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Arpaio reminds us: Trump's team enables evil behavior - By Jennifer Rubin
August 28 at 10:15 AM
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
As Hurricane Harvey was about to make landfall President Trump announced the pardon of former Maricopa sheriff Joe Arpaio, not mentioning the circumstances of his conviction for criminal contempt (i.e., flagrantly violating and then boasting about violating a court order on racial profiling). Once again, Trump made common cause not with the victims of racism or persecution but with their perpetrator. In Trump’s mind, harassing Hispanics and subjecting them to inhumane treatment is the sign of a good law enforcement officer (like letting a suspect smack his head on the top of a police car or killing terrorists’ families, as he’s publicly endorsed).
Trump’s adolescent, exaggerated and dishonorable view of police and military authority might be attributed to over-compensation for his lack of physical courage and military service. It might stem from his total lack of appreciation of our democratic values. Never forget, however, that the most important consideration for Trump is Trump. The determination as to whether someone is deserving or a “good guy” is whether he supports Trump. In this case, Arpaio supported Trump in his birtherism and cruelty toward immigrants. He is a good guy in Trump’s eyes. Trump chooses his own personal and legal interests over any concern for the larger message his actions sends to the country.
To make matters worse, we learn that Trump went directly to his attorney general (just as he allegedly went to James B. Comey about Michael Flynn) trying to get the case against his friend dropped. Trump has learned nothing about potential obstruction of justice, it seems. When it is his guy whose gotten caught he wants him cleared. Period.
We have come to expect Trump to identify with the most lawless, most bigoted elements in the country. He is not about leading or unifying the country. He’s about protecting his guys, especially if it enrages the rest of the country. If one thinks of Trump as a mafia don — sociopathic, motivated either by loyalty or by vengeance, fascinated by violence — one can understand why his actions are never in line with platitudes about healing, unifying or improving the lives of ordinary Americans. He cannot fathom that the latter is his job, not protecting himself or fellow race-baiters.
Trump’s defenders deny he is a racist, but that’s no longer a plausible characterization of the man who rose to fame on birtherism, incited white grievance and resentment throughout his campaign, stereotyped African American life as invariably violent and hellish, tried to ban Muslims and has approved inhumane deportation procedures that tear apart families. He thinks neo-Nazis include some “fine people” and seeks to ally himself with a modern day Bull Connor. (This is same man who is still convinced that the African American youths dubbed the Central Park Five are guilty.) When race is an issue he always comes down on the side against the oppressed, never their oppressors. It defies the law of averages and decades of his public life to conclude he is not motivated by racial animosity, resentment and/or stereotyping.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/08/28/arpaio-reminds-us-trumps-team-enables-evil-behavior/?utm_term=.74ae105caa83
4 replies
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/27/the-day-president-reagan-comforted-a-black-family-who-had-a-kkk-cross-burned-on-their-lawn/
The day President Reagan comforted a black family who had a KKK cross burned on its lawn
By DeNeen L. Brown | August 27
President Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan walk with Barbara and Phillip Butler, the victims of a 1977 cross burning, and their daughter Natasha outside the family’s home in College Park, Md., on May 3, 1982. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)
President Reagan read the story about the cross burning in his morning Washington Post. A black family in College Park, Md., had just won a civil suit against a young Ku Klux Klan leader who had been convicted of terrorizing the family five years earlier.
Reagan’s deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, said the president was jarred by what had happened to Phillip and Barbara Butler. “That was the first thing on his mind this morning,” Speakes told The Post on May 3, 1982. White House Chief of Staff James Baker and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver walked into the Oval Office, and the first thing he said to them was, “ ‘I’ve read this story. I’d like to go see these people.’ ”
Deaver found the Butlers at their jobs at the Government Printing Office, where they both worked as printers, and told them the president wanted to visit them at their home.
The Butlers had been newlyweds when they bought the house in 1976. They were the fifth black family to move into the neighborhood. They had lived there for five months when, on Jan. 30, 1977, the Klan burned the cross on their front lawn.
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RR was a RW asshole and a racist (who created the welfare queen lie), but at least he was smart enough to do the right thing once in a while. Heck, at least he knew how to act the part.
The day President Reagan comforted a black family who had a KKK cross burned on its lawn
By DeNeen L. Brown | August 27
President Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan walk with Barbara and Phillip Butler, the victims of a 1977 cross burning, and their daughter Natasha outside the family’s home in College Park, Md., on May 3, 1982. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)
President Reagan read the story about the cross burning in his morning Washington Post. A black family in College Park, Md., had just won a civil suit against a young Ku Klux Klan leader who had been convicted of terrorizing the family five years earlier.
Reagan’s deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes, said the president was jarred by what had happened to Phillip and Barbara Butler. “That was the first thing on his mind this morning,” Speakes told The Post on May 3, 1982. White House Chief of Staff James Baker and Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver walked into the Oval Office, and the first thing he said to them was, “ ‘I’ve read this story. I’d like to go see these people.’ ”
Deaver found the Butlers at their jobs at the Government Printing Office, where they both worked as printers, and told them the president wanted to visit them at their home.
The Butlers had been newlyweds when they bought the house in 1976. They were the fifth black family to move into the neighborhood. They had lived there for five months when, on Jan. 30, 1977, the Klan burned the cross on their front lawn.
---------------------------------------------------------
RR was a RW asshole and a racist (who created the welfare queen lie), but at least he was smart enough to do the right thing once in a while. Heck, at least he knew how to act the part.
