With Arpaio Pardon, Trump drops pretense he’s not a racist
August 28, 2017

 
Share


I write this under the persistent rain of Hurricane (now Tropical Storm) Harvey. I’m one of the lucky ones who saw no flooding and never lost power, but many around me were not so lucky. NBC Nightly News showed a highway intersection near me and noticed some “splashing” in the middle of the highway underpass not realizing it was a guy in a bathing cap swimming in 5 feet of water in the middle of the highway. People are weird.

Speaking of which, a mere 72 hours after “Glorious Leader” feigned offense at being criticized for defending Nazi’s & White Supremacists, Trump used the hurricane as a distraction to pardon racist former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio was convicted last month of criminal contempt for ignoring a judge’s order (because The Law does not apply to people like Arpaio & Trump) to stop detaining people he suspected were undocumented immigrants based merely on their race (or what race they appeared to be.) And I have NO doubt Trump believed Arpaio’s only crime was benign “profiling”, making it easy to excuse a fellow disgusting bigot for his “misbehavior”. It’s easy to forget that the controversy surrounding Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe goes all the way back to the Bush Administration, when he was charged in 2008 with using/abusing his office (and its financial resources) to target his political enemies (including arresting a reporter in his home in the dead of night after criticizing him, in 2007). Arpaio’s antics reached a fever pitch during the 2012 election when he became a problem for Mitt Romney, who didn’t want to be seen as defending Arpaio and Arizona’s horrendous “papers please” bill (that codified Arpaio’s “detain and ask questions later” way of doing business) while simultaneously not wanting to offend a key GOP demographic: racists & bigots.

160 people DIED in Arpaio’s custody… 73 of “unexplained” causes (ibid). In 2009, a pregnant Latina woman… and American citizen… was racially profiled and arrested by one of Arpaio’s goon squads. They shackled her hands and feet, and did not unshackle her even after going into labor (where was she going to go?), giving birth in the jail and separating her from her newborn child for 72 hours. This is the man Trump deemed worthy of a Presidential Pardon. Please note that the pardon was over Arpaio’s refusal to comply with a court order, which carried with it a whopping six months (some say only “60 days”) in jail. Trump deliberately angered millions and upset an entire minority population just to spare an old racist bastard 60 days in jail? #ToddlerTrump once again being intentionally provocative just to tick off his political enemies.

Of course, Arpaio was also a huge “Birther” (which pretty much goes without saying) and fan of Trump’s racist Birther crusade against Obama, creating his own “Birther Squad” where the Maricopa County sheriff concluded (with the help of World Nut Daily and “Swift Boater” jackass Jerome Corsi) in 2012 that president Obama’s birth certificate was “a forgery and a fraud”. Why was an Arizona sheriff investigating Obama’s birth certificate? Didn’t he have better things to do? Apparently not.

But Arpaio is just one example.

As I’ve previously mentioned, there are/were three conspicuous racists serving in Trump’s inner circle: his “Chief Strategist”… known “White Nationalist” Steve Bannon, military analyst and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian “Nazi Medal” Gorka, and “political advisor” “White Power hand gesture guy” Stephen Miller. Following Trump’s botched response to the Charlottesville protest, he fired Bannon (one of the founders of the “Alt-Right” movement)… a fellow loose-canon that reportedly did not get along with others (reportedly, “The Mooch”… during his brief 10 days on the job, wanted both Bannon & Priebus fired. Priebus got the ax first and many believe incoming Chief-of-Staff Kelly finished the job with Bannon.) Gorka says he quit. Everyone else says Trump fired him. Why? Because Gorka and Bannon were good friends, and Gorka was not happy about Bannon’s firing. And now only Miller remains.

After firing two prominent racists, Trump’s base needed some red meat. Following the conviction of Arpaio, Trump announced he was flying to Arizona for “a rally”, but it was widely suspected he was going there to pardon Arpaio. Like all racist cowards, Trump flinched under the white hot spotlight of criticism of possibly issuing his first-ever pardon to a ridiculous racist asshat like Sheriff Joe a mere three days after Trump was criticized for defending Nazi’s. Trump instead waited until 9pm EDT… just as a hurricane was making landfall in Texas and people were being killed… to announce he was pardoning him. If you wait until late Friday evening while the nation is distracted by a natural disaster to do something, you CLEARLY know you’re doing something wrong. Something you know you’d be roundly criticized for if the nation were not distracted by millions of people in mortal danger in Texas.

I was going to write about Trump’s childish attacks upon Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) for his lack of loyalty (there’s that word again), but the storm outside suddenly just got that much worse that I need to end this here.

It all seems like this all took place over the course of a month. It’s difficult to believe it was only one week ago. What a week.
 


Writers Wanted Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

RSS Please REGISTER to be notified by e-mail every time this Blog is updated! Firefox/IE users can use RSS for a browser link that lists the latest posts! RSS


 

Share

August 28, 2017 · Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Civil Rights, Crime, Racism, Scandals, Unconstitutional

Leave a Reply