Campaign Manager Brags That Trump ‘Hasn’t Talked About Deportation Force Since November’

The two biggest political stories of the week were Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton‘s trading of cannonfire with Republican rival Donald Trump over Trump’s courtship of the racist “alt-right,” and the Trump campaign’s gyrations on the issue of deportations. On Sunday morning’s Fox News Sunday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway cleared things up like a batch of expired Valtrex.

Ever since reporting emerged that Trump might be softening his stance on deportations last weekend, the press has been trying mightily to figure out whether Trump still plans on deploying a “deportation force” to rid the country of undocumented immigrants, and this morning, Chris Wallace was the latest to try and get a straight answer out of the campaign. Conway seemed to send mixed messages, telling Wallace that there would be “no legalization and no amnesty,” but also making a rather unclear point about Trump and the “deportation force”:

Now, the deportation force, I would like to address that. He hasn’t mentioned that since last November, I think in a few of the debates as you point out. In his convention speech last month, he’s consistent on that now in terms of addressing these many different areas of a complex issue.

What Conway seems to be saying, then, is that while Trump will take no steps to legalize any of the undocumented immigrants who are already here, he also won’t use a “deportation force” to deport them, and that ” if you go back to your home country,” you can apply to come back legally.

That sounds an awful lot like “self-deportation,” but we won’t know for sure until Trump delivers on his now-delayed immigration speech, and even then, probably not.