The president committed to pardoning former Sheriff Joe Arpaio last night during his campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. It wasn’t the only news he made, but it was the thing that stuck out most for me. There’s a substantive case to make about why Arpaio doesn’t deserve a pardon. The ACLU points out that in addition to defying a court order to stop racially profiling Latinos and placing himself in contempt of court, Arpaio has a record of abusing his public office, coddling sexual predators, and creating inhumane conditions for his prisoners and doing harm to their health. In truth, even the briefest glance as his Wikipedia page should convince you that the man is a scoundrel and a charlatan in addition to being one of the most brutal racists to hold public office in the last four decades.
On July 31, 2017, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court by District Judge Susan Bolton. Bolton explained that Arpaio had failed “to ensure his subordinates’ compliance” with court directives by “directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.” Therefore, the Judge found, Arpaio had “willfully violated an order of the court.” She set his sentencing hearing for October.
The president claimed last night that Arpaio is guilty of nothing more serious than “doing his job.”
Trump and Arpaio are connected for one thing by the fact they are the most and second-most famous Birthers in the country. It seems to have created a bond between them.
[Arpaio] said in an interview on Tuesday night that he did not know Mr. Trump was going to mention his name at the rally and reiterated that he had not talked to the president since last fall. But Mr. Arpaio said he “wasn’t really surprised” to hear he would likely be pardoned.
“I just know him,” Mr. Arpaio said of the president. “And even though everybody said he’s not going to talk about it — deep in my heart, I knew he was going to say something. I had no hints, but that’s who he is.”
You can call it “Birther Solidarity.” I guess there’s a code. Birthers don’t let Birthers go to jail.
And maybe the code is a better explanation than trying to discern some kind of greater strategy. Trump seems to be ping-ponging between taking the most pro-Nazi position available to him and denying that he has done so, but last night he did three things that made it appear that he thinks his political survival depends on rallying racist support to his besieged banner.
The first was his verbal commitment to pardon Arpaio. The second was his promise to cause a government shutdown if he doesn’t get his border wall paid for not by the Mexican government (as promised) but by our own. And the third was maybe the most disturbing, to me, of all. Trump told his assembled supporters that people are trying to take away “our culture.”
“In the proud tradition of America’s great leaders, from George Washington — please don’t take his statue down, please. Please! Does anybody want George Washington’s statue? No. Is that sad? Is that not sad? To Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt. I see they want to take Teddy Roosevelt’s down too. They’re trying to figure out why. They don’t know. They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders do it overnight. These things have been here for 150 years, for 100 years. You go back to a university and it’s gone. Weak, weak people.”
There’s no way to read that broadly. When the president speaks about “our culture,” he clearly means the culture of those who celebrate the Confederacy. He wasn’t talking to the nation. He was talking to the crowd and to his supporters. In other words, his comments about “our culture” were addressed in the same way as his comments about Arpaio:
“By the way, I’m just curious. Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe? [Crowd cheers.] So, was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job? He should have had a jury, but you know what? I’ll make a prediction. I think he is just going to be fine. Okay? But — I won’t not do it tonight because I don’t want to cause any controversy. Is that okay? All right? But Sheriff Joe can feel good.”
If there was any doubt that Trump was claiming the racists as his own, he erased it with his conclusion:
“We are Americans and the future belongs to us. The future belongs to all of you. This is our moment. This is our chance. This is our opportunity to recapture our dynasty like never before.”
The “Americans” he is talking about are not all Americans, and what dynasty could he be referring to? It isn’t a Democratic or Republican dynasty. It’s an uninterrupted record of unquestioned white supremacy that was disrupted and can only now be “recaptured.” What interrupted that record? First, the Union armies. Second, the Civil Rights Movement. Third, the election of a black president.
Maybe Trump is right that he does better politically when we focus on race. He’ll take the side of the American flag and the police and let his opponents talk about the merits of diversity. It remains to be seen if Trump knows what he is doing from a strictly political perspective.
What’s unambiguous, however, is that he’s leading a pro-Confederate movement that sees white nationalists and white supremacists as “good people” and real Americans. He complains that the media report this accurately, but he’s tripled down on it at this point.
So, like with the Civil War and World War Two and the Civil Right Era, the “real” Americans have to do battle. But, this time, our own president is the enemy.
It’s a symbiosis between Trump and his base. The base wants a race war, has for a long time. 3% of the people in this country own 50% of the guns and that has always been about race war. People don’t stockpile guns and ammo to shoot squirrels.
I’m reluctant to ascribe intentionality to Trump. Trump will say whatever gets him applause. He can’t break into the upper crust of business moguls, he’s rejected by high society, the intellectual ‘elites’ laugh at him, creatives think he’s the missing link between ape and man. Even his wealth is an illusion – subtract laundered cash and what Trump owes the Russian moguls and he may be in the red for all we know. So in a reverse Michelle, when they go high, he goes low. If the cool kids don’t want him at their table then he’ll sit in the back of the room throwing spitballs.
Now Trump faces the conundrum of his life: he’s risen to the top and still the business heavies, the entertainment world and Manhattan society still despise him. He gets increasingly depressed, nervous, realizing however much he tries to hide it that he’s inadequate to the task. He finally got to sit with the cool kids and he farted. The only people who will have him are the losers – the racists, the creeps, the sheep looking for a führer.
He betrays his base because Trump betrays everyone. But the beauty of betraying imbeciles is that they don’t realize it. They won’t abandon him, and he’ll keep pandering to them because each is all the other has.
I think this is absolutely right, and very well put.
My only quibble would be the part where Trump himself has only a chameleon-like relationship with the actual White Nationalist ideas. I don’t think that’s correct. He’s shifted through a lot of poses and positions over the decades but I think there’s ample evidence that the anti-black, anti-immigrant stuff is real.
The Central Park Five is only the most conspicuous example — think of the mood you have to be in to take out a full-page ad in the Times condemning a bunch of exonerated black teenagers.
I think he hears a lot of stuff and agrees with it, but I think the racial stuff genuinely resonates with him. And the joke is, this doesn’t happen in a more sophisticated or cynical or manipulative way (as with, say, Bannon): Trump is at the same idiotic intellectual/cultural level as his supporters, so they’ve got a resonant feedback loop going that’s satisfying at both ends.
” Trump is at the same idiotic intellectual/cultural level as his supporters, so they’ve got a resonant feedback loop going that’s satisfying at both ends.”
Nailed it!
I don’t think so. I think he has tapped into a fault line between white people and austerity. The middle and lower classes have gradually lost prestige and wealth over the past several decades. No one has solved it or addressed it. That feedback loop may be an illusion but it has some power to it. (Charlottesville may have been a step too far and we hope will be his end.)
Trump is not speaking to all Americans, only the real ones: the White Americans, the ones who founded this country. That is his message embodied in those White Supremacists, Klan and Nazis. They are the ones who will remake this country, just like the first time. Leave the so called identity groups, the POC, LGBTQ, feminists, Jews to the Democrats. They have the fake news, and the trade agreements that took your jobs away. And they let the immigrants and Muslims into your country. That is what is behind MAGA.
And what do the democrats have? Who leads it? We have Bernie’s populist wing that might help but then there’s the pragmatists of the left center, with those identity groups, and Wall Street. They are the ones responsible for losing your jobs and your standard of living. They run huge bureaucracies on Wall Street and get nothing done.
Trump isn’t the least worried about lies. Just tell another one, it was not understood the first time. MSM are liars and all fake. One has to wonder if Mueller comes up with the goods if the republicans will do anything at all.
It is quite necessary that the democrats have a coherent plan to address this and a leader. The problem the democrats have is getting everyone on the same page. In some real sense we have become a party of interest groups, each with his own ideas. It is my personal belief the only way we win is to embrace more, not less government, even to the point of intrusiveness. But that too will be challenged.
It should not be at all surprising he will pardon Sheriff Joe. He may even be nuts. So now we wait for him to shoot someone on 5th Avenue, I suppose.
Trump may be dumb, but he’s not stupid. Unless he’s out the WH door before the midterms, he won’t pardon Arpaio before then for the simple reason that Arpaio lost his 2016 reelection rather decisively. For now he keeps the Trumpsters on board with the “I’m gonna do it” and unless or until he does, others can blow it off as another meaningless PR stunt.
Well I guess you called that one wrong. Trump Pardoned Arpaio tonight.
There is no way to know if Trump believes what he says. He’s a pathological liar. To assign anything to a pathological liar is to fall into a trap.
I think he’s a hollow man, without any real beliefs. That’s why he is so bizarre, so unpredictable. He will say anything that’s good at the moment. You can even see his anti-black rental policies as simply expedient – “sorry, it’s good for business, nothing personal, negroes are bad for business”. There IS a frequent amorality to people who fancy themselves as “business people”.
He says whatever the audience hungers for, without regard for anything. He literally got elected by treating the GOP base as an applause meter. If you think he gives any thought to the words that came out of his mouth, you are literally too kind.
He believes in nothing, nothing, nothing – that is his secret weapon. He’s not playing 12 dimensional chess. He’s an unprecedented event. He’s the Mule.
I don’t know how these notions are helpful, but I think it’s real. The GOP is heading for a giant fracture, but it’s not easy for the Democrats to embrace the zombie armies that Trump ‘stole’ away – and they WILL try to nod nod wink wink there way through this after Trump is gone and act like nothing ever happened. I truly think that we need Trump to stay in place as long as possible and just keep pouring gasoline on the GOP to maximize the damage. As long as he doesn’t start a nuke war or something…
A 4 for that reference alone. The rest of your comment was quite cogent as well.
“I think he’s a hollow man, without any real beliefs.”
He is hollow – but I think he knows what he is about. He is a racist and he believes in white people. That is his base. So I doubt it is simply expedient: “sorry, it’s good for business, nothing personal, negroes are bad for business”. Being racist he is quite willing to cede that to the democrats and he will appeal to the real founders of the country, white people.
And he is a pathological liar but it matters not a wit to him, nor apparently to his base who simply believes it is all fake news anyway. I hope he does considerable damage to the republican party, but the democrats need a coherent plan or there will be no reason for his base to abandon him.
I mean how in hell did he win the first time around? There must be some base of people who are fed up with what has been happening the last several decades. That thing called inequality is real. And the danger now is the feeling spreads.
Even talking about it the way Trump does makes all white people a little more racist. Data shows it.
More madness from dumbass, he wants to deny transgender to the services and prohibit medical payments. His base will love this.
The use of race to rile up white folk for votes is nothing new to the right. They’ve been doing it since the end of slavery, and even before that. Right wing politicians have known for some time: create a racial grievance, rile up disaffected (and some not so disaffected) whites and like waving a red flag before a bull they charge ahead, ignoring all else.
The GOP has been plumbing those depths recently through dog-whistling. Trump has come along and given his narcissism and monumental but fragile ego, he uses this to stick a thumb in the eye of “the establishment” as payback for treating him like the moronic cretin that he is. He took it from “we want our country back” to “make America great again.” Where’s the difference?
As ignorant as he is, Trump knows one thing, and that’s race. He didn’t need any primers or teleprompters to speak off the cuff on Charlottesville, Arpaio, Obama’s birth certificates, immigration and every and sound competent and credible to those it matter to, the white supremacist and Nazi organizations. Trump knows it because on this he speaks from the heart.
Trump is just the logical conclusion of the GOP’s own race baiting. All these condemnations of Trump is driven not so much by conscience but by the fact that he’s abandoned the dog whistle for the megaphone. He’s removed any deniability the GOP had left that racism is a core tenet of the right and the republican party.
Yes, I agree that is what he does. His appeal is direct to the white voter who is often disaffected with the way his life has been going. His pay is stagnant and his standard of living is not improving. Plus he feels no one cares, it is all about immigrants and special social groups of which he is not a part. It is an echo of Brexit.
So it doesn’t matter how much Trump lies. It matters that he speaks to them. They are his base.
The democrats have to find a way to reach at least some of the disaffected. Last election only 21% voted for Clinton, about the same as 2012 for Obama. If that vote collapses further, things could get worse. The pragmatism of the party, doing things as always, could be a loser. They need a plan and a leader to fight this. Thinking that he has under 40% approval rating will not guarantee winning. No one likes him but he talks to them. We need to do the same.
oops, meant she lost by 21% or 58% to 37%.
Lawd hamercy:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/voices-of-cult.html
jesus.
Clinton was criticized by many for labeling these people “deplorable”, but that’s an extremely polite and tasteful term for these dangerous fuckheads.
It’s no accident that the same people I went to high school with who admired Charles Manson are avid Trumpsters now. Trump has been promising “Helter Skelter” from the get go.
You will fall into error if you take seriously any of Trump’s promises. Sheriff Joe better have his bags packed, because by the time he needs that pardon Trump will have forgotten all about him. Or, he’ll have another agenda. Or he still won’t want the blowback.
You can’t go wrong assuming that Trump will end up doing the opposite of what he promises. If he really meant to pardon Sheriff Joe, he would have done it already, and right now he’d be angrily denying that he’s obstructing justice, and counter-attacking his enemies and the media for what he feels is unjust criticism. He’s impulsive that way. If he has to consider something for several months, he’ll never do it. That’s not how he operates.
He might get the impulse again and do it, but the longer he waits the less likely he is to ultimately issue any pardon at all.