Did someone say caravan?
One week after Election Day, President Donald Trump’s daily drumbeat of warnings about a caravan of “bad thugs” and potential terrorists intent on invading the U.S. from Mexico has largely fallen silent.
The migrant caravans are still trudging along, the largest still about 1,000 miles from the southern border, but Trump – and many in the conservative media – have dramatically reduced the frequency and intensity of their dire warnings now that they no longer feel the same urgency to stir up GOP voters.
Trump and his media allies have largely moved on: They’re more focused now on the possibility of electoral chicanery in recounts in the Florida Senate and governor’s races.
Within the West Wing and in Trump’s orbit of allies, there is a sense that the caravan was a useful midterm messaging tool, one that became the centerpiece of an eleventh-hour pre-election strategy modeled on the president’s 2016 campaign pledges to crack down on illegal immigration, according to four White House officials and outside advisers not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
But once the election was over, the president’s attention turned elsewhere, the officials and advisers said.
For weeks before the election, the caravan was a dominant news story. The largest caravan was believed to have formed in Honduras on Oct. 12 and first was featured in a Fox & Friends segment four days later, which prompted a tweet from the show’s most famous fan.
As the midterms approached, Trump and his conservative allies flooded the zone with harsh rhetoric and hardline policy proposals, including sending troops to the border, revoking birthright citizenship and an ad featuring a Latino man convicted of killing two police officers that was widely condemned as racist.