By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Arizona State Treasurer Jeff DeWit, a Republican who knows his numbers, went down a list of chilling statistics on a hot day here in front of a fired-up crowd waiting to hear presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
It was nearly a year since a successful Trump rally in Phoenix last July persuaded the Manhattan billionaire that he really might have a potent presidential campaign within his grasp. He may have thought he needed to bellow then to get attention.
However, treasurer DeWit’s devastating surgical presentation on Barack Obama’s damaging custody of America suggests that more such GOP precision, and less Trump bluster, is the right prescription today, when the billionaire is criticized for using failing tactics.
DeWit was among Arizona GOP leaders providing the introductions for Trump’s June 18 appearance here at Veterans Memorial Coliseum. They weren’t running away from the billionaire developer, although some high-profile people were absent.
“I can tell you that Mr. Trump is one of the smartest and quickest minds of our times,” said DeWit, who added that he had been the first elected official in the nation last year to endorse Trump’s presidential candidacy.
By the time he went down the list of horribles spawned by Obama’s left-wing government, DeWit had the crowd on its feet, chanting “USA, USA!” in defiance of the damage Obama wrought.
It was the kind of record that should destroy any left-wing Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, like Hillary Clinton, hoping to serve at least another four years in the White House in order to continue Obama’s disastrous policies.
That’s why left-wing Democrats and their many media allies continue ripping away at Trump’s candidacy however they can, while giving Hillary more free passes than imaginable, because they know someone like her can’t hope to win on her merits.
DeWit, reminding the audience of national suffering caused by Obama’s policies, included these points:
— The average family makes $2,484 less annually than in 2009, the year Obama took office;
— That family pays $4,154 more in health-care premiums;
— 5.5 million more people have fallen into poverty;
— 7 million people no longer have employer-provided health care due to Obamacare;
— 13 million more people are on food stamps, bringing that total to 46 million people;
— $3.4 billion is added to the national debt every day.
But Obama is aloof from the tragedy he imposed.
The president has taken 189 days of vacation, costing taxpayers $71 million, and has played 269 rounds of golf, DeWit said.
The Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the state fairgrounds here has played host to a number of personalities since it opened in the mid-1960s, including separate visits in the 1980s by both St. John Paul II and Mother Teresa, stopping by to offer prayers.
Earlier in his comments, DeWit said that even though more tax revenue is being taken in nationally than ever before, “more than a trillion dollars a quarter,” politicians still manage to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more than that in every quarter.
“We need a conservative political outsider” for president who knows what it takes to build a business, and to build a wall, DeWit said.
After Trump stepped out to charm the cheering Arizona crowd, he reminded listeners that his national campaign launched in a serious way when he spoke in Phoenix on July 11 last year, after he announced his race the previous month in New York City, defining the burdens of illegal immigration as a key issue.
“Arizona was really my first big speech. . . . We don’t forget,” Trump told the June 18 audience. “It was a very important day,” and he’d wondered how many people would show up.
The original plan to rally in a 500-person hotel ballroom last July was scrapped when the hotel said it was overwhelmed by the numbers of people wanting to attend. The location was switched to a hall at the Phoenix Convention Center that would hold about 5,000 people. The big hall was packed to the walls.
Trump had found a winning issue with Americans suffering under a literal massive invasion of unauthorized foreigners, and Arizona, with its long international border, was at the forefront.
(See page one of the July 23, 2015, Wanderer, regarding that rally, “Will Trump Walk a Straight Path on Opposing Illegal Entry?”)
Since then, Trump has visited the Phoenix area three more times, making four additional public appearances.
The Associated Press reported on June 14 that Arizona GOP Gov. Doug Ducey, along with some other Republican governors, met with Trump in New York on that day.
However, Ducey didn’t attend the June 18 coliseum event. Also absent were the Grand Canyon State’s two “moderate” GOP U.S. senators who campaign as conservatives, John McCain and Jeff Flake.
The AP story said a Ducey spokesman said that the governor “told Trump that Arizona hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton, and he wants to keep it that way.”
Such well-known Republican figures as Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an early Trump supporter, and former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer gave introductions of Trump at the coliseum. Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham and Arizona House Speaker David Gowan also greeted the audience.
Arpaio complained that some Republicans just say they’ll support “the nominee” without naming him. “I want them to say ‘Trump’,” Arpaio said to cheers.
An interesting presence was provided by Arizona State Sen. Carlyle Begay, a member of the Navajo Nation who announced last November that he was leaving the Democratic Party Senate caucus to become a Republican legislator.
In his announcement then, Begay said the Republican Party represents the change needed by the people he represents on Native American lands: “I clearly see the Republican Party as the party of progress.”
Begay offered the opening prayer at the Trump rally, noting blessings received “beyond what we deserve” from God.
If “building the wall” lit a fire last year, Trump brought the issue up again and again here in mid-June, winning more cheers.
Speaking only about a couple or so hours’ drive north of Mexico, Trump repeatedly cited popular issues like border security, gun owners’ constitutional rights, and defending against terrorists. The crowd shouted its approval.
During the late-afternoon rally, he also made multiple mentions of LGBT people, in light of an Islamist’s massacre at the Pulse club in Orlando on June 12.
The Orlando attack “was an assault on our country. . . . It was an assault on everything we stand for,” Trump said, receiving a huge cheer when he added, “This was not about guns. This was about terrorism.”
A strong border is needed or “we’re not going to have a country,” Trump said, but he wants immigrants to come in legally. “Legally, legally,” the crowd chanted in reply.
The New York billionaire also emphasized the importance of creating more jobs, including for African-Americans and Hispanics. Jobs are “like the great medicine that makes us better.”
Trump later noted that he’d been told he often didn’t mention the issue of justices to fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court, so he’d mention that now. The crowd gave a big cheer. Had he been depriving himself of more such cheers by failing to mention the issue more?
Apparently alluding to how left-wing laws destroy a nation, Trump said, “If Hillary Clinton gets in, we’re going to have Venezuela.”
Trump proceeded to say that as president, he’d pick justices from the list of names he already released to illustrate his conservative good intentions, “or someone similar,” and that the next president probably will nominate three justices, or even more.
One issue Trump didn’t mention at all was the pro-life agenda, including defending unborn babies — a distressingly familiar GOP pattern of avoiding bringing up pro-life, then claiming that the public hasn’t been educated sufficiently, so national GOP leaders can’t take action.
It was around 110 degrees outside as Trump spoke in the air-conditioned coliseum on June 18. Anyone who lives here should know that June is the hottest month of the year, due to regional weather patterns. Moreover, some days of 110 degrees or higher are to be expected at least from June through August.
The heat may have suppressed the turnout for Trump’s appearance, but it wasn’t unusual summer weather.
The coliseum, which could seat nearly 15,000 people, had a number of empty spots, more of them farther from the speakers’ stand.
Asked for a crowd estimate by The Wanderer, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said, “The rally was attended by approximately 6,000 people.”
This was higher than some local media said, claiming attendance at 4,500 to 5,000.
Repeal And Replace
Trump, who spoke for about 44 minutes, also blasted Obama’s highly unpopular national medical program, saying it’s responsible for so many jobs being cut to part-time because employers “want to get away from those horrible Obamacare rules and regulations” governing full-time workers.
Later he added, “We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare” with something better and less expensive. “The deductibles on Obamacare are so high, you’ll never be able to use it.”
The assortment of GOP presidential hopefuls last year was touted as being so talented, Trump said, that he wondered if he should even get into the race. But he turned out to have beaten them all.
He concluded by foreseeing that as president, he’ll be winning on so many issues, he’ll be driving people crazy.
Ron Ludders, a Trump backer and chairman of Phoenix’s Arizona Project Tea Party, walked over to this writer before the coliseum event started.
Asked what he thought of some GOP figures reportedly still hoping to deny Trump the party’s presidential nomination, Ludders replied: “The people of the United States have spoken in record numbers” for Trump. “When I was a kid, we used to call ’em ‘sore losers’. . . . The same applies today.”
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