In her new book, Ann Coulter says there is only one truly mortal sin Donald Trump could commit. As it turns out, he committed it the same day the book was released.
“Until the bleeding has stopped, there’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies,” Coulter wrote in her new tome, “In Trump We Trust.”
Coulter’s Trump hagiography hit shelves on Tuesday — the same day the Republican nominee told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he is open to “softening” the very immigration proposals that inspired Coulter and legions of other conservatives to support him. His comments have made the rest of the week very awkward for her, forcing her to explain his apparent apostasy when she expected to be taking something close to a victory lap. and very publicly so.
“I’m starting to worry that he’s panicking and talking to the wrong people because he’s sounding a bit more like the candidates he defeated,” Coulter told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday.
“It just sounds very consultant to me,” she added. “This could be the shortest book tour ever if he’s really softening his position on immigration.”
Coulter, who did not respond to an interview request from CNNMoney, has been one of Trump’s most vocal media boosters. She was also a believer in his candidacy at a time when most were dismissive, asserting last June that Trump’s general election prospects were better than any other Republican. In Trump, Coulter gushed last August, “we finally have someone who genuinely loves America and is not beholden to the donors.”
And no issue fueled her support for Trump more than immigration. Her 2015 book, “Adios America,” was a 400-page diatribe against undocumented immigrants.
Coulter has said Trump requested and received an advance copy of the book. About two weeks after its release, he announced his candidacy with a speech in which he warned that many undocumented immigrants are drug dealers and rapists. But Coulter insisted at the time that Trump “didn’t get his ideas from me.”
“He had them,” she told the Washington Post. “My book supports his ideas.”
Coulter is less supportive of what Trump has said this week, although she’s made clear that she is not “abandoning” her candidate. She has also given Trump the benefit of the doubt, saying Wednesday that he is only shifting “rhetorically.”
“I don’t think it is a change in policy,” Coulter told the Washington Examiner. “The policy is anyone who’s here illegally is here illegally, does not have the right to be here. We’ll decide whether it’s in our interest to let them stay or not.”
But Trump’s morphing rhetoric has made it difficult to make sense of his policies. After indicating this week that he may support a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants living here, Trump backtracked in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“There’s no path to legalization unless they leave the country,” Trump said.
Whether Trump is moderating in style or actual substance, Coulter doesn’t approve. She told ABC News that she wants Trump “to dump whomever the moron is who told him Americans are staying up at night worried about how people who broke our laws entering, broke our laws staying here, broke our laws taking jobs, how comfortable they are.”
The shift on immigration follows yet another shakeup at the top of Trump’s campaign, but Coulter speculated that the culprit might be someone with an unofficial role.
“[Trump] seems to be getting contradictory advice,” she said. “I’ve seen these rumors he’s now being advised by Roger Ailes, the former head of the Marco Rubio super PAC known as Fox News.”