You might think that given our current climate in this country — with tensions high between white supremacists and, well, decent people — Donald Trump would do what he could to be a voice of reason.
But this is a president who has shown through his rash actions and boundless ego that rational behavior is too much to expect.
Trump appears to be headed toward issuing a presidential pardon to Joe Arpaio, the notoriously racist Arizona sheriff who was convicted of felony contempt of court for refusing to end his county’s policy of racial profiling and bragged about ignoring the court order.
Sure, presidents have issued controversial pardons in the past — Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate; Bill Clinton pardoned his wealthy buddy Mark Rich; James Buchanan pardoned Brigham Young for fomenting the Utah Rebellion.
But this one pardon is bigger than Arpaio. Pardoning the renegade sheriff shows Trump isn’t just tolerating the kind of racial profiling Arpaio implemented, he is explicitly endorsing it. He is telling law enforcement it is fine to violate state and federal laws.
Most abhorrently, the president of the United States is telling American citizens, especially those who are not white, that a badge is a license to violate your civil rights at any time, for any reason, or no reason whatsoever besides the color of your skin. All because the president with orange skin considers it part of the job.
If you doubt that is the case, look at what he told an audience of frothing supporters in Phoenix on Tuesday.
“Do the people in this room like Sheriff Joe?” he said to cheers and howls as protesters clashed outside the venue. “So was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?”
“I’ll make a prediction: I think he’s going to be just fine,” Trump said, his smug tone and puckered smirk trivializing the gravity of the situation.
If Arpaio’s job was to disregard constitutional rights of the citizens of Maricopa County and the fundamental constitutional authority of the courts, then, by all means, Sheriff Joe, park that cruiser in the “Employee of the Month” stall now and forever.
But that wasn’t his job. Just like it wasn’t his department’s job to arrest and detain people on the flimsy belief they might be in the country illegally. Sheriff deputies are not federal immigration officers and need to have evidence that a crime was committed. A court in 2011 told him as much, but Arpaio ignored it.
That wasn’t all Arpaio ignored. His department also ignored sexual assault cases that were part of the job.
The focus on immigration enforcement was so all-consuming that reporters for the East Valley Tribune found that sex crimes cases — many of them child molestation — were not being adequately investigated. By 2011, that number had grown to more than 400.
None of that is Trump’s concern. Nor is it his concern that Arpaio doesn’t meet any of the criteria the Justice Department has established for the consideration of pardons and clemency.
Trump’s sole concern is himself, and a pardon for Arpaio makes him a hero with the same people who cheered him on for coddling white supremacists and monuments revering the confederacy last week. In other words: His white base.
But it would also be a new low point in a presidency that seemingly finds a way to redefine rock bottom on a weekly basis.
It would fuel the oftentimes justified suspicion our minority communities have of police, once again undermine our court system, and pile-drive a wedge between Americans.
from The Salt Lake Tribune http://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2017/08/25/gehrke-a-pardon-for-joe-arpaio-would-mark-yet-another-new-low-in-trumps-presidency
Shawn Miller 