Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

After all of the promises on the campaign trail, the push for more funding for immigration enforcement, the complaints about President Obama’s unconstitutional actions on immigration and the appointment of hard-liners on border security, many of us were left a bit puzzled about President Trump’s DACA comments. Rather than simply canceling the program, he give it a six month window and called on Congress to do something. But what? To pass a law officially implementing the program he was getting ready to cancel? That sounds suspiciously like… amnesty. And we know he can’t be in favor of that, right?

Well, unless Sarah Huckabee Sanders has taken up the aforementioned habit of abusing hallucinogenics, we had Donald Trump wrong all along. He’s always been a fan of amnesty. (The Daily Caller)

President Donald Trump’s request that Congress protect illegal immigrants is not a change of heart, but something Trump has always supported, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Trump presented a hard-line immigration policy on the campaign trail and said during an August 2016 campaign speech that “there will be no amnesty.”… When asked during Tuesday’s White House press briefing about Trump’s support of amnesty, Sanders replied, “I think the president has spoken out very clearly that he wants us to make this decision based on a variety of factors. But the number one thing is that he wants responsible immigration reform and part of that is including that in the process.” She went on to say that Trump “always wanted responsible immigration reform.”

This isn’t just a modification in policy. It’s a reversal. In fact the Daily Caller does a fine job of revisiting a 2016 campaign speech in Arizona where Trump went after Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush on the subject, chiding them for just being politicians who think that “immigration reform” means “amnesty, open borders, and lower wages.”

This was a fairly divisive aspect of the primary debates. And as I recall, for a lot of the people who initially (or at least eventually) wound up supporting the president, amnesty was pretty much a deal breaker. It’s not a question of whether or not any of the people currently receiving protection from deportation under DACA are “nice people” or otherwise obeying the law. I’m sure many of them are. But even if they were brought here as children, once they reach adulthood they have to take responsibility for their own lives and that means following the law. It’s still an insult to everyone else who came to this country the correct way and worked toward their eventual citizenship.

So is this just a bargaining chip now? That’s not being made clear. I suppose I can see the point of some conservatives who are willing to consider a one time amnesty for the “dreamers” in exchange for tougher immigration laws, more strict, well funded enforcement and the wall. But does anyone really believe that the Democrats will sign on for any of those things as part of a deal? And if that’s what Trump was intending all along, why didn’t he just tell us?

As I said earlier, looks like I picked the wrong week to…