Cristiano Lima, Politico, August 22, 2016

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In a prerecorded interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly airing Monday night, the Republican nominee again refuted a report by BuzzFeed that he was open to legalization for undocumented immigrants, dismissing it as “false.” The report came on the heels of newly minted campaign manager Kellyanne Conway giving an interview Sunday morning in which she characterized Trump’s plan to deploy a deportation force as “to be determined.”

The Trump campaign found itself on the defensive Monday, with the nominee flatly denying that he was “flip-flopping” on the issue in an earlier interview with Fox News.

Speaking to O’Reilly, Trump insisted that his calls for mass deportation could in fact be carried out under existing U.S. law, comparing his plans to that of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Trump added that if laws are executed properly, immigrants that “go around killing people and hurting people” are “gonna be out of this country so fast your head will spin.”

“We’re going to obey the existing laws. Now, the existing laws are very strong. The existing laws, the first thing we’re gonna do, if and when I win, is we’re gonna get rid of all of the bad ones. We’ve got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country,” he said. “What people don’t know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country, Bush the same thing. … Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well I’m gonna do the same thing.”

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