Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio defended his fellow anti-immigrant birther Donald Trump last week, saying that Trump didn’t mean “to say anything derogatory” about “all the great people from Mexico” when he said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.”

Arpaio told radio host Aaron Klein, in an interview later excerpted in WorldNetDaily, that criticism of Trump and his loss of corporate allies after he made the comments were violations of his “freedom of speech.”

“Well, first of all, I thought we had freedom of speech in this country, and he’s running for president, he has a right to voice his opinion,” Arpaio said. “He did talk about the birth certificate in the past, I’ve been working on that. So, I don’t know, I guess you’ve got to be politically correct when you run for office. But once again, I don’t believe he meant to say anything derogatory about all the people, all the great people from Mexico.”