The New York Post reports:

Donald Trump took his act out west Saturday, drawing huge crowds who came to cheer his bizarre, over-the-top claims that Mexico is purposefully exporting criminals in bulk to the United States.

In Phoenix, where immigration has long been a hot-button issue, supporters snapped up all 5,000 tickets to a free rally.

“They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us.”

Trump even promised to charge the government of Mexico $100,000 for every illegal immigrant who crosses into the US.

“Now they make so much money, that’s peanuts,” he told the cheering, laughing crowd.

“I could’ve made it much higher — but I’m nice. I’m in a good mood today.”

Not a bad idea, if it could be done.

And as for illegal immigrants killing us – that’s a hot topic.

Matthew Vadum writes at Front Page:

Left-wingers in San Francisco should be hanging their heads in shame after their borderline seditious, destructive immigration policies allowed an illegal alien felon to murder a young woman randomly in broad daylight.

Nor did gun control laws prevent Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a 45-year-old illegal alien deported five times to Mexico, from allegedly firing one bullet into the upper body of medical device sales representative Kate Steinle on busy Pier 14 … Steinle was cut down in front of her father and mother and died later in hospital.

No motive has been established for the shooting but Lopez-Sanchez is a five-time felon. An hour after the shooting, he was picked up by police roughly a mile away.

Although this violent thug pulled the trigger, progressives, through the laws they have enacted, put this man on the streets which allowed him to murder.

Federal authorities had Lopez-Sanchez in custody in March after he was set free from a federal prison. They transferred him to San Francisco authorities because he was wanted by them on drug-related charges. The feds filed what’s called an “immigration detainer” requesting that the local authorities notify them before releasing the man.

But San Francisco, home of the most militant leftists in America, refused the request because local policy forbids it. The prisoner in effect got a “get out of jail free card” from the left-wing open-borders movement which argues that keeping illegals in jail violates their constitutional rights.

This is how it works. Being wanted for violating immigration laws isn’t enough, in the eyes of progressives, so after they have served their local time illegals go straight from their holding cells to the streets where they are free to murder, rape, and rob the citizens of this country. …

Leftist pressure groups pushed California lawmakers hard to force the state’s jailers to set illegal aliens who lacked serious criminal records free more quickly so federal officials would not be able to detain them for deportation hearings.

Kate Steinle is dead because of the damage the Left has done in its crusade to dismantle what remains of U.S. immigration law.

Whatever discourages illegals from entering the country is bad, and whatever encourages them to hop the fence is good in the eyes of the progressives who are destroying America.

We don’t think the day will ever come when “Left-wingers in San Francisco” will be “hanging their heads in shame” for anything they do. If Leftists were capable of shame, if they had consciences, they would have abandoned their ideology and/or committed mass suicide decades ago when that ideology was fully demonstrated to be the most terrible of any that has ever afflicted poor suffering humankind. We are talking about Socialism of course – both the International Socialism of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and the National Socialism of Hitler.

Now back to Donald Trump.

We don’t think Donald Trump should be president. But if his bold candor forces others to be bold and candid, then we’re glad he’s in the line-up.

As much as progressives and the Republican establishment hate him, the murder of Kate Steinle would not have made a ripple in the national consciousness were it not for Donald Trump. No, Trump didn’t bring the story to people’s attention, but he did bring the issue to it.

That comes from an article by Derek Hunter at Townhall. Here’s more of it:

When Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien with a felony rap sheet long enough to make him a viable hip-hop star, the world barely noticed. Conservative blogs did. Fox News did. But most of the rest of the world ignored it. When this became impossible, mainstream media covered it … as little as possible.

The murder of Kate Steinle touched a nerve with Americans who are more interested in protecting the lives of innocent people than advancing a political agenda.

Unfortunately, none of those people are elected Democrats. None work in the White House. And only a tiny few can be found in newsrooms across the country.

Kate Steinle’s murder didn’t garner the national media coverage or sympathy given to a drug dealer in Baltimore or a petty thief who tried to kill a cop in Missouri, but it did rekindle a smoldering fire in the American people. Kate was killed for no reason, but she need not die in vain. …

Before Trump’s announcement, the debate over illegal aliens and immigration reform was about amnesty, and far too many Republican presidential hopefuls agreed with the concept, to varying degrees. Trump changed that, much to their consternation.

The Chamber of Commerce, a big money player in politics, wants amnesty; it wants an already saturated employment market flooded with millions of new legal entrants to keep downward pressure on wages.

It’s a myth that big business and Wall Street are “Republican” or “conservative.” They love big government when it subsidizes them or props up their stock price. And they love regulations when they make it nearly impossible for new competitors to emerge. Big business is perfectly happy both to use government as a weapon against competitors and to cry “free markets” when that weapon is aimed at them.

Trump doesn’t need them or their money, so he doesn’t have to soft pedal his talk about illegal aliens to appease them. Every Democrat in the field – and most of the Republicans – willingly cede our national sovereignty to corporate interests, Trump calls a spade a spade. That makes him dangerous. It also makes him wildly popular.

What the GOP establishment doesn’t understand, and never has understood, is its lip service, half-measures and phony compassion are not popular. We see through it. They can cite all the convoluted polls in the world claiming to show support for amnesty should certain hurdles be met, but everyone knows those hurdles will be ignored should they become law. …

Trump isn’t my candidate – I don’t have one yet. But the reason for his current popularity is obvious to anyone who isn’t surrounded by lackeys or those with a vendetta against him: He’s unapologetically himself.

Think what you will of Trump, but if you’re going to hit him be prepared to get hit back, and hard. If you’re going to ask him a question, expect to get an answer unlike one you get from a politician. And people feel he’s telling them the truth, not regurgitating poll-tested, focus-group-approved pabulum.

The establishment is starting its usual “which candidate is electable” dance marathon, but in the last two presidential elections, that marathon has produced John McCain and Mitt Romney. How’d that work out again?

Part of that dance is telling us who can’t win. In 1980, the establishment was certain Ronald Reagan couldn’t win. He was too conservative, too radical, too old, too much of a wild card.

To be clear, Trump isn’t Reagan. But he is Reaganesque in the sense that people believe he’s telling them what he really thinks with a real passion, and he doesn’t bow to pressure to temper it or tell them something else. During an interview with CNN this week, he didn’t tolerate the usual liberal media garbage; he called it out and batted it away.

If one or more of the other candidates don’t find that voice, that honest way of speaking … Trump could be the nominee. Or Hillary Clinton could be president.

And finally, we select some remarks by Mark Steyn. But enjoy the whole thing here. To tempt you – he calls Hillary Clinton “a sleazy, corrupt, cronyist, money-laundering, Saud-kissing liar”, “a dud and a bore”, “a wooden charmless stiff”. He also brings Obama into his range and scores a hit by stating: “the Bernie Sanders surge is a strong sign that, while [the Democrats] are relaxed about voting for an unprincipled arrogant phony marinated in ever more malodorous and toxic corruption, they draw the line at such a tedious and charisma-free specimen thereof”. [Great stuff – but do they?]

Trump is supposed to be the narcissist blowhard celebrity candidate: He’s a guy famous for erecting aesthetically revolting buildings with his “brand” plastered all over them, for arm-candy brides, for beauty contests and reality shows. The other fellows are sober, serious senators and governors.

And yet Trump is the only one who’s introduced an issue into this otherwise torpid campaign – and the most important issue of all, I would argue, in that ultimately it’s one of national survival. And so the same media that dismiss Trump as an empty reality-show vanity candidate are now denouncing him for bringing up the only real policy question in the race so far.

What he said may or may not be offensive, but it happens to be true: America has more Mexicans than anybody needs, and then some. It certainly has more unskilled Mexicans than any country needs, including countries whose names begin with “Mex-” and end in “-ico”. And it has far more criminal Mexicans than anybody needs, which is why they make up 71 per cent of the foreign inmates in federal jails.

Just to underline that last point, a young American woman was murdered for kicks in a supposed “sanctuary city” on the eve of the holiday weekend by an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He had flouted US immigration law for years – or, to be more precise about it, local, state and federal officials had colluded with him in the flouting of US immigration law, to the point where San Francisco’s sheriff actively demanded the return of this criminal to his “sanctuary city”, thereby facilitating the homicide of an actual citizen, taxpayer and net contributor to American society.

This would be quite an interesting topic to air in a US election campaign, don’t you think? Certainly, a segment of voters seems to be interested in it. But bigshot media like NBC and Univision and craphole emporia like Macy’s are telling Trump and everybody else: you can’t even bring this up; this is beyond discussion. The “acceptable” Republican candidates are now obliged to denounce the guy who mentioned the unmentionable: “Will you distance yourself from Trump’s controversial remarks? Do you agree such views have no place in your party?” Needless to say, Reince Preibus and the other jelly-spined squishes of the GOP establishment are eagerly stampeding to do the Macy’s-Univision-industrial complex’s work for them. …

Kate Steinle is dead because the entire Democratic Party, two-thirds of the Republican Party and 100 per cent of the diseased federal-state-municipal bureaucracy prioritizes myths over reality.

Yes, it’s distressing to persons of taste and discrimination that the only person willing to address that reality is Donald Trump. But that’s because he’s not the reality-show freak here. The fake-o lame-o reality freakshow is the political pseudo-campaign being waged within the restraints demanded by the media and Macy’s. So, if Donald Trump is the only guy willing to bust beyond those bounds, we owe him a debt of gratitude. If, as Karl Rove proposes, other candidates are able to talk about the subject in a more “inclusive” way, so be it. But, if “inclusive” is code for not addressing it at all, nuts to that. …

Be honest, which would you prefer and which is a bleaker comment on the political health of the republic – Bernie vs the Donald? Or Hillary vs Jeb?