Yesterday Donald Trump held a 25-minute “phone rally” with Arizonans because “some states led by Democratic governors … say you can’t do political rallies.” He didn’t mention which states, nor did he note that Arizona has a Republican governor who’s crawled so far up Trump’s butthole during the pandemic that reopening too soon likely cost thousands of lives—or that he recently did hold an indoor rally for 3,000 in Phoenix that no doubt contributed to the virus’s tragic trajectory.
How many people were on the call is anyone’s guess, since the President’s team said it was “big numbers,” but they did not respond to requests for a specific or even ballpark figure. Big numbers, tremendous numbers, perfect numbers.
Trump threatened that the suburbs—and Arizona is the posterchild for suburbia—would be overrun by some unnamed bogeymen if Biden wins. He never defines this threat, but it’s clear what he means: black and brown people will invade the “beautiful suburbs” in Scottsdale and elsewhere. With no shame, Trump champions the practice of redlining that his father embraced and Donald continued: don’t sell or rent to POC in the “good” parts of town.
But it was his comments about the border wall that show just how deep-seated his racism is. With no proof (that never stopped him before), Trump said if Biden is elected he will “take down the wall.”
"We’re spending a lot of money building the finest of its kind, and Biden wants to rip it down. That's what I heard."
Yeah, well, you hear a lot of shit in your alleged mind, because Joe Biden never said he’d tear the wall down. If he did, I’m hunky dory with that, but Biden only said he wouldn’t waste billions more on the racist ecological nightmare, but invest instead in smart border security. Even the most impenetrable monstrosity would do little to stem immigration, since most of the undocumented here arrive through airports and existing check points, not by scampering across the desert.
Trump’s fear-mongering and racism is on full display: Vote for me and I’ll complete your beautiful wall and keep brown people out of a state that is one-third Hispanic. Left unsaid was Trump’s pandemic policies that so far have led to more than 140,000 infected Arizonans and 2,730 deaths, with another single-day death record yesterday: 147. And with a positivity rate of 37%, there’s no end in sight.
Arizona is a “red zone” state, one of the hottest of Covid hot spots in the world, and it all started when Donald Trump visited a mask factory in Phoenix in May, and encouraged Gov. Ducey to open the state nearly a full month sooner than epidemiologists said was safe. Ducey, a loyal Trump bootlicker, obliged and two weeks later the infections and deaths started to climb. And they have not let up, to the point Maricopa County is bringing in refrigerated trucks because the morgues have no more capacity.
So, there’s your choice, Arizona: A president who will stop building the wall but enact healthcare policies that save lives and bring back the economy, or a president who will build more wall to keep out scary brown people and ignore a raging pandemic that will likely waste thousands more lives. Trump offers a choice between being brown or being dead. If you choose the latter, and some here will, that’s some serious racism.