Trump's First Week: For Many In Arizona, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

LA Times ^ | 1.31.17 3:00 | Nigel Duara

[drewh]

Aross the massive mall parking lot from the Red Lobster, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show blared from the speakers of a silver sedan, idling near Party City with its windows down.

The nominal topic Monday was the alleged liberal assault on NFL quarterback Tom Brady, but Limbaugh had long since moved on: to a border wall, suspicions of nationwide protests and President Trump’s response to the threat posed by foreigners.

Nodding approvingly in the driver’s seat was Doyle MacCree, 84, of Goodyear, a conservative suburb west of Phoenix.

Here, more than 120 miles from the border, Arizona voters outraged with President Obama’s executive orders that welcomed the foreign-born to America are delighted with Trump’s first week in office, when his actions seemed to have done the opposite.

Trump has ordered federal funding withheld from cities that provide sanctuary to immigrants in the country illegally, demanded Congress pay for the immediate construction of a 1,900-mile border wall and banned travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, as a way, he says, to keep terrorists at bay.

The wall is just the start of it,” MacCree said. He’s looking ahead to the potential for violence on the border over the question of who gets in and who doesn’t.

Perhaps Trump hasn’t yet gone far enough, voters here say, but give it time. He has uncomplicated solutions to what they see as uncomplicated problems.

Arizona, with its lengthy border with Mexico, was the epicenter of a fierce debate over immigration long before the rest of the country, prodded by Trump, took up the issue.

The state’s traditional libertarian-leaning conservatism has been tempered in recent years by a rapidly growing Latino population; Trump still carried Arizona in November with nearly 50% support.

[BradyLS]

He said wouldn’t run for the current term he won. But, of course, he changed his mind...