Actually, I think Trump is behind it. He thinks all Republicans are racists, and he didn’t want to offend them.
Now THAT is a stretch, that The Donald was somehow behind all this talk that he was a “supporter” of the KKK/Nazi/white supremacy anti-minority point of view.
The Donald is probably one of the most color-blind candidates running, and this would simply not be on his radar. But those who are actively working to deny The Donald a shot at the candidacy for the President of the US would pick up a half-truth, that denying the illegal immigrants any implicit right to remain within the borders of that territory once known as “the United States of America” is somehow “racist”, and use it to lob at The Donald.
But a half-truth, like a half-brick, is much easier to throw, and though it at first does a little less damage, by breaking everything into half-truths, there is suddenly twice as much ammunition, and hurling all these half-truths is much more damaging than throwing whole lies, which can be shrugged off.
And these things do not even have to be “half-truths”, they need only be plausible, even if only a short while.