like this is totally consistent with Trump’s rhetorical strategies. He has moved the Overton window, and now he can use that reset to move closer to where he actually always wanted to be. 

There has never been a way to deport 20-30 million illegal aliens in four years, so the smart thing to do is target your efforts, create incentives for people to self-deport, and to ensure that the people who we can’t move out of the country in a reasonable time are as productive as possible. 

In other words, Trump isn’t “chickening out.” This is where he always wanted to be. 

Editor’s Note: President Trump will not allow lawlessness to reign in America. We will not have a repeat of 2020’s “Summer of Love.”

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