The Donald Trump pivot story the mainstream media badly wants to write

PHOENIX—On Wednesday, Donald Trump cast aside his cloak of divisiveness and embraced a new, softer tone in a lofty, sensitive speech that would have made Ronald Reagan’s eyes well up with tears of pride.

Never have we seen Donald Trump behave so presidentially. At this speech—or should we call it an oration?—Trump completely ditched the divisive, inflammatory rhetoric that critics say directly appeals to skinheads and men who bring guns to their son’s Little League game.

Reader: He pivoted.

The difference between the new Trump and the old was stark, like the before and after photos in Katy Perry’s Proactiv commercial.

Indeed, at several points during the event, I thought mine own eyes did deceive me: Was that Donald Trump behind the lectern, or was it President Jed Bartlett himself?

Watching Trump on stage was akin to beholding real-life Disney magic. Striding to the stage like a pristine white horse, Trump appeared a delicate, judicious figure, dazzling all with a careful appeal to undecided voters without once using an old-timey racial slur.

“Donald Trump impressed me with his sensitivity and prudence last night,” said Nathaniel Blorch, a fellow at the American Political Thinkery Institute who has been locked in a soundproof chamber for the last 16 months. “For a candidate to read from a Teleprompter without once sounding like the re-animated corpse of Mussolini—that’s presidential.”

“It’s going to sway a lot of voters,” Blorch added, before drifting away to his home planet, where long-term memory does not exist.

Trump’s day was not without its slipups: At one point, the political novice expressed admiration for the Pol Pot administration, and appeared to think that every city in Mexico was called “Mexico City.”

But those lapses paled in comparison to the reformed, Atticus Finchian Donald Trump who stepped out yesterday.

Mostly, Trump’s day was marked by statesmanlike flourishes. He stood next to the president of Mexico without vomiting; he did not threaten to prosecute any journalists for treason; and he appeared to compromise on his proposal for roving gangs of immigration squads who would round up anyone in America whose skin tone was darker than an eggshell.

Trump’s move to the center should prove important, as the candidate seeks to win back a diverse nation of voters who may have been turned off by his yearlong White Supremacy Warped Tour.

“I might be coming around on Trump,” said Belinda Chapsworth, 37, an undecided voter we found wandering around a forest with a metal detector. “He went to Mexico and did not threaten to firebomb the entire country. To me, that’s what a president does.”

Whether this shift in approach is coming too late to affect the election is almost beside the point: Donald Trump has warmed our hearts, and proven that Man’s capacity for Goodness truly outweighs his capacity for Evil.