Donald Trump, speaking in Arizona. Photograph by Ralph Freso / Getty

“I just landed, having returned from a very important and special meeting with the President of Mexico,” Donald Trump told a crowd in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday night, as he began what he promised would be a very important and special policy address on illegal immigration. He said he'd liked his host, President Enrique Peña Nieto, “a man who truly loves his country—Mexico.” Trump pronounced the name of that country as if the object of Peña Nieto’s affection might not be obvious to his audience, and then added, “And, by the way, just like I am a man who loves my country—the United States.” Trump gave the cheers that followed a double thumbs-up and an asymmetrical smile. As political odysseys go, Trump’s hop over to Mexico didn’t add up to much of a journey, in terms of political risk or philosophical or even rhetorical evolution; neither did his speech, which mostly repeated his warnings about how Hillary Clinton and her ilk had handed over innocent Americans to murderous illegal immigrants for their own corrupt purposes. Any late-hour hopes anyone might have harbored for anything very different—outreach to Hispanic Americans that went beyond vague protestations of Trumpian love, for example—would have wilted in the Phoenix night. But Trump himself was having, by his measure, a pretty good day.

“The truth is, our immigration system is worse than anybody ever realized,” Trump said. “But the facts aren’t known because the media won’t report on them, the politicians won’t talk about them, and the special interests try to cover them up because they are making an absolute fortune.” Every current policy was “weak and foolish”; everything would have to change, and change “quickly.”

A few hours earlier, he had been on a stage in Mexico City, where he and Peña Nieto, after their closed-door meeting, stood behind identical lecterns before the press, as if both were heads of state. In March, Peña Nieto, in discussing Trump’s “tone,” had recalled that Hitler and Mussolini also made appeals to populism. Now, though, the main historical point he made was that the Republican candidate might be “the next American President,” and that he, Peña Nieto, craved the respect and approbation of such a man. “Your presence here, Mr. Donald Trump, shows that we do have common ground,” he said, speaking in Spanish. Peña Nieto explained, almost pleadingly, that the number of undocumented people crossing the border into the United States had fallen over the past decade, but then shifted to talking about how the insecurity of the border allowed for traffic in guns and drugs in both directions. Trump, listening to the translation, thrust his lower lip forward in a series of chinless nods. When it was his turn, he spoke about the “spectacular, hardworking” Mexican-Americans he himself employed, and the right of either country to build “a physical barrier or wall.” Afterward, answering questions, Trump said that in the two men’s private meeting, “We did discuss the wall—we didn’t discuss payment of the wall. That will come later.”

Peña Nieto, handed the floor, did not contradict Trump. Instead, at a moment when, with the world watching, he might have said anything, and offered any reproach, he emphasized that he had invited Clinton, too, but that it was Trump who had showed up. There were, Peña Nieto said, “misinterpretations” and “perceptions” involved in Trump’s comments about Mexican-Americans that had created “hurt,” and it was his duty to protect Mexicans abroad. But he suggested that Trump’s “genuine interest” was to make things better all around. Later, after Trump left, Peña Nieto tried to salvage his dignity on Twitter by saying that he had told Trump privately that Mexico wouldn’t pay for the wall. It looked, briefly, as if he might be confronting Trump about a lie, until Peña Nieto’s spokesman subsequently told David Luhnow, of the Wall Street Journal, that, because Trump had simply ignored the Mexican President when he brought up the payment question, it was technically correct that there hadn’t been a “discussion.” Whether this was mostly a story about Trump’s mendacity or his deluded narcissism is, consequently, a matter of debate; neither interpretation is flattering to Peña Nieto. (Then again, most leading Republicans, including Paul Ryan, have not done any better in their exchanges with Trump.) By most accounts, Peña Nieto’s performance did not go over well in Mexico. In retrospect, it may count as a small blessing that Trump did not induce him to wear some sort of hat with a slogan on it.

On the hat front, both Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Senator Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, wore “MAKE MEXICO GREAT AGAIN ALSO” baseball caps when they introduced Trump at the rally in Phoenix. With that, Peña Nieto, or a cartoon version that he was complicit in creating, has been written into the Trump storybook as yet another person he has disparaged but whose savior he would supposedly be. In Phoenix, Trump added black and Latino citizens, whom he called the victims of immigration, to that list. At the same time, he offered no apologies for his slurs. And because it would hardly be a Trump speech without fresh doses of bigotry, he suggested that there were some groups who, regardless of their legal status, could never be assimilated—“Sometimes, it’s just not going to work out”—and so America should choose “immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish and love us.” (As often with Trump, it was hard to know if “us” really constituted a bigger group than “me.”) And there would be no more visas for people in “any place where adequate screening cannot occur.” In case there was any doubt about which places he had in mind, his next sentence mentioned the 9/11 attacks. He also cited Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and demanded more thorough ideological and religious examinations. “We call it America First, folks,” Trump said.

There was some speculation beforehand that the Phoenix speech might reconcile some of the contradictory statements that Trump has made about deporting the millions of undocumented people who have built lives in the United States. It didn’t, really; there was a focus on immigrants with criminal records, but not in a way that would offer relief, or even clarity, to those who weren’t criminals. Indeed, he expressed annoyance at having to consider their interests at all: “Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington.” There was no real line, in Trump’s speech, between entering America without the proper papers and committing a crime inside its borders—“That’s what it means to have laws”; “There will be no amnesty.” He had ten policy points, but all in one key: criminals would be not only deported but flown “great distances” from America; judicial obstacles to doing so would be removed, without any concern for the “politically correct”; law-enforcement officials would no longer have the restraints that, in the Trump vision of America, were holding them back. He would work for “the forgotten people.”

The speech paused, as the “Angel Moms,” a group of family members of people killed by immigrants, came onstage. Politifact has called Trump’s use of these stories, which may not be statistically typical, an example of the risks of using anecdotes to drive policy. (The Washington Post’s Fact-Checker also has a look at some of the liberties he took in the Phoenix speech.) Still, these are people who are in pain, and Trump was smart enough to know that his best interest lay in being quiet for a moment and letting them talk, patting their backs and nodding solemnly. One spoke about having a child who “would be alive today” if Trump had been President; “If you don’t vote Trump, we won’t have a country,” a woman said; another called him “the only man who’s going to save our country.” “That’s tough stuff, I will tell you that,” he said when they were done. Trump has learned something: not about moderation but about how he can reach certain voters. It would be a hazardous mistake to miss that. The polls, in the past week, have been narrowing.

Hillary Clinton, he said, supported the release of “dangerous, dangerous, dangerous criminals.” Why was she worried about dividing immigrant families through deportation, he asked, when American families were being divided by murder-by-immigrants? His answer—his answer to almost any question involving Clinton—was that she was a criminal herself. Violent immigrants, he said, had evaded justice, “just like Hillary Clinton has evaded justice, O.K.? Maybe they’ll be able to deport her!” As a result of her “misconduct” as Secretary of State, thousands of immigrant criminals had been released in America, and dangerous people were now “all over the place,” he claimed, with a sweep of his arm, adding, “probably a couple in this room, as a matter of fact.” Statistically speaking, it does seem possible that there was at least one dangerous person in the arena. Could he have been born in Queens, New York?