Bringing the blame game to Valley
Donald Trump unleashed his old self in toxic talk on immigration Wednesday
There’s nothing like lousy poll numbers to get a candidate’s attention. So in the past two weeks, Donald Trump has been on his best behavior. A new campaign staff seems to have imposed a modicum of discipline on Trump, persuading him to stop lighting bombs and start behaving something a little closer to a statesman.
But on Wednesday, the old Trump was unleashed. He returned to Phoenix, and the potent topic that lifted him to his party’s nomination — immigration.
If conservatives feared Trump was softening his stance on the issue, he was there to reassure them his claws are fully splayed. The border hawk is back.
In the Trump universe, illegal immigration is the nucleus of all that ails the United States. It’s the catalyst of crime and the bane of every police department. It’s the great drain on national resources and an urgent threat to our national security.
We’ve seen this all before in Arizona. Russell Pearce and Joe Arpaio, Andrew Thomas and Paul Babeu. Phoenix is the test market for border demagoguery and so Trump naturally brought his own brand of this toxin to the place that has swallowed the most.
He played an old game blaming immigrants for the violent crime in this country while cheered by a crowd of largely white Americans who no doubt descended from Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews who endured the same kind of hazing when they were fresh off the boat.
One by one, like blows of a sledgehammer, he unleashed his immigration policy points: He will build a wall. He will end “catch and release.” He will create a “deportation task force.”
He will, on day one, frogmarch every “criminal alien” out of the country.
He will block funding for sanctuary cities.
He will draw an X through President Barack Obama’s executive orders.
More timid Republicans have avoided the word “deportation.” Trump savors it with puckered cheeks before rolling it off his tongue. “You can call it deported if you want. The press doesn’t like that term. You can call it whatever the hell you want it. They’re going to be gone.”
Earlier in the day, Trump flew to Mexico City to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. He was polite to his host, as well he should have been.
Peña Nieto reaped the whirlwind simply by receiving Trump at the presidential palace. His countrymen were furious he would entertain a man who had spoken so vulgarly of Mexicans and Mexican immigrants.
“This is appeasement of the worst kind,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former Mexican intelligence official quoted in the Wall Street Journal. “Peña Nieto is like (Neville) Chamberlain to his Hitler.”
“For Trump, this makes perfect sense. He polishes his image,” Hope said. “What is Peña going to get out of this? Half price on the wall?”
In Mexico City, Trump assiduously avoided talk of the wall he intends to build with Mexican pesos. He did not push buttons that could have blown this foreign engagement sky high. The meeting ended cordially and on high notes.
Then Trump came to Phoenix and chopped the legs off the Mexican president. He disgraced him with words that must have made Peña Nieto wilt.
“We will build a great wall along the southern border,” said Trump, pausing chin up, chest out to soak in the applause. “And Mexico will pay for the wall. 100 percent. They don’t know it yet. But they’re going to pay for it. They’re great people, but they’re going to pay for it.”
Any world leader with sense would have known such rhetoric would humiliate the Mexican president. But Trump is no diplomat. He’s a foreign-policy lout.
The state that had endured the ravings of Pearce was watching Trump try to nationalize the madness that once gripped Arizona.
Our state eventually came to its senses and dispatched Brand Pearce and his Senate Bill 1070 immigration law. We will now wait and see if the American people do the same with Brand Trump.