He called journalists "terrible people." PHOENIX (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump criticized U.S. immigration and trade policies on Saturday in speeches that veered from accusing Mexico of deliberately sending criminals across the border to professing respect for the Mexican government and love for its people. “I wonder if the Mexican government sent them over here,” Trump said from the stage. In a break from the immigration rhetoric that has garnered him condemnation and praise, Trump asserted that he would have more positive results in dealing with China and Russia if he were president and said he could be pals with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I don’t think so,” Trump added, taking aim at two of his more mainstream rivals, Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans, including most Republicans, support an overhaul of the law to give millions of undocumented immigrants a means of staying in this country legally. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, he brought on stage Jamiel Shaw Sr., a Southern California man whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed in 2008 by a man in the country illegally. All of those cross-pressures were in play Saturday at Trump’s appearances here and in Las Vegas. "He's been getting a lot of heat, but you know, there's a silent majority out here," Arpaio said, borrowing from a phrase Richard Nixon popularized during his presidency in a speech about the Vietnam War. Arizona's tough-on-immigration Sheriff Joe Arpaio introduced Trump in Phoenix after outlining the things he and the candidate have in common, including skepticism that Obama was born in the United States. “You can give a fuller picture of those types of people who are coming to America who are not documented, who are not legal,” said Peter Wehner, who was a top official in George W. Bush’s White House.
– As Donald Trump continues to trade volleys with Latinos, he took his unrepentant show to Phoenix last night, where he told an enthusiastic crowd that waited hours in 100-degree temps that "we have to take back the heart of our country" and that he was "ready to go right at the Mexican government. I’m going to charge them $25,000 per illegal immigrant and, oh, I’ll make them pay." Trump used the 70-minute speech, which the Washington Post characterizes as more a "stream-of-consciousness rant than a presidential-style stump speech," which "put an exclamation point on his bombastic push" to focus on immigration. "These are people that shouldn’t be in our country," Trump told the crowd of between 3,500 and 4,200. "They flow in like water." He also took the opportunity to further hammer away at GOP golden boy Jeb Bush, saying, "let's say he's president—oy, yoy, yoy. How can I be tied with this guy? He's terrible. Terrible. He's weak on immigration." Bush wasn't Trump's only whipping boy: Also attracting the candidate's scorn, per the Post, were "Macy’s, NBC, NASCAR, Caroline Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, several times, the media." (The candidate avoided attracting Neil Young's wrath again and left the stage to "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister.) Trump spoke earlier in the day to a Libertarian crowd in Las Vegas, notes the AP, striking a slightly more nuanced tone: "I love the Mexican people. I respect Mexico greatly as a country. But the problem we have is their leaders are much sharper than ours, and they're killing us at the border and they're killing us on trade." (Even as Trump spoke, Mexico was having a little trouble keeping a notorious drug lord on lockdown.)