Trump’s Revenge

David Posnett — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 14:24:37 +0000

The president’s pardon of Joe Arpaio is revolting for many reasons. Most disgusting of all is that he did it to torment anyone who doesn’t support him.

Slate.com

Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center during a rally on Tuesday, where he made clear he would soon pardon Joe Arpaio.

Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Friday night, Breitbart tweeted out its story about Donald Trump’s pardon of sadistic former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio with these lines: “Look what you just made me do Look what you just made me do.” It was a reference to the new Taylor Swift song, but it was also a celebration of Trump’s unhinged abusiveness.

The Arpaio pardon was monstrous for many reasons. It sent a signal of impunity to racist police all over this country. It spit in the face of people who were targeted and even tortured by a sheriff who once proudly referred to his Tent City jail as a “concentration camp.” Trump circumvented ordinary Justice Department review procedures, which both demonstrates his contempt for the rule of law and ensures that next time he issues a precipitous pardon—say, to his son—it will be slightly less shocking. He sent a message to his cronies under pressure in the Russia probe to stay strong, by demonstrating his willingness to defy all normal political constraints in letting criminal conduct off the hook. Trump supporter Don Surber, a former West Virginia newspaper columnist fired for describing the dead teenager Michael Brown as an “animal” who had to be put “down” by police, exulted on his blog: “In pardoning Arpaio, President Trump sent a message to those under investigation by two dozen Democratic lawyers. …The message of his pardon is: Donald Trump has your back.”

But one of the most revolting things about the pardon was captured in Breitbart’s taunting tweet. The president was furious about being criticized for being a racist, and so, like a violent father smacking around his wife and children, he took it out on the majority of the country that fears and abhors him.

The Arpaio pardon should be seen in concert with the news, also breaking Friday, that Trump is planning to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to apply for work permits and protection from deportation. Just two months ago, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced that DACA, which protects about 740,000 people, would continue. Polling showed that even broad majorities of Trump voters supported letting the DACA beneficiaries—sometimes known as Dreamers—stay in the country. What changed between now and then? Well, John Kelly, the new chief of staff, is an immigration hard-liner. But the previous policy on DACA was instituted under his auspices at Homeland Security. More significant, I think, is that the president had his feelings hurt.

Also Friday, U.S. Border Patrol refused to close immigration checkpoints along Hurricane Harvey evacuation routes, saying, “CBP will remain vigilant against any effort by criminals to exploit disruptions caused by the storm.” This means that undocumented immigrants would have to choose between waiting out the hurricane or risking arrest. As Dara Lind reports at Vox, this is very different than the way the George W. Bush administration handled evacuations for Hurricane Ike, which hit Texas in 2008. Then, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff instructed agents, “We’re not going to be bogging people down with checks or doing things to delay the rapid movement of people out of the zone of danger.” We’ll find out in the coming days if Trump’s unyielding attitude on immigration has actually started to kill people.

Trump cannot deliver almost anything he promised during his campaign. He’s not going to get rid of Obamacare, much less replace it with something at once cheaper and more generous. He will not bring back American manufacturing, or make the country respected in the world, or extricate American troops from Afghanistan. He probably won’t be able to build a wall on the Mexican border, and has already conceded that Mexico won’t pay for it. But there is one promise he can deliver on, and it may be the central promise of his maggot-hearted campaign: revenge. If his supporters felt humiliated and dislocated and eclipsed by an urbane black president, Trump would make that president’s voters feel even worse. Outside Trump’s rally in Phoenix last week, a middle-age blond woman held a sign saying, “Trump Won Go Ahead and Cry.”

One of the uniquely horrifying things about the presidency is that Trump was put there to torment us, and by us, I mean the majority of Americans who voted against him. His strongest supporters revel in his instability, in the terror he evokes and the suffering he causes. He is, to use one of his own epithets, an enemy of the American people. We’ve all lived through presidents that we hate. (The irony of referencing W. and a hurricane in a positive light is not lost on me.) But this is the first president who hates us even more, and that may be the ultimate source of his power. Surber concluded his celebration of Arpaio’s freedom: “At any rate, pardon my laughter.”

Arpaio is a Really Bad Hombre

David Posnett — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 19:20:28 +0000

From Paul Clements (running for Congress in Kalamazoo MI)

Friday, the President announced that he had pardoned notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio on his conviction for contempt of court. When I first heard the news, I called it “a travesty” and “an insult to justice.” Truth be told, I am still in shock. Just to illustrate why pardoning Joe Arpaio is so wrong, let me list some of the horrific, racist, and egregious action of abuse he has perpetuated:

Officers under Arpaio’s employment once grabbed a pregnant Latina woman, slammed her against a car, stomach-first, three times, and then dragged her into the patrol car and shoved her in the back seat. They left the pregnant woman alone for 30 minutes, without air conditioning, only to issue a citation for “failure to provide an ID.”
In his inhumane jails, for people convicted of no crimes, and more often than not, illegally detained because of their race, Arpaio withheld sanitary pads and napkins from menstruating women for days, forced to wallow in their menstrual blood.
Arpaio once neglected a mentally ill prisoner for weeks, until he had lost 20 pounds from starvation and malnourishment.
Arpaio regularly kept mentally-ill people, under his care, in 85-degree heat until their psychotropic drugs malfunctioned.
He regularly fed inmates rotten food. Some days they only got bread and water, despite being forced to be in 110 degree weather.
Deputies under Arpaio’s supervision once raided a home by launching tear gas canisters into the house. The canisters caused the house to combust. A puppy came running out of the house. But his deputies, they drove the puppy back inside, where it burned to death. The homeowners were forced to watch their pet burn to death, while the officers laughed at them.
Officers in his jail once restrained a veteran in a chair while they tased him multiple times. A few hours later, this veteran died from a cardiac arrest caused by the electric shock.
Officers arrested a wheelchair bound man for possession of marijuana. Because of his disability, he required a catheter to urinate. He pounded on the cell door to ask for the catheter. To “punish” this man, guards placed him in a “restraint chair” despite not being able to use his legs. During this time, the guards broke his neck. This entire episode was caught on tape. The guards were laughing and smiling while the man writhed.
A blind man was found dead in Arpaio’s jails. At first, Arpaio claimed he had died because he had fallen from a bunk bed. But, autopsies showed that officers under his supervision had beaten this blind man. This blind man later died from his injuries.
A 13-year-old came forward that her uncle was raping her. The sheriff told her parents that there was no evidence of rape, but in reality, a state crime lab returned a rape kit that tested positive for semen. Sheriff Arpaio ignored this evidence and withheld it from her parents. The sheriff didn’t arrest her rapist, who raped her continuously for five years until she became pregnant with his child.

Pardoning Sheriff Arpaio says responsibility for conduct like this can go unpunished even when a court has ordered it stopped. Trump is moving America from a constitutional democracy toward a police state.

— We must unite to preserve our democracy and the rule of law. Please support my campaign here to help me fight Trump and his GOP enabler Fred Upton. Paul Clements.

Arpaio – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Trump’s Revenge

Arpaio is a Really Bad Hombre