Washington is wringing its hands and declaring that Donald Trump has crossed a line by saying that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States. This would only be true if people had not been paying attention to Trump for the last eight years, such as when he opened his 2015 campaign by calling Mexicans criminals and drug dealers. Or when he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims from coming into the United States. Or when he compared immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border to Russian President Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine (after he had tried to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for arms).

The difference between then and now is that Trump has begun to marry his racist and authoritarian rhetoric to more explicitly fascist rhetoric. And by this time next month, he will have overwhelmingly won the first Republican presidential caucus in Iowa and preparing to put up a double-digit victory in New Hampshire. A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Tuesday also showed Trump defeating Biden, meaning that come 20 January 2025, he could have the capacity to turn his words into policy. None of that should be surprising. What is more surprising is that the Senate is now negotiating how to significantly curtail immigration into the United States in exchange for aid to Ukraine. But Trump’s words add a new colour to the negotiations because it is entirely possible that if an agreement is reached, and he wins the election, Trump could wield that new authority to implement a draconian regime for people who come to the United States.

Negotiations with the bipartisan coterie on Capitol Hill have included, as friend of Inside Washington Myah Ward at Politico has reported, the potential use of “nationwide expedited removal,” which would allow the government to deport anyone in the country who does not have a legal basis for doing so.

While this may register to some as Republican pablum about “the border” — even though this has little to do with the US-Mexico border and may lead to removals from within the country —Trump’s calls to be a dictator on “day one” permeate these discussions. Passing such legislation would give him tremendous latitude. Unsurprisingly, the most MAGA voices in the Senate are unfazed.

“I’m mad he wasn’t tougher than that because you’re seeing what’s happening at the border? We’re being overrun,” Sen Tommy Tuberville of Alabama told me. But Sen Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who voted to convict MTrump for his actions on January 6 and won re-election last year, refused to speak. “I’m not going to comment,” she told The Independent. “I’m just avoiding commenting on the former president.”

Sen Susan Collins of Maine, another Republican senator who voted to convict Trump, called his comments “deplorable.”

“That was horrible that those comments are just they have no place, particularly from a former president,” she told The Independent. Senate Minority Whip John Thune tried to split the difference between distancing himself from Trump while also calling for more restrictions on immigration.

“My grandfather was an immigrant,” he said. “And we’re a nation of immigrants. But we’re a nation of laws. We have to enforce our borders.” But perhaps just as befuddling is the fact that Democrats who oppose Trump seem all too willing to work with the GOP on restricting immigration when the leader of their party is spewing white nationalist rhetoric not unlike that of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter in 2018 and the El Paso Walmart shooter in 2019. During Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s press conference, I asked why Democrats were negotiating curtailing immigration with a party led by Trump.