DONALD TRUMP / SHERIFF JOE: “BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER”

…Trump and the American born Hispanic Judge he criticized

 

 

Trump and Sheriff Arpaio: built their political careers in the same disgusting way.

 

As a former reality TV star, we already know how fanatical our president is about TV rating.  Therefore it should not be a surprise to anybody that the president chose to announce his pardon of the country’s most famous racist in the middle of a hurricane.

 

But maybe, some have speculated, that Trump only did it just to toss some red meat to his base. That’s pretty much what Trump’s recent Phoenix, campaign-rally was all about.  Yes, he was able to whip up the crowd that practically frothed at the mouth when he hinted at a possible pardon of the former Maricopa County sheriff.

 

As Trump’s overall approval has hovered since his first month in office at only 35%, a high-profile pardon of a notorious racial profiler might have been a good way to shore up his support.

 

But some have also speculated that the pardon was more about rewarding a longtime ally for his loyalty. Sheriff Joe certainly was one of the first local politicians to get aboard the Trump train. Oh I know, the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions was also among Trump’s earliest political supporters.  But loyalty alone did not shield him from the public humiliation he has taken at the hands of the president.

 

We now know that the new special council that is investigating the president and his Russia connections is also looking into how the president had asked the AG if the government charges against Sheriff Joe could be dropped.  The AG had to inform him that to even suggest that was very inappropriate.

 

And now a new theory for the pardon has been introduced.

 

That theory is that the pardon was just a signal to other Trump confederates coming into special counsel Mueller’s orbit that the president will protect them all with pardons. His message to his troops is, “No need to turn on the man, yah hear?”

 

Let’s face it.  As the leader of America, Trump actually sees himself as more of a local tin-pot dictator, instead of being the president of the free world and of the greatest nation on the globe.

 

I personally never thought we would ever have someone like Donald J. Trump as the US President.

 

Seriously, Donald Trump is so narcissistic that instead of being a forward looking, calculating mastermind.  He has instead shown the ability to make everything, including issues like the Charlottesville violence, the current Houston natural catastrophe, and even the solar eclipse….all about himself.

 

It must also be noted that both Trump and Arpaio built their political careers by demonizing immigrants.

 

Just look at the other similarities between Trump and Sheriff Joe! 

 

They both raised their national profiles by claiming that President Barack Obama was secretly a Kenyan-born Muslim.  You will recall, the racist conspiracy theory when Trump falsely claimed that he had sent an investigator to Hawaii to check into Obama’s past.  Well, Sheriff Joe actually did send a taxpayer-funded deputy to Hawaii to investigate Obama’s past.

More broadly, they both use the “law and order” concept as their code for encouraging law enforcement to harass all people of color.

 

Those are just the best-known similarities between these two bigots, but they’re hardly the only ones. There are many other areas in which Arpaio has proved to be the ideal Trump supporter.

As an example, Sheriff Joe’s attitude against journalists that he has tried to jailed when negative stories were written about him.  That is totally in line with Trump’s attitude toward the media as “the enemy of the people” and his threats to open up the libel laws that would allow throwing all media personnel and journalists in jail.

 

In addition, they both really like being involved with the massive public exposure of their positions.

 

Trump needs his massive campaign style rallies to boost his ego and his buildings all have his name prominently displayed, many time in polished brass or gold.  For years as sheriff, Arpaio always rode a giant tank in all the local parades.  Trump and Arpaio are both positive for more militarization of the nation’s police forces, and they were both against Obama’s rolling back of that approach in the police departments.

 

Also, remember when Trump questioned the ability of a US born judge of Mexican descent to remain impartial in the Trump University case. Well, Arpaio refused a court order to stop racial profiling which earned him the contempt-of-court conviction.  That was the crime for which he was pardoned by Trump.

Politically motivated investigations were a main part of Arpaio’s law enforcement career.  Just as was Trump’s campaign “Lock her up!” anti-Hilary rallies.  And both always claimed to be victims of “political witch hunts”.

 

Trump in his presidential campaign continued to say he would bring back torture for prisoners being held abroad.  Arpaio often acted on his own brutal impulses in his own jails which were “tent cities,” which he referred to as “concentration camps”.  He housed inmates in temperatures that would reach up to 145° in the dessert and the conditions got so hot that prisoners’ shoes sometimes melted.  At least three prisoners died being held down in what was called a “restraint chair”.  But the medical results were that they died of suffocation.

 

What we really have are two: “birds of a feather”.  And based on that, we now know what Donald Trump will be like when he reaches the same age of Sheriff Joe today.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017