Trump’s raucous day in California
President blasts Brown, Schaaf, praises wall and space wars
Even for someone who cheerfully admits he thrives on conflict, Tuesday may have been too much of a good thing for President Trump.
Over the course of a day that marked the president’s first visit to California since his election, the president fired his secretary of state, attacked Gov. Jerry Brown and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for their support of sanctuary policies, inspected prototypes for his longpromised $18 billion wall on the Mexican border, and warned that without that wall, “you won’t have a country.” And that was all by lunchtime. Trump rounded out his day by suggesting to an audience of Marines in San Diego that the country may be getting a new “space force” to fight battles above the Earth, then raising millions of dollars for the Republican Party at a Los Angeles-area fundraiser and watching a nail-biter of a special congressional election in Pennsylvania that could hold the key to the president’s political future.
The pinballing political focus changed so quickly it was impossible to concentrate on any one subject, which didn’t seem to bother the president at all.
“I haven’t seen (Trump) as comfortable as he was at the wall, discussing why this one was good and that one was bad,” Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the USC of Public Policy, said of the wall sections. “He was in his comfort zone; he’s a developer.”
It didn’t hurt that his visit to the border and his ongoing dispute with Democratic leaders in deep-blue California was nearly drowned out by his Twitter announcement earlier Tuesday that he had fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and named CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take his place.
The tweeted decision, which by some accounts came as a surprise to Tillerson, took control of the news cycle, with speculation about TilSchool
lerson’s departure and other possible shakeups in the White House dominating much of the day’s coverage.
With Tillerson’s ouster and the high-profile race in Pennsylvania, where the winner might not be known until the absentee votes are counted, “the whole California trip is off the radar,” Jeffe said.
That’s not true in California itself, though, since Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with local leaders.
The president used his first official visit to California to slam both Brown and Schaaf for “putting the entire nation at risk” and becoming “the best friend of criminals” with their backing of sanctuary cities and other policies that support undocumented residents.
When Schaaf issued a public warning last month of potential Bay Area immigration raids, it “was a disgrace to our nation,” Trump said as he spoke to reporters at the border.
“You have sanctuary cities where you have criminals living in sanctuary cities,” Trump said, “and then the mayor of Oakland goes out and notifies (them) when (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is going in to pick them up.”
He was even more specific in a tweet earlier Tuesday.
“California’s sanctuary policies are illegal and unconstitutional and put the safety and security of our entire nation at risk,” the president tweeted. “Thousands of dangerous & violent criminal aliens are released as a result of sanctuary policies, set free to prey on innocent Americans. THIS MUST STOP!”
Trump didn’t spare the governor on his first visit to the state since he was inaugurated more than a year ago. Brown “has done a very poor job of running California,” the president said. “The place is totally out of control . ... People are going to start to move pretty soon.”
Trump mentioned that he owned property in California, which includes a golf course and a home in Beverly Hills.
“Taxes are way out of whack — double or triple what they should be,” he said.
Brown refused to go toe to toe with Trump, answering him only with a tweet that referred back to a letter the governor sent to Trump Monday telling him that “California thrives because we welcome immigrants and innovators from across the globe” and that the state is “focusing on bridges, not walls.”
“Thanks for the shout-out, @realDonaldTrump,” Brown said in his afternoon tweet. “But bridges are still better than walls. And California remains the 6th largest economy in the world and the most prosperous state in America. #Facts.”
Trump’s main message, though, was the country’s need for the border wall, a project that still hasn’t been approved or funded by Congress.
“We need safety, we need security at the border, and we’re getting it like we’ve never had it before,” Trump said. “But we want to make it perfecto.”
The president spent nearly an hour looking at eight 30foot-high prototypes of the proposed wall near the Otay Mesa border crossing in San Diego. Trump also promised that the wall, which he originally said would be paid for by Mexico, actually would pay for itself.
“It will save thousands of lives, save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing crime, drug flow, welfare fraud, and burdens on schools and hospitals,” Trump said. “The wall will save hundreds of billions of dollars — many, many times what it’s going to cost.”
Those pictures of Trump standing in front of the replicas of the wall will play well with his supporters, who continue to fire up the president’s rallies with chants of “Build the wall! Build the wall!”
In his remarks to the enthusiastic crowd of Marines at the Miramar Air Station, Trump was quick to tout his pro-military credentials, reminding them that he had pushed for a larger defense budget that included raises for military personnel.
The president also suggested that other, more futuristic changes may be coming.
“My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a space force, develop another force. We have an Air Force; we’ll have a space force.”
He finished the day with a $35,000-a-plate fundraiser that was expected to bring in about $5 million for the party. The president was scheduled to stay overnight at a downtown Los Angeles hotel before getting back on Air Force One.
But Trump’s long and eventful day likely will extend well into Wednesday. With almost all the votes counted in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, Democrat Conor Lamb was leading Republican Rick Saccone by a few hundred votes in a contest that will count for far more than a single seat in Congress.
Trump won the district, which has been held by a GOP congressman for years, by a 20-percentage-point margin over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. But since Rep. Tim Murphy resigned last October after a sex scandal, Republicans have poured millions into the district to try and hold it for the party.
Even a tight race in what should be a comfortable seat for the GOP is a worrisome sign for Republicans, especially since Trump was in the district last weekend, stumping for Saccone.
“The world is watching,” Trump told Saccone at a noisy Saturday rally. “I hate to put this pressure on you, Rick. They are all watching because I won this district, like by 22 points. That’s a lot.”
If Lamb can win the bluecollar district for the Democrats, it would provide a major boost for their hopes of flipping similar working-class districts across the nation in an effort to grab the 24 new seats they need to take control of Congress and make it hard for Trump to move his programs forward.
If Saccone wins, even by a handful of votes, Trump can cast the result as a personal victory and argue that voters continue to back him and his policies. But even with a loss, Democrats will be able to argue that in any district less reliably Republican than the one in Pennsylvania, they’ll stand a good chance in November.