I suppose Trump thinks because he won Arizona, and because his political godfather Joe Arpaio reigned over Maricopa County for more than two decades, that downtown Phoenix is the ideal place to hold a rally—in order to get his mojo back. He couldn’t be more wrong, and he’s been wrong a lot.
Central Phoenix is Democratic, progressive, diverse and the opposite of everything Donald Trump represents. Our mayor is a Democrat as is most of the city council, half of them Hispanic; all of our state legislators are Democrats, mostly women; our congressional representative, Ruben Gallego, is a Latino veteran who is one of Trump’s harshest critics. Trump will be speaking near the Chinese Cultural Center and Cesar Chavez Plaza, and other nearby venues celebrate Black theater and Native American culture. Bottom line: We embrace our diversity, it’s our strength and the reason many of us live here. We don’t have a problem calling out Nazis.
When Trump first said he’d hold a rally in Phoenix this Tuesday, an early voice of dissent was Mayor Greg Stanton, who urged the president to reconsider, since the tragedy in Charlottesville was only days old. Mayor Stanton was on Rachel Maddow last night, saying he fears more violence in a state where any yahoo can walk around with an AK-47 strapped to his side. He also said Trump’s people never responded to his request to cancel the event and it’s going ahead as planned.
Joining Mayor Stanton, Arizona congressmen Ruben Gallego, Tom O’Halleran and Raul Grijalva also wrote Trump, asking him to stay away, and don’t even think about pardoning Sheriff Arpaio, who was recently convicted of criminal contempt of court for acting like Trump, i.e., thinking he’s above the law. Trump recently floated the idea of pardoning the criminal lawman because he’s a “great American patriot” who “doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.” I doubt if Trump ever asked the people Arpaio killed, tortured, blackmailed, spied on, arrested or detained illegally if they “deserved” their treatment.
So this morning several state legislators and community leaders came together to urge Trump to reconsider his Phoenix trip.
"(Trump) should delay the visit here and respect the people who were affected in Charlottesville last week, especially the family that lost their daughter," said state Sen. Catherine Miranda, referring to 32-year-old Heather Heyer, killed Saturday after a car crashed into demonstrators protesting a white-supremacy rally in the Virginia city.
"The message I’m getting is that he’s going to continue to condone racism and hatred by coming here and pardoning the most racist sheriff in the nation," the Phoenix Democrat said.
Other elected officials, faith leaders and civil rights organizations are singing from the same playbook: Stay the heck home! We don’t want you! And if you’re coming here to toot an even louder dog whistle to your white supremacist base by pardoning the most notorious racist lawman in the nation, whose birtherism and felony conviction for racial profiling are embraced by the bigots, then all hell will break loose, says Sen. Martin Quezada:
"To have (Arpaio) finally be held accountable for the harm he caused all these years, and then to have the president to come in and alter that outcome — we can't stand by and let that happen."
See you Tuesday, be safe.