Trump touted 'tough' immigration plan before mulling 'softening'

Minutes before suggesting he would be open to "softening" his position on illegal immigration proposals, Donald Trump took pains to emphasize that the under-girding of his message has remained the same since his announcement speech.

"We are going to let people in, but they're gonna come in legally—as I've been saying for a long time," Trump told Fox News' Ainsley Earhardt on Tuesday before walking onstage to tape a town hall on the issue with the network's Sean Hannity.


During that event, Trump addressed his meeting with Hispanic leaders last weekend in Manhattan, remarking that "there certainly can be a softening because we're not looking to hurt people, we want people — we have some great people in this country."

But speaking to Earhardt in an interview aired Wednesday on "Fox & Friends," Trump played up the toughness of his proposal. The Republican nominee vowed, as he would to Hannity, that the wall would be built—"100 percent"—after political observers noted that he had scarcely mentioned the central part of his proposal in recent days.

"Somebody was saying on one of the shows today that maybe probably Trump won't build the wall—we're building the wall. A wall is gonna be built. It's easy," Trump said. "And we're building the wall. We're going to have very, very tough standards. You come into the country, it's tough."

For people coming in from Syria and "these places," Trump continued, immigration is "really going to be tough."

"You know, Hillary Clinton's allowing thousands and thousands of people, and Obama, but she wants to have 550 percent more than Obama is allowing," Trump remarked. "People are coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, they have no paperwork, they have no nothing. We don't know what we're getting. Could be ISIS. We don't know what we're getting. So we're going to have a strong border on the southern border."