Among the most ardent contingent of the nativist far-right, Donald Trump’s mostly anodyne State of the Union address Tuesday night seemed to provoke an acute case of whiplash, as the president careened from sweeping appeals to bipartisanship to racial dog whistles, from strident anti-immigration diatribes to calls for amnesty, and back again. “Should have ended the speech after C.J.,” moaned conservative gadfly Ann Coulter, on Twitter, after Trump pivoted from praising Homeland Security Investigations Supervisory Special Agent Celestino Martinez to offering “a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants” who came to the United States as young children. “Under your plan, Mr. President, NO COURT will ever ever ever consider the ‘educational attainments or moral characteristics’ of illegals before granting amnesty to millions.”

Amnesty for nearly 2 million undocumented immigrants, of course, was only the first of four “pillars” that Trump described as the foundation of his plan to overhaul the immigration system, something that his Republican allies in Congress had begged him to put forth during the most recent government shutdown debate. Trump also called for greater immigration enforcement—building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and “hiring more heroes like C.J.”—ending catch and release, getting rid of the visa lottery, shifting to a merit-based immigration system, and eliminating what Republicans call “chain migration” (known as “family reunification” under federal law), which allows green card holders or legal residents to sponsor family members trying to immigrate to the U.S.

Trump billed the four pillars as a “fair compromise”—something where “nobody gets everything they want, but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs.” And he loaded the rest of his speech with demagogic warnings about the dangers of immigrants, talking at length about the MS-13 gang and spotlighting the family of the children killed by illegal immigrants, weeping in the House gallery. The line “Americans are dreamers, too,” resounded with the usual suspects in the conservative echo chamber as if Father Coughlin himself had shouted down from heaven. Still, Trump’s first pledge—to create a path to immigration for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who arrived as children—was, academically speaking, pure MAGA heresy.

“Amnesty doesn’t put America First,” tweeted men’s rights radio host Stefan Molyneux, adding that it may have been ”too much to ask” that Trump remember his own campaign promise to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Molyneux’s thoughts were echoed by Coulter, and in a long-winded rant from Wisconsin congressional candidate and apparent anti-Semite Paul Nehlen, who accused Trump of exiting the “#NoCuckZone” by offering the immediate families of immigrants a path to citizenship.

By the end of Trump’s speech, Breitbart featured at least one telling, negative headline, amidst an orange, all-caps sea of praise: “DONNY DACA: TRUMP SELLS AMNESTY, SAYS IT PUTS AMERICANS FIRST.”


Of course, the president’s supporters are uncomfortably familiar with Trump-induced whiplash. Reports that he called third-world countries “shitholes” delighted his ideological allies, signaling that the president was still on their side, while signs that he was weighing a deal with their Democrat nemeses “Chuck and Nancy” worked them into a fury. Luckily for the White House, with the scattered exceptions of Coulter and Molyneux, the majority of Trump’s devotees ignored the president’s impiety and instead directed their rage at the opposing party.

They were helped by the TV cameras, which captured stone-faced Democrats sitting through several seemingly inoffensive applause lines. For the rest of the night, conservative talking points, filtered from the fringes of Infowars hosts repeatedly tweeting the word ”TRIGGERED”, to the very Trumpian mouth of new ABC commentator Chris Christie, focused on how Democrats clearly did not respect America enough to honor the memory of teenage girls killed by MS-13, or even stand to applaud the concept of bipartisanship. As Trump’s bathos-laden speech wrapped up, his reliance on Real People combined with the Democrats’ apparent refusal to play along had even Coulter cheering that this was a “GREAT SPEECH”.