This piece is worth reading for the comedy, but there are some substantive comments that I have not read elsewhere. Most pointedly, the writer points out that Trump's Phoenix speech ended with the comment that he won't deal with the issue of law-abiding undocumented aliens until "all the other steps have been taken." Meaning: he has clearly changed his tune on immediately deporting all eleven million undocumented aliens currently in the U.S., and that he will only take on this issue once all ten steps of his program are in place... the wall, the "extreme vetting," the citizenship loyalty test; everything. Basically, he is now saying what Rubio was saying back in the Florida primary... that he refused to even talk about the issue of the status of law-abiding undocumented aliens "until the border has been sealed." Exact same position as Rubio, only this time, Trump espouses it instead of ridiculing it.

Trump is a bully when he gets to hide behind his unhinged, extremist supporters, but wilts like a dead flower when confronted with someone his own size.

...or all of that is true AND he is trying to have it all ways! The debates have to smoke him out on this one, and the moderators will surely try.

It is actually very interesting that most people in the mainstream press are focused on the fact that Trump's Phoenix speech seemed to be a return to the hard right after he had appeared to flirt with more "humane" approaches in the prior week, particularly in his open polling of the audience in the Hannity town hall. Yet the change in his position in no longer demanding that all undocumented aliens be deported essentially puts him in relatively close alignment with where Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio had been a year ago. They all said to build a wall and seal the border. No one knows what extreme vetting or his citizenship/loyalty test really means. So the only difference between these three guys is that Trump is saying Mexico will pay for the wall, which it won't.

..and he was supposed to be a straight talker, if nothing else. What next, Pence out and Chris Christie for VP after all?