By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Life goes on at 110 degrees, this time every year.
It was a normal sunny, low-humidity June day In Phoenix at 107 degrees by mid-afternoon, with the temperature to edge a few degrees higher before starting to come down with the evening. It’s what desert-dwellers here expect annually, and accommodate routinely.
However, social temperatures had been turned sharply higher around the nation with violent leftist-incited tension by the time President Trump arrived here on June 23 to speak to cheering thousands of young people who Trump described as the future of the nation. KFYI Radio news (550 AM) said some of the attendees had lined up by 3 a.m. — more than 12 hours earlier.
Was the social boiling point also to become something that the nation had to tolerate routinely? No nation could long survive that way.
Arizona political consultant and former Republican state legislator Stan Barnes said on Phoenix radio the same day that suburban moms seeing looters recently at the local Scottsdale Fashion Square would turn Trump’s way when voting for president.
In May 1968 France had been convulsed by appalling youth-led protests, violence, occupations of property, and workers’ strikes. Capitalism and Americanism were denounced, and Marxist graffiti disfigured walls. Wikipedia recalls that France’s economy “came to a halt.”
Traditionalist French President Charles de Gaulle weighed his options, dissolved the National Assembly — which he had the power to do — and called for parliamentary elections. Wikipedia recalls: “Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, and when the elections were held in June, the Gaullists emerged stronger than before.”
Trump didn’t talk about French history when he spoke to around 3,000 enthusiastic young people filling a rented auditorium at the Dream City Church here, but he repeatedly focused on the dangers of violent demonstrators. He cast presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden as the leftists’ captive.
Outside the church, Phoenix television news reported, hundreds of protesters gathered, growing more aggressive and louder about an hour after Trump began speaking inside, although they didn’t disturb his talk.
Phoenix Police reported on their Facebook page that demonstrators began to move outside their designated free-speech zone that was “in front of the entrance to the venue,” blocking traffic and moving into the area protected for the presidential motorcade.
The police posted: “Two demonstrators committed aggravated assault against police officers when they each swung at and struck two separate officers. Other demonstrators began throwing objects at officers. As a result of the criminal activity, an unlawful assembly was declared. In an effort to make the crowd aware of the need to disperse, officers shared this information over a loudspeaker and on social media.
“Officers utilized flash-bang devices, as well as pepper balls deployed into the ground and a burst of pepper spray. No gas or projectiles were deployed by officers,” the police account continued.
No continuing major violence was reported.
A few hours earlier, Trump began the day’s visit to Arizona at the Grand Canyon State’s southwest corner, near the borders of California, Mexico, and Arizona.
After speaking with reporters at the White House, the 74-year-old Trump pursued a typically energetic day’s schedule, flying through three time zones, nearly coast to coast and from the mid-Atlantic to the border Southwest, arriving in Yuma before lunchtime.
The president and others, practicing social distancing, spoke at a roundtable in Yuma about border security before he headed out to inspect progress at constructing part of the lengthy border wall that he made a key part of his 2016 campaign agenda.
Trump recalled the large caravans of illegal aliens that even placed their own lives at risk by marching northward not so long ago, but, he said, they’ve learned that they can’t get through any longer, so they don’t come.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post posted on June 23 that “Joe Biden has said he will halt work on the project if elected, potentially stopping the bulldozers and excavators in their tracks, with hundreds of miles of planned barriers left incomplete.”
The Post added that Trump said in Yuma: “The Biden people — and he’s controlled totally by the radical left, as you understand, he’s not controlling it, they’re controlling him — they want open borders, they want criminal sanctuaries, they want everything that doesn’t work. I don’t even think it works politically, frankly.”
During the livestreamed border roundtable that lasted just over a half-hour, Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey said, “For years Arizonans have heard empty talk about the border. And this is the first administration that has taken action.”
Ducey said that when he was elected to his first four-year gubernatorial term in 2014, there were “large areas of Arizona’s border that were wide open and unprotected.” He added that “border security is national security.”
Arizona GOP Cong. Debbie Lesko told the roundtable that many of her Democratic colleagues in Washington prioritize illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens and “really do want open borders.”
Border-protection officials and politicians at the program, including Yuma’s police chief and mayor, praised the enhanced security. The Washington Examiner quoted Police Chief Susan Smith:
“After the border enhancements were put in place, I can tell you we saw a marked decline in many of those calls associated with undocumented immigrants, such as load vehicles coming across with drugs and humans, human trafficking, stolen vehicles. . . .”
Fox News posted on June 23: “While much of that construction has been in places where there were already existing structures, officials have been keen to point out that there is a big difference between this wall and the old landing-mat style structures that could easily be driven or climbed over.
“The wall’s construction, along with other measures to combat illegal immigration such as the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy and agreements with countries south of the border, has coincided with a sharp drop in border apprehensions from the highs of spring last year,” the Fox report added.
No one can doubt that a President Biden and new Democratic administration would have the effect of ripping the border wide open again, inviting innumerable new illegal immigrants and future Dem voters.
Trump emerged onto the Dream City Church stage in Phoenix, in south-central Arizona, at 3:30 p.m. for the “Students for Trump Convention” after flying just over 180 miles northeast from Yuma.
The livestreamed gathering of the packed venue showed no social distancing and few young people wearing face masks but many red MAGA hats as they frequently leaped up to give Trump’s remarks standing ovations and cheers.
The president said they’re “a new generation of pro-American student activists” being mobilized, one of whom, he suggested, one day may become president.
Referring to current disorders, Trump said, “You see what’s happening. It’s a disgrace. . . . You’re fighting a divisive left-wing ideology” that seeks to purge. It’s a “radical left” that demands absolute conformity from all.
If Democrats Barack Obama as president and Biden as his vice president had done a good job during their eight years, Trump said, he wouldn’t have been elected in order to correct their record.
Everyone in the auditorium was bound together by shared truths, Trump said, believing that history shouldn’t be torn down by militant mobs. “Our heroes are not a source of shame,” but examples to look up to.
In its story on Trump’s Arizona visit, the London-based UK Telegraph provided a familiar touch of media misrepresentation. Its foreign staff wrote: “On Tuesday (June 23), Mr. Trump said those protesting against racial injustice and police brutality ‘hate our history. They hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans’.”
Huh? Protesting against racial injustice and police brutality means hatred of “everything we prize as Americans”? No indeed. Trump was speaking of violent left-wing ideologues. Or was the Telegraph suggesting that only violent rioters oppose these injustices?
Trump ran into one rhetorical problem when he bragged that “we confirmed two great Supreme Court justices” since he became president. “. . . I’ve always heard it’s the most important thing you can do,” confirming judges.
A month ago, taking a bow for the confirmation of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh made sense to conservatives — but certainly not since Gorsuch engaged in the worst sort of left-wing activism on June 15 when he wrote the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, that thrust sexual orientation and subjective gender identity into sex-discrimination law.
Gorsuch airily conceded his action could raise problems for religious liberty in future legal cases.
As one example, the Inside Higher Ed website posted on June 17: “Advocates for religious colleges say Monday’s Supreme Court decision ruling that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal under federal law raises unanswered questions and concerns for them.”
Rather than knit his brow over such potential troubles, Trump reminded the student convention of his administration’s accomplishments, including economic improvement, the U.S. Space Force, elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate, right-to-try experimental therapies for terminally ill patients, criminal-justice reform, black-college funding, and cutting regulations.
Claiming that Democrats finally gave up on opposing his efforts for the border wall, Trump was rewarded by the young people chanting, “Build the wall! Build the wall!”
Trump commented, “Two things will never be obsolete, a wheel and a wall.”
The president’s advocacy for school choice — making access to education “a civil right” — and plans to plant the American flag first on Mars caused two of the many standing ovations he received.
The chaotic leftists’ “movement is based on hate. Ours is based on love,” Trump said, adding shortly, “Every American should take a long look at the bedlam in Seattle,” because that’s what leftists would bring to every city.
Democrats are trying to rig the November election by having mail ballots sent out widely, he said, raising possibilities including that they could be stolen from mailboxes and also counterfeited, although absentee ballots “are fine.”
“Mail-in ballots is a disaster for our country,” he said. “…It’s gonna be fraud all over the place.”
Trump told of a friend who said his son recently received a mail-in ballot – although the son has been dead for seven years. “We cannot let this happen….That’s why we are fighting for the integrity of our elections.”
Trump brought four young people to the stage to tell of their own experiences with leftist oppression — two male students from North Carolina State University, a female who was fired because of leftist protest, and a black female conservative from Minnesota who lamented, “Unfortunately, the murder of George Floyd has created chaos” in her home state, even though the involved politicians are all liberal Democrats.
“If they care about black lives,” she said, “they would defund Planned Parenthood. . . . We do believe black lives matter.”
Trump concluded just after 5 p.m. on an optimistic note of a unified future for Americans, with “this moment as a turning point in American history. . . . The best is yet to come . . . God bless America.”
Full Of Optimism
Virginia Catholic blogger Mary Ann Kreitzer told The Wanderer that she loved watching the youth gathering from back East.
“I think President Trump has the instincts of a normal, patriotic American. Despite his wealth he seems to have a real affection and respect for your average, hard-working men and women,” Kreitzer said. “You get the sense that he really respects the little guys. You don’t get that sense from people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden. They seem uncomfortable and out of place when they’re in the factories or the little local diners.
“What really resonated with me was his description of the chaos in the streets when he said, ‘It’s the behavior of totalitarians and tyrants and people that don’t love our country. . . . They have one goal, the pursuit of their own political power.’ He nailed it when he said the left is vicious and with them, ‘Nothing is sacred and no one is safe’,” she said.
“The youth absolutely loved him, I think, because his message is positive and full of optimism! When do you get anything positive from the left? They constantly attack this country,” Kreitzer said.
“Donald Trump is certainly not perfect, but neither are the Pope or our bishops. Who would most of us rather see in the Oval Office — Trump or one of our USCCB, leftist bishops like Cardinal Blase Cupich? Frankly, that’s a no-brainer for me.”
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