By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Two boosts to his presidential campaign that self-funding billionaire Donald Trump didn’t have to pay a cent for are the attacks against him and his fans by left-wing homegrown extremists, and the attacks on innocent crowds by left-wing terrorists.
Both of these assaults may be working to Trump’s advantage by stirring public sympathy for him as an embattled opponent of mob action in the U.S., and admiration for him as a necessarily tough guy who ignores political correctness when calling to protect U.S. borders and screen out violent foreigners.
Trump’s campaign opponent Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) may be an even stronger, principled foe of liberal mobs, but Trump might hold the upper hand because he demonstrably has been under vicious assault.
The most recent notable attack against Trump before the March 22 Arizona Republican presidential preference vote was a few days earlier, on March 19, as left-wing, open-borders demonstrators tied traffic in knots for miles to block access to a Trump rally on the northeast outskirts of metropolitan Phoenix.
Like other effective disruptions, it didn’t need thousands of radicals sitting in on the roadway, but just a few pickup trucks strategically stopped across three lanes.
A video showed that when a jeep tried to drive slowly past protesters, they jumped on it. The New York Daily News reported: “‘What do we want? Dead Trump,’ the rioters screamed at one point.”
Terrorists would take note about how much can be snarled with so little effort. If two or three trucks did this, what could 60 trucks do across an entire metropolitan area, to bring a city’s first responders to their knees? Or 600 trucks in several major states?
The trucks finally were removed, and thousands of Trump fans — Trump claimed 20,000 — were able to listen to him in suburban Fountain Hills, more than 30 miles from downtown Phoenix.
Interesting that protesters who want the borders open also want U.S. citizens’ roadways shut down.
On March 21, national radio host Rush Limbaugh asked how many people stuck in that traffic weren’t even going to Trump’s rally but to a hospital along that road — apparently a reference to an Arizona branch of Minnesota’s famed Mayo Clinic. Also on March 21, talk host Laura Ingraham said first responders couldn’t get through the gridlock.
Then, the very morning of Arizona’s March 22 vote, murderous jihadists in Belgium killed more than 30 people and injured more than 200, the latest of some successful Islamist attacks in Europe.
And who had inflamed the global elite by warning that the U.S. should pause about admitting Muslims? His name rhymes with “dump.”
Earlier in March, mobs prevented a Trump rally in Chicago. This, coincidentally, harked back to the violent 1960s and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Party convention, when left-wing rioters persuaded worried voters that it was a better idea to put Republican presidents into office.
Trump went on to smother Cruz in the Arizona primary results, while, just to the north, heavily Mormon Utah the same day gave Cruz an overwhelming victory in its GOP caucus. It was said many Mormons were repulsed by Trump’s vulgarity.
On March 8, Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Paul Babeu held a news conference warning about Barack Obama throwing open the U.S. border to Mexico after he failed to get “comprehensive immigration reform” through Congress. Pinal County is just to the southeast of Phoenix’s Maricopa County.
The president of the National Border Patrol Council, Brandon Judd, told this news conference that the Obama administration manipulated data, improperly assigned officers to areas where there’s only low activity by illegal aliens rather than protecting busy areas, and tried to stifle dissent by officers against Obama’s agenda, according to a report by Tucson ABC-TV affiliate Channel 9.
The mania of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to encourage open borders is leading to its grave complicity for enabling terrorists and other criminals to enter the U.S. When jihadists successfully attack major European cities, how much longer before they can repeat a U.S. attack on the scale of New York City and Washington, D.C.’s, 9/11?
On the scene in Phoenix, Fox News television host Sean Hannity interviewed both Cruz and Trump, each for one hour separately, shortly before the presidential preference vote. The Wanderer attended both of the interviews.
Cruz took the stage the evening of March 18 at the packed activity center of Arizona Christian University, whose conservative Republican president, Len Munsil, told more than 1,000 people of various ages that the school teaches every class from “a conservative, biblical worldview.”
The crowd cheered when Munsil added, “and we are a pro-life institution.”
Both before and during the televised program, a man reminded the Cruz audience that a previously arrested illegal alien fatally shot his 21-year-old son in the face who clerked at a suburban convenience market in January 2015.
Steve Ronnebeck linked the death of his son, Grant, to the lax border policies of Barack Obama, saying, “I feel like we have a bully in office. He’s written all these executive actions. . . . Is our president partially responsible for Grant’s death?”
The audience answered, “Yes.” The father concurred: “Yes.”
Trump talked with Hannity the following morning, March 19, in a hall in the south wing of the mammoth Phoenix Convention Center. About 800 people were in the audience, plus those on stage. Trump had two larger Arizona events later that day.
Seeking clarity, Hannity speedily went down a list to review Trump’s past statements to him about his campaign positions, starting with pro-life.
“You are pro-life?” Trump replied, “Yes.”
“You are pro-Second Amendment?” “Yes.”
Finishing the list, Hannity asked if “that is your solemn pledge and your solemn vow, that you will follow that agenda?”
Trump replied, “100 percent,” and received a big cheer and standing ovation from the audience.
Hannity didn’t grill Trump during this interview for details on the consistency of his positions.
Cruz told his university audience on March 18 that he started the day at the southeastern Arizona border town of Douglas, where “the fence is so dilapidated” that reporters just jumped over it.
“Every rancher said they don’t lock their doors” because illegal aliens do as they please anyway, Cruz said, adding that “the Border Patrol is not on the border. . . . What’s missing is the political will” to stop the border violations.
The audience gave a huge cheer when Cruz said that on his first day as president, he’d repeal all of Obama’s illegal executive orders.
Cruz said the E-Verify system for employing only authorized workers and a strong biometrics check for entrants to the U.S. are needed, as well as an end to a welfare system that benefits illegal entrants.
“(I)f you’re here illegally, you’re deported,” just as Mexico does to illegal aliens there, Cruz said.
He added, “Listen, we welcome legal immigrants,” and received a big cheer.
Taking a poke at Trump’s reputation for empty bluster and insults, Cruz said that if a person’s car won’t run, he doesn’t get someone to “yell and curse” at the car, but someone who’ll raise the hood to see what’s wrong.
Former GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry sat down to affirm their endorsement of Cruz. After the program went off the air, Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and conservative talk personality Glenn Beck also urged that the crowd help deliver a victory for the Texas senator.
Strong And Tough
The next morning, Maricopa County Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer delivered their blessing to Trump during his Hannity interview.
Border-protecting Arpaio probably has considerable clout with Arizona voters. However, Brewer mainly has been absent from the public scene here since her governorship sputtered to an embarrassing end after she rammed through a costly Medicaid expansion in the dead of night with Democrat legislators’ support, then vetoed a bill to protect religious conscience.
Hannity read Trump a recent headline from the far-left MoveOn.org site that anti-Trump groups threaten the largest disruptions in a century against his candidacy. “They’re coming at you hard on the left,” Hannity said. “How do you handle it?”
The talk host added that a radical-left mentor of Obama, domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, was at the recent Chicago disruptions that prevented a Trump rally.
“Republicans have been absolutely impotent” in the past, Hannity pressed, when they’ve been hammered by left-wing insults alleging racism and sexism.
Trump replied that a response must be “very tough and very strong.”
Hannity said he’d been to the border 10 times and had seen illegal-drug warehouses “as big as this room.” This convention-center room appeared to be about 130 feet on each side, not including the stage and audience entry area.
He said 642,000 crimes had been committed against Texans by illegal aliens.
Trump said border agents “back me 100 percent. . . . They’re not allowed to do their job.” He added that “hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals” are free to roam under Obama’s policies.
As people arrived for the Trump taping, a small group of protesters outside waved a large Mexican flag while being exhorted in Spanish, as if to prove Trump’s point about where such protesters’ loyalties lie.
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