I get a lot of calls from families and people who have served time and they say, ‘Thank you, Sheriff. I hate the tents.’ That’s music to my ears.
I still think people like to hear from someone’s heart and how they really feel than the old political rhetoric trying to not say the wrong thing because how would it look, would they get votes, lose votes.
We do have freedom of speech, but if you say the wrong word, it looks like it makes headlines. So everybody has to be very careful.
Once I can talk to people, I switch them over on my side.
I love people that come from another country. I love talking to them.
I roam the streets all the time. You’ll be shocked. I’m shocked, everybody that comes up to me, “Oh, thank you, Sheriff. You’re supporting Trump.” I don’t care who they are. They kind of whisper sometimes.
I don’t have all these advisers, political advisers. I don’t even talk to them because I’m not a slave to a campaign manager, and Trump isn’t either.
I’m a very private person, regardless of what the world may think of me.
I don’t throw people under the bus. When I stick by a guy – I may not agree with him all the time, but I sure don’t throw him under the bus.
But believe me, there’s a lot I’d like to say – but I don’t think the time is right now.
Maybe today you could have shot anybody and get away with it. So there’s many times, I could have killed people. Legally, I could have killed many people, especially working undercover.
Not that I ever did anything wrong. I was just aggressive. That’s the way I am in my life.
I even used to stop vehicles going through stop signs, even though I was walking.
Now everybody is mafia. You got the Russian mafia, the Mexican mafia. Everybody is mafia these days.
When you see a white guy at three in the morning on your beat in an alley, you kind of – “What’s this guy doing here?”
The day I leave, you won’t know how to pronounce my name. You could care less about me, and I should be dead and buried because there’s not one media that will come and remember who Joe Arpaio is. That’s the way it is in politics.
I just can’t surrender. I can’t start something and then surrender because of political reasons. I just don’t do that, and that goes back to me, why I keep running when I should probably take it easy, even though I have no hobbies, and enjoy the rest of my life.
I’m not a computer guy. I have my Smith Corona. I would know nothing about computers.
Everything I do in my life is very aggressive.
Many times, when you go to arrest somebody, they pull their gun, and here I am, a federal agent, telling them to drop their gun. But the gun is like that. I give them a split second to drop it, and they drop it. I could have shot them – who is going to complain?
I was taught to work hard and to be honest, and that’s what I try to do, so that’s it.