NORTHAMPTON — Even as Republicans around her fell in line to support Donald J. Trump’s candidacy for president, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Ana Navarro did not budge.
The lifelong Republican, who was born in communist Nicaragua before fleeing to south Florida as a child, told an audience at Smith College Tuesday night that she knew she wouldn’t vote for Trump since June 16, 2015, the day the real estate mogul announced his run for the White House.
“That day he called Mexicans rapists and criminals,” Navarro said. “That first day, which is engraved in my memory, I knew that even if he became the nominee of my party, I would never, ever — nunca jamás — support Donald Trump.”
Navarro delivered her quip-heavy speech to a crowd that filled the lower level of John M. Greene Hall as part of a “presidential colloquium” this week that included a talk Monday by MSNBC news anchor Rachel Maddow.
At times, Navarro elicited laughter. She compared some Republican presidential candidates to cardboard cutouts, joked about her heavy alcohol consumption after the election and gave advice to future presidential candidates — “Do not send emails,” she said flatly.
At other times, she struck a more somber tone.
“Whether you believe in God or you don’t — and I’m telling you guys, this is no time to be an atheist — because we better all pray to some god that he is a good president,” Navarro said. “The cost of him being a bad president is really just too great. It could cost American lives.”
Navarro used the opening part of her speech to explain why she is a Republican.
“My family fled communism,” Navarro said. “Ronald Reagan supported us in that struggle. That pretty much sealed the deal for me.”
She said she grew up in South Florida, a region with a healthy GOP influence, where Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s regime settled and aligned with Republicans.
“My Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is pro-immigration reform, pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-freedom, pro-everything,” Navarro said. “And she fights for all of us and is inclusive.
“I also stay a Republican because I believe in values of a strong national defense, of smaller government,” Navarro said, adding that includes the government not interfering with reproductive rights. “I believe in individual responsibility, in fiscal responsibility.
“And I’m staying a Republican because, damn it, Donald Trump ain’t gonna kick me out,” she said.
Later on, during a question-and-answer session, she said the worse-case scenario for the GOP would be to become a “monolithic” party filled with “old white people.” The Democrats, she said, would naturally become the party of everyone else.
“It’s corrosive to our social fabric,” she said.
She also urged those in the crowd to not silo themselves away from those who have differing opinions.
“For me, our biggest problem that we face today, is the political balkanization of America,” she said. “We have lost our ability to embrace diversity of thought.”
Navarro also gave her assessment of some of the people with whom Trump surrounds himself.
“I know a lot of them,” Navarro said. “They’re very good people; they’re very qualified professionals. … Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Katie Walsh.
“My hope was that if he surrounded himself with seasoned operatives, they would help him … be sane,” Navarro said. “Instead, he seems to be making them be insane.”