This is an excerpt reprinted with permission from The Hagstrom Report, a news service providing original national and international agricultural news to its subscribers.
PHOENIX – CNN political commentators Donna Brazile, a Democrat, and Ana Navarro, a Republican, offered the International Dairy Foods Association entertaining comments on the 2016 presidential race at lunch on Tuesday, but said they, like most members of the audience, could not predict who will win the Iowa caucuses on Monday or what will happen the rest of the year.
Donna Brazile
Brazile, who ran former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000 and is a supporter of Hillary Clinton, declared “I am not a socialist” — a reference to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who is running for the Democratic nomination.
When asked who Sanders might pick for vice president, Brazile noted Sanders’s fascination with Scandinavia, and said she prays that “Sanders will not go outside the country to find someone.”
If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, Brazile said, “she needs to go outside Washington to find a young, fresh face.”
She also noted that Republican candidate Donald Trump has been married three times and that two of his wives have been immigrants “because there are jobs in this country only immigrants will do.”
Ana Navarro
Navarro, who was born in Nicaragua, fled the Sandinista revolution and worked for Jeb Bush when he was governor of Florida, said she is supporting Bush for president.
If Trump gets elected, she said, he will build the fence on the Mexican border, get drug lord El Chapo to pay for it, and then let him out of prison so a movie can be made of his life.
While Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and other candidates have courted the millennial generation vote, the popularity of the elderly Sanders shows that young people “can cut through the bull” that most candidates put out, Navarro said.
If Trump gets nominated, she said, he has offended so many people he might have to pick business tycoon Carl Icahn or his daughter Invanka to run with him.
If Bush gets the nomination, Navarro said, she would like him to pick either South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval for vice president.
Navarro ended the luncheon presentation by appealing to the dairy processing executives to stay active in public affairs.
“We are too polarized,” Navarro said. “It is not necessary. A little diversity of thought goes a long way."
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