Trump blames media for Charlottesville backlash
Amid protests, president holds rally and signals he will pardon Arpaio
PHOENIX — Minutes into a rally set to the theme of “unity” where he was supposed to read from a set script, President Donald Trump tripled down on Tuesday on his defense of his earlier statement about the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and accused the “dishonest media” of distorting his words.
“Why did it take a day? He must be a racist! It took a day,” Trump said, pretending to quote reporters who watched his immediate comment about the violence spurred by neo-Nazis that left a woman dead.
“I don’t want to bore you with this, but it just — it shows you how dishonest they are,” Trump said, taking his statement from Aug. 12 out of his pocket and reading it again. He notably left out the part where he said there was violence on “many sides.”
Before his attack on the media, Trump all but promised to pardon Joe Arpaio, the hard-line former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who became a national symbol of the campaign against unauthorized immigrants, and whose round-’em-up raids have landed him in legal trouble.
“I’ll make a prediction — I think he is going to be just fine,” an angry and defiant Trump told a campaign-style forum in Phoenix where he abandoned scripted remarks and launched into a half-hour tirade against the news media. “But I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy.”
“But Sheriff Joe can feel good,” Trump added.
Hours earlier, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, had said that Trump would not issue a pardon for Arpaio on Tuesday.
The campaign-style forum in Phoenix drew scores of protesters and fanned fears of arousing more of the ugly nativist sentiments that exploded more than a week ago in Charlottesville.
Outside the sprawling convention center, the scene was a tense caldron, with hundreds of supporters screaming at one another, chanting slogans and hoisting placards that said “Fire Trump” and “Fake President.” Some voiced fears about the potential for the repeat of the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, while others griped about the 108-degree heat in Phoenix.
Trump spent the first 20 minutes of his speech defending his remarks about the racially tinged unrest. At one point, protesters interrupted his unscripted tirade.
“How did they get in here?” Trump said. “They’re supposed to be with the few people outside.”
Reeling from criticism over his initial Aug. 12 statement, Trump was pushed to give additional remarks by his top advisers, as well as his daughter Ivanka. So he did, two days later. But that statement was criticized as too late.
So at an impromptu Aug. 15 news conference, where he was supposed to announce an infrastructure project and not take questions, Trump instead reverted to his initial statement. He described some of the people at the initial neo-Nazi march as peaceful protesters and “very fine people” who did not want to see statues of Confederate leaders removed.
But Trump has continued to fume about the criticism, and, according to people who have spoken with him, vented anger over cancellations at his club at Mar-a-Lago in response to his remarks.
So at Tuesday’s rally, the president returned to peak campaign form, mocking ABC News host George Stephanopoulos for being short, calling the New York Times “fake news” and egging on a chant of “CNN sucks.”
“Antifa!” Trump said, mocking the counterprotesters who opposed the neo-Nazi ralliers.
Trump marinated in his own frustrations for at least 10 minutes, moments after early speakers like Vice President Mike Pence and Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban Development secretary, insisted the president only embraced unity and would show that momentarily.
Earlier, Trump traveled to a sun-scorched border post in southern Arizona to highlight his determination to crack down on illegal border crossings from Mexico.
The president’s first stop, in the desert city of Yuma, focused more on enforcement than rhetoric. Venturing into a giant hangar, Trump met with Border Patrol officials, who showed him a Predator drone, a helicopter and a boat that is used to scour the countryside near the border for unauthorized immigrants.
Administration officials showcased the stretch of border as Exhibit A in the value of a border wall. There are now more than 60 miles of fencing along the border near Yuma — the construction of which preceded the Trump administration — which officials said had helped drive down the number of arrests for illegal crossings by more than 40 percent.
Trump is using these statistics to make the case to Congress for funding a wall along the entire Mexican border. Some Senate Republicans are balking, and Trump’s political advisers worry that failing to deliver on this signature campaign promise would hurt him with his political base.
“What he’s done so far has worked,” Thomas Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told reporters. “We need funding to make it permanent. We need to build a wall.”