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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday and defended her state and its strict immigration law from ongoing criticism that the legislation was motivated by prejudice.
Brewer, whose memoir, Scorpions For Breakfast, was released on Tuesday, began by claiming that Arizona's law, SB 1070, had been drafted to make sure it "would not infringe upon anybody's civil rights." Brewer has asked the Supreme Court to hear a case regarding the constitutionality of the law, and she said Tuesday that she believed the justices would rule in her favor.
Brewer later continued, defending the reasons for pushing the controversial legislation:
We are not racist, we are not bigoted, but we know that "the liberal media" generally wants to shove that race card out there, they wanna throw it around very, very loosely to shut down the debate. We have a severe problem, and I believe that 70 percent of people in America, they understand that and they agree with us in Arizona. Every poll will tell you -- they agree with what we're doing.
Asked by host Joe Scarborough about which specific polls showed those results, Brewer admitted that she couldn't name anything off the top of her head. Mediaite points out that nationwide support may have been displayed in some polls conducted around the time of SB 1070's passage, but that Brewer ignores some polling that showed deep dissatisfaction among Latinos.
Brewer's rhetoric on Tuesday was similar to what readers can expect to find in her book, the Associated Press reports. In it, she defends the law as "a fair, effective and necessary response to what she said amounts to Washington turning a blind eye on border security," according to the AP.
On Fox News Monday night, Brewer said that action movie star Chuck Norris, an outspoken supporter of the Arizona governor and the immigration law, had come up with the memoir's title.
