The president went to Phoenix to deliver a speech that was dishonest, assailed his own allies, and contradicted itself.
How many people, given the prerogative to travel wherever they wanted and the use of a fully staffed jet to do it, would head to Phoenix, Arizona, in the dog days of August? But then Donald Trump often prefers to turn up the heat, and his rally Tuesday night was no different.
In remarks that veered between the carefully composed and the spontaneously concocted, Trump called for national unity even as he mounted all-out attacks on his enemies in the press and the Republican Party. He insisted he stood for all Americans but called Confederate monuments a part of “our” history. The president all but promised to pardon former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, convicted of criminal contempt of court, and told a series of out-and-out lies in the course of accusing the media of dishonesty.
