• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

2

‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion

3

'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic

1

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

2

‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion

3

'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic
Leadership

Donald Trump Declines to Clarify Contradictory Immigration Positions

By
Haley Sweetland Edwards
Haley Sweetland Edwards
,
Zeke J Miller
Zeke J Miller
, and
TIME
TIME
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Haley Sweetland Edwards
Haley Sweetland Edwards
,
Zeke J Miller
Zeke J Miller
, and
TIME
TIME
Down Arrow Button Icon
June 28, 2016, 1:20 PM ET
Presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump Re-Opens  Trump Turnberry Golf Course And Hotel Following Refurbishment
Photograph by Bloomberg via Getty Images
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Donald Trump’s campaign is going out of its way to withhold clarity about the candidate’s shifting positions on immigration, as he appears to be softening his hardline stance on deporting people in the U.S. illegally and banning Muslim visitors.

In interviews this week, Trump suggested that he was no longer committed to forcing the mass deportation of roughly 11 million who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally, a position he has repeated in campaign speeches and debates since August 2015. He now says he would pursue an immigration policy that would focus only on deporting “bad dudes”—a policy that echoes the enforcement priorities of the Obama administration.

Trump also walked back his oft-repeated promise to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” a policy position enshrined in a December 2015 press release. On Saturday, Trump told reporters that he would not ban all Muslim immigrants, but only those from “terror countries.” “I don’t want people coming in—I don’t want people coming in from certain countries,” he told the Daily Mail. “I don’t want people coming in from the terror countries. You have terror countries. I don’t want them, unless they’re very, very strongly vetted.”

Trump did not specify which immigrants would qualify as “bad dudes,” and therefore be subject to deportation. He also would not name any nation that fell under the category of “terror countries,” saying only that “they’re pretty well decided. All you have to do is look.”

When CNN reported Monday that a new campaign immigration policy paper was forthcoming that would soften his stance on the Muslim ban, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told TIME, “This is not accurate,” and declined to elaborate further. When the Associated Press asked Trump to clarify how he would identify muslims, Trump emailed a statement in response. “You figure it out!” it said in part.

If elected, Trump has promised to wage an “unpredictable” foreign policy, and much of his domestic agenda follows the same maxim. By staking out differing, sometimes opposing positions on the same issue, Trump keeps his opponents and even his own supporters guessing. The lack of clarity stems both from Trump’s own unfamiliarity with some complex policy issues—he fashions himself a big-picture and instinctual leader—but also represents an effort at deliberate ambiguity.

The latest immigration shifts suggest that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is willing to embrace more centrist rhetoric before the general election. But it also marks the latest in a long line of instances in which Trump has dissembled, reversed himself, and walked back previous policy commitments, revealing an increasingly hard-to-pin-down platform just weeks ahead of the Republican convention in July. Trump appears to be betting that the confusion will allow him to appeal to all sides, while allowing him an out should the temperature of any one proposal get too hot.

In recent months, Trump has also appeared willing to negotiate on his long-standing plan, the cornerstone of his presidential run, to build a wall, paid for by Mexico, along the southern border of the U.S. In campaign speeches during the primary season, Trump often described the wall, popular among the Republican base, as bigger, taller, and more “beautiful” in each telling. But in recent interviews, it appears to be shrinking in size and grandeur, as polls show Republican voters in the general election are less enthusiastic about the wall than many primary voters. “Everything’s negotiable,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in March. “I’ll be honest with you. You know, I’ll make the wall two feet shorter, or something.”

Trump’s dissembling on immigration, which has been one of the most solid planks of his platform, reflects a broader trend in his campaign in which he has repeatedly committed to a policy and then, in the matter of weeks or even hours, distanced himself from that it, while arguing that he has not, in fact, shifted positions. On March 3, for example, Trump embraced the idea of forcing U.S. military officers to employ torture methods, like waterboarding, that are widely seen as violating international treaties, and he repeated his position that “torture works.” “We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding,” he said.

Then, a day later, on March 4, he released a statement saying that he would not, in fact, ask military officers to break international laws of war, but simultaneously appeared to remain committed to his previous statements. “I’m in total support of waterboarding. It has to be within the law, but I have to expand the law,” he said. “I’ll work on it with the generals.”

Trump performed a similar two-step after promising to authorize the military to “take out” family members of terrorists. “We’re fighting a very politically correct war,” he said in December 2015. “And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.” Three months later, in an interview on CNN, he said he didn’t mean that the military would kill terrorists’ families—only that he would “go after them.”

Trump’s policy platform again changed over the issue of abortion, when he suggested in an MSNBC town hall event on March 30 that women who get abortions should be subject to “some sort of punishment.” Hours later, he released a statement reversing himself: only the doctor who performs an abortion should be subject to punishment, he wrote, not the woman herself. But then he added that his “position has not changed.”

It’s common for politicians to change their rhetoric between the blustery primary season and the more staid and centrist general election. “Pivoting” from more radical policies to more inclusive ones is a tried-and-true move in the dark arts of politics. But most of Trump’s shape-shifting policy positions aren’t exactly “pivots.” Trump doesn’t move between positions on a linear spectrum so much he layers different responses atop on another, embracing a vast pallet of colorful language. The result is a muddled canvas of opinions, where so many competing colors are represented that both supporters and the campaign itself can point out whichever shade fits the mood of the moment.

The problem is that, less than three weeks before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, many voters aren’t certain where their presumptive nominee stands on everything from immigration and foreign policy to trade and the national debt. Even many Republican party leaders have been left uncertain about how to interpret the nominee’s latest terms of art.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

About the Authors
By Haley Sweetland Edwards
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By Zeke J Miller
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By TIME
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Leadership

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • TikTok icon
  • YouTube icon

Latest in Leadership

wilt
Arts & EntertainmentAuction
Gen Z entrepreneur found a Wilt Chamberlain Lakers warm-up for $3.07 outside Portland — it was a $90,000 genuine article
By Claire Rush and The Associated PressJuly 21, 2026
2 hours ago
cpk
SuccessBook Excerpt
The California Pizza Kitchen story: how two lawyers quit the courtroom to reinvent restaurants
By Rick RosenfieldJuly 21, 2026
2 hours ago
k
Commentarypower
What I keep hearing from Fortune 500 CEOs: ‘We have no idea what we’re actually paying for power’
By Kiran BhatrajuJuly 21, 2026
3 hours ago
Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow
CommentaryHuman resources
The CEO who fired HR was right. About the wrong thing.
By KeyAnna SchmiedlJuly 21, 2026
3 hours ago
Jersey Mike's Subs restaurant.
C-SuiteCFO Daily
Jersey Mike’s tests how far investors will stretch on restaurant IPO valuations
By Sheryl EstradaJuly 21, 2026
3 hours ago
Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Economynational debt
Jamie Dimon won’t put more of his own money into the long end of the bond market right now—thanks to the $39 trillion national debt
By Eleanor PringleJuly 21, 2026
4 hours ago

Most Popular

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
Success
Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 20, 2026
21 hours ago
‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion
Success
‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion
By Sydney LakeJuly 20, 2026
1 day ago
'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic
AI
'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic
By Jason MaJuly 18, 2026
3 days ago
Current price of silver as of Monday, July 20, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of silver as of Monday, July 20, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 20, 2026
1 day ago
It’s not just Taco Bell lettuce and possible glass in Pillsbury rolls: Food and drink recall events reached a 6-year year-over-year high
Retail
It’s not just Taco Bell lettuce and possible glass in Pillsbury rolls: Food and drink recall events reached a 6-year year-over-year high
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 20, 2026
1 day ago
Current price of oil as of July 20, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of July 20, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJuly 20, 2026
1 day ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.