Donald Trump has relaunched a presidential campaign that never really ever landed. (Remember, the president filed to run for reelection the same day he was inaugurated.) Speaking for 80 minutes at an Orlando, Florida, rally on Tuesday, Trump again replayed 2016’s greatest hits. He ranted about Hillary Clinton’s emails: “Can you imagine if I got a subpoena for emails?” he asked, falsely claiming that the former secretary of state had “acid washed” her servers. “If I deleted one email, like a love note to Melania, it’s the electric chair for Trump.” He called the Mueller investigation an “illegal attempt to overturn the results of the election, spy on our campaign, which is what they did, and subvert our democracy.” And he warned that the Democrats would “flood the country” with dangerous undocumented immigrants if they won the next election. “The Democrat agenda of open borders is morally reprehensible. It’s the greatest betrayal of the American middle class and, frankly, American life,” said Trump, as the crowd chanted “build the wall.”

Despite the braying and bravado, however, Trump is perhaps in the worst position of any incumbent president in recent history. His poll numbers are so bleak he refuses to acknowledge them, going so far as to fire pollsters who had the temerity to show the president consistently losing to his potential Democratic rivals. He is trailing in a number of key electoral states, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He is on the verge of dragging the United States into war with Iran, and his other high-profile diplomatic gambits have failed. His luck with the economy could run out any moment, due either to the vicissitudes of economic cycles or the trade wars he has tried to gin up. Even if House Democrats don’t officially start an impeachment inquiry, the investigations they conduct could drive presidential poll numbers into the earth’s core.



But when the walls close in, you can always count on President Trump to do what any man in his position (his position being a rageful and insecure manchild) would: Turn again to racist fearmongering. On Monday, in a teaser for his campaign rally, the president tweeted that he was ordering an unprecedented roundup of undocumented immigrants.

....long before they get to our Southern Border. Guatemala is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third Agreement. The only ones who won’t do anything are the Democrats in Congress. They must vote to get rid of the loopholes, and fix asylum! If so, Border Crisis will end quickly! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019

A plan to speed the removal of thousands of immigrants, known as the “rocket docket,” has existed for months, according to The Washington Post. It would involve a government “blitz operation” that would round up “thousands of migrant parents and children” whose deportation orders were expedited earlier this year. The operation was considered so extreme that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen—neither exactly a friend of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free—objected, and were pushed out of the administration by Trump and his vampiric senior adviser Stephen Miller.



Trump is almost certainly being hyperbolic. Deportation operations are not typically announced in advance. At their peak—under President Obama in fiscal year 2012—deportation orders capped out at around 400,000. ICE has slowed deportations in 2019 in part because, as NBC’s Julia Ainsley reported, the agency “is running out of space due to the influx of immigrants coming across the border.” Human Rights First, meanwhile, told Reuters that the idea that Guatemala could protect migrants was “simply ludicrous.”

