Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who has been mentioned as a potential pick for Donald Trump’s cabinet, blasted anti-Trump protesters Tuesday, saying that those who fly the Mexican flag are loyal to Mexico, not the United States.
Calling the protests “orchestrated” and “just awful” on KTAR News 92.3 FM Arizona radio, Brewer said of the protesters, “They’re not very sympathetic when they’re flying the Mexican flag. Obviously their allegiance isn’t to the United States, it was to Mexico. They’re not entitled to behave like that, I don’t believe. You know, people protest, it’s fine. A lot of them aren’t legal citizens and some of them are and they didn’t even vote and now they’re outraged. They could at least give him a chance.”
She added that those involved in the protests, which have broken out across the country since Trump’s election last week, “obviously don’t have jobs.”
“What day are we going on now, seven?” said Brewer. “And they’re still out there protesting. And obviously, I have even recognized a couple of people and the signs are the same signs that we’ve seen all seven days, practically. They obviously don’t have jobs, right? So what better things do they have to do? So they’re just out there marching away. And these kids that are leaving school. If I was the principal of that school, I’d lay down the law. This is outrageous. It’s just out of control.”
Asked by hosts Mac & Gaydos if her criticisms referred to the “whole crowd” of protesters, Brewer replied that she was referring to “a lot of them.”
Later in the interview, Brewer was asked about Trump’s pick of Steve Bannon to his chief strategist in the White House. Bannon, a former executive of the right-wing online publication Breitbart, has been denounced for trumpeting Breitbart’s ties to the so-called “alt-right” and for theracist and anti-Semitic writing the outlet has published.
Brewer said she had never met Bannon and defended Trump’s selection of him, but said that she didn’t think he would keep his job if he “goes berserk.”
“I think it’s because he was so involved with the campaign strategically,” Brewer said of Bannon’s hiring. “People have said publicly that he was the strategist and that he has the ear of Donald Trump and he won so he owes a lot to Steve Bannon. And if he was good at doing that, then why not give him a chance at this? I don’t think Donald Trump will keep if he goes berserk like people what people think that he is. I can’t believe that he’s like that to tell you the truth because I know Donald Trump and Donald Trump is not like that at all. I mean, he is not like that at all. Whatsoever. At all.”
Brewer also said in the interview that she expected Trump to try to follow through on most of his promises, through he has “backed down a little bit” on some since the election.
“I think we’ll see a lot of it,” she said. “We know from his conversations since he won that he has kind of backed down a little bit on some issues but he still wants to secure the border, he still wants to lower your taxes, and he still wants bring jobs in. And I think that’s why he won.”
Brewer, a prominent Trump surrogate from the early days of the campaign, refused to talk about whether she was being sought as a member of the President-elect’s cabinet.
“I’m not talking about it,” she told the hosts.