The Tucson Republican, who's currently running for the U.S. Senate, joined President Donald Trump and other conservative politicians this morning for a roundtable at the White House on sanctuary cities. The consensus: They're bad. So bad that McSally joked about needing a border wall to protect Arizona from lawless, liberal California.
“As we look in Arizona, we often look into the dangers of the southern border,” McSally said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “But if these dangerous policies continue out of California, we might need to build a wall between California and Arizona as well.”
McSally also made a similar remark on Fox News last week, commenting, "Look, [California governor] Jerry Brown might want to start building a wall between California and Arizona because his policies are actually endangering the rest of the country. He can't just keep them there."
While this is clearly hyperbole, it's also racist. The assumption here is that California is somehow unsafe because sanctuary policies are preventing the authorities from coming in and sweeping up undocumented immigrants — despite the fact that there's no evidence to suggest that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than anyone else.
McSally's outlandish comments should at least help to distract people from her latest gaffe. Yesterday, a sharp-eyed employee of American Bridge, a left-wing Super PAC, noticed that the congresswoman appeared to have posted a comment on her own Facebook video, writing, "Great video quality! Thank you for your service!"
McSally's team deleted the comment, and told CBS News that it had been posted by a staffer who'd forgotten to switch to his personal account before commenting. If true, then that's only mildly embarrassing, but the whole episode does raise questions about whether McSally's staff are in the habit of posting comments from fake accounts in order to boost engagement on her social media posts — like other campaigns have been known to do.Hey @RepMcSally, call your digital director and tell them to remember to switch accounts before posting fake compliments to your Facebook. #azsen pic.twitter.com/8hvhMQc17y
— Joshua Karp (@JoshuaKarp) March 19, 2018
Anyway, anti-immigrant rhetoric aside, building a border wall between California and Arizona isn't necessarily a bad idea. A lot of Arizona Republicans would be thrilled to see fewer liberal Californians moving here for the lower cost of living. And people in San Diego probably wouldn't mind having fewer Scottsdale douchebros show up at their beaches this summer, either. McSally might have landed on a winning platform here.
