PHOENIX
— Minutes into a rally set to the theme of “unity” where he was
supposed to read from a set script, President 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,” Mr. 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,” Mr. 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.”
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.
Mr. 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?” Mr. Trump said. “They’re supposed to be with the few people outside.”
Reeling
from criticism over his initial Aug. 12 statement, Mr. Trump was pushed
to give additional remarks by his top advisers, as well as his daughter
Ivanka Trump. 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, Mr. 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
Mr. 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 the ABC News host George Stephanopoulos for being short, calling
The New York Times “fake news” and egging on a chant of “CNN sucks.”
“Antifa!” Mr. Trump said, mocking the counterprotesters who opposed the neo-Nazi ralliers.
Mr.
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,
Mr. 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 visit unfolded in the shadow of a rumor — knocked down for now by the White House — that Mr. Trump planned to pardon Joe Arpaio,
the hard-line former sheriff of Maricopa County, who became a national
symbol of the campaign against undocumented immigrants, and whose
round-’em-up raids have landed him in legal trouble.
“There
will be no discussion of that today at any point, and there will be no
action” on that front, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told
reporters, referring to a pardon.
The
president’s first stop, in the desert city of Yuma, focused more on
enforcement than rhetoric. Venturing into a giant hangar, Mr. 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 illegal 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.
Mr.
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 Mr. 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.”
Mr.
Homan said the executive orders on immigration signed by the president
had helped further stanch the flow of illegal crossings. But the
measures he and other officials cited — such as electronic sensors along
the border fences — were put in place well before Mr. Trump took
office.
Arizona
was the site of one of Mr. Trump’s most raucous rallies during the
presidential campaign, and if anything, the atmosphere was even more
charged on this visit, his first as president.
The
Democratic mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton, pleaded with Mr. Trump to
put off his trip, saying it would only aggravate racial tensions, coming
so soon after clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters
in Virginia.
The
list of people in Arizona on Mr. Trump’s enemies list includes both of
the state’s Republican senators: Jeff Flake, a longtime nemesis whom Mr.
Trump has described as “toxic” and a “flake”; and John McCain, who cast
the decisive Republican vote to dash Mr. Trump’s effort to repeal
former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act in the Senate.
For
his part, Mr. Trump has toggled unpredictably between appealing for
unity in the wake of Charlottesville to reaffirming his inflammatory
statements of last Tuesday, when he draw a moral equivalence between the
white supremacists and those who tried to resist them.
On
Monday night, the president prefaced a speech laying out his
Afghanistan policy with a call for conciliation, telling the service
members in his audience that they symbolized the ideals of individual
rights and respect for minorities that are central to the American
experience.
“Loyalty
to our nation demands loyalty to one another,” he said in the most
eloquent part of his 25-minute address. “Love for America requires love
for all of its people. When we open our hearts to patriotism, there is
no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate.”
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