This comes after President Trump held an extraordinary meeting with Democratic and Republican lawmakers at the White House on Monday, in which President Trump appeared to support a wide-reaching deal on immigration that could grant millions of undocumented people a pathway to citizenship.
During the meeting, Trump repeatedly said he would “take the heat” for a sweeping immigration deal, which would likely be opposed by much of his far-right-wing anti-immigrant base. President Trump also said he wanted a “bill of love” to protect the 800,000 young undocumented people, known as DREAMers, whose protections he attempted to rescind late last year. To the surprise of many, the majority of the meeting was televised, which aides said was meant to show the president’s mental acuity, amid mounting questions about the president’s mental health.
But much of what Trump said during the televised meeting appeared to run counter to his campaign promises and his immigration policies, which have included demanding $18 billion in funding for a militarized border wall, rescinding DACA and canceling immigration protections, known as TPS, for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Sudanese immigrants who have been living in the United States for years.
Following the meeting, a number of his right-wing supporters attacked Trump. He has already begun walking back his comments from the meeting, tweeting, “As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.”