Donald Trump’s dogged, Captain-Ahab-like obsession with immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the southern border is many things.
It is an open appeal to white-nationalist xenophobia among the many members of his overwhelmingly white base. Check.
It is a frustration that his oft-promised new wall has yet to a single mile built. Check.
It is a natural outgrowth of an intrinsic hostility to people who are Hispanics. Check.
But I believe that it is also something more sophisticated and tactical than that: It is a play to the other, smaller part of his base, the black and Hispanic people who voted for him in 2016. CONT.
Charles M. Blow, New York Times