If you thought Donald Trump seized the initiative and scored big yesterday with his bully-pulpit trip to Mexico and his fiery speech on illegal immigration and the necessity to maintain America’s borders… think again:

THE BIG IDEA: Immigration is a losing issue for Donald Trump, and he’s just spent two weeks talking about it almost every day. After telegraphing repeatedly that he would embrace a more politically palatable position, the Republican nominee used a much-ballyhooed speech in Phoenix last night to make clear that there will be no softening whatsoever. In some key ways, he even hardened his position. Republicans facing four more years in the wilderness will long recall the raucous rally in Phoenix as a low point of the Trump campaign, perhaps even as the moment that he definitively extinguished his hopes of becoming president. That feeling will be particularly pronounced because it came at the end of a whirlwind day that might otherwise have been remembered as a triumph.

Yes, the speech went on far too long, and thus missed its emotional highpoint, the introduction of the moms and dads who needlessly lost children to the murderous predations of illegal “immigrants.” But as Grandma Hillary — the only realistic alternative, it should always be remembered — collected cash but otherwise continued her Front Porch/Rose Garden/Hospital Ward shakedown strategy, the speech gave Trump one of his best moments on the campaign trail yet.

But you’ll never hear that from the rabidly anti-Trump Washington Post, which is now essentially indistinguishable from such Leftist mouthpieces as Media Matters or, for that matter, the Vichycon precincts, manned on a daily basis by Jennifer Rubin (looky, here’s another one now!), on the former Right. I get the WaPo’s list of stories each day and almost without exception it is a relentless drum roll of anti-conservative, anti-GOP and anti-Trump stories.

Many political professionals from both parties privately believed Trump’s trip to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto was a master stroke, an audacious move that made Trump look serious and presidential on a global stage. Rightly or wrongly, even some critics believed that the billionaire projected pragmatism and showed that he could be effective at cutting deals. But then came Phoenix. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of what Trump said:

Oh, shut up. What he said was entirely unexceptionable and was in fact, the same thing Democrats were saying just a couple of election cycles ago.

Bottom line: The deportation priorities Trump laid out in Phoenix could target more than SIX MILLION individuals for IMMEDIATE REMOVAL

James Hohmann says that like it’s a bad thing.

At this point, the utterly deracinated Vichycon movement (now down to just a hardy few, thankfully) and the frothing Left have made common cause in order to elect Hillary Clinton president of the United States. And that is all there is to it.