Donald Trump put out an excellent statement on immigration yesterday, following new census data showing record immigration growth. It said:

Record rates of immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for U.S. workers. Pew polling shows 83 percent of all voters - Democrats, Republicans and Independents - think immigration should be frozen or reduced. The biggest beneficiaries of allowing fewer foreign workers into our country would be minority workers, including all immigrants now living here, who are competing for jobs, benefits and community resources against record waves of foreign workers. Limiting job competition would reopen pathways to middle-class stability and shrink welfare rolls. In addition, it would relieve overcrowding in our schools and hospitals that afflict our poorest communities. Yet, Senators Cruz and Rubio have led the charge for even higher immigration rates - a policy supported by only 7 percent of the Republican electorate. When I am President we will listen to the people - not the special interests - and get immigration numbers under control, as the voters have demanded.

Googling shows this statement has received essentially no coverage in the MSM, which is otherwise wall-to-wall Trump trashing. This is obviously part of a coordinated strategy which, not for the first time, liberal commentators seem more prepared to acknowledge than Conservatism Inc. drones. As Matthew Yglesias said in Vox after the last debate:

But for all their attacks, they [Trump's rivals] are not really joining the argument that Trump started over the proposition that the GOP should ditch elements of free market ideology and embrace populist nationalism instead.

Trump's rivals don't want to engage in this argument for the same reason that Trump has rocketed in the polls — most rank-and-file Republicans agree with Trump. So instead, they bite at him over secondary issues — old campaign contributions to Hillary Clinton, Trump University — or try to point out problems with Trump that also apply to the other candidates. It was shocking, for example, to see Fox News anchors pointing out that Trump's tax plan isn't remotely paid for. This is entirely true, but it's equally true of every other GOP tax plan of the past 15 years and it never seemed to bother Fox before.

These are real knocks on Trump, but they don't explain the GOP establishment's rage against him. That stems from the divide over the role of populist nationalism in the conservative movement.

No matter what happens, the Republican Party is hurtling toward disaster, March 3 2016. Link in original, emphases added.

Nowhere is this more true than on the immigration, Trump's decisive winning issue. And the MSM is fully on board with this strategy:

For all the talk of the Republican establishment trying to stop Donald Trump, it's the media establishment that is cranking up the volume to deafening levels.

What’s remarkable about this sustained assault is that it comes with equal force from the right and the left, united in their passion to stop the man who is winning the most Republican primary votes.

Presidential campaigns are rough, and opinion journalists often pound away at the candidates they dislike. These politicians get attacked on their record, background, temperament and for just about anything untoward they’ve done since grade school.

But I’ve never seen anything like this.

Media warnings against Donald Trump shift from aggressive to apocalyptic, by Howard Kurtz, Foxnews.com, March 8 2016.

Of course, while I'm reluctant to second-guess Trump's astonishing performance, it would help (sigh) if he himself remembered to talk more about immigration on the stump.