The chickens are restless.
Donald Trump has made a habit of alienating people whose support he desperately needs and no one knows that better than House Speaker and man whose spine is pictured on milk carton missing ads across the country, Paul Ryan.
The President’s ill-advised Friday decision to pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio -who was convicted of criminal contempt for ignoring a court order in a racial profiling case involving his rather nasty habit of singling out and detaining drivers based on their ethnicity – comes at a particularly sensitive time for race relations in America. In that respect it was poorly timed.
Of course if we’re talking about timing, Trump could have done worse than making the pardon official on a night when the media was focused on Hurricane Harvey.
But now that the storm coverage has died down, everyone is free to get back to Trump and Arpaio and it looks like Paul Ryan is starting to grow some balls.
As WSJ reports, Ryan is upset. Here’s a statement from the Speaker’s spokesman:
The speaker does not agree with the decision. Law-enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States. We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon.
And just like that, another point of contention between Trump and Ryan.
This comes on the heels of Trump’s most recent Twitter tirade in which the President essentially tried to pre-blame Ryan for the debt ceiling drama:
Now we’ll anxiously await Trump’s response which we imagine will be delivered via a series of 140-character virtual shouts – misspelled words and all.
As of now, there’s no word from Alex Jones.
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We have been wondering what was the red line trump could cross that would finally get them off their asses…not sure if this is it, but we can add it to the huge pile. McCain is outspoken about it, as he should be! Trump sure making them look like fools!
– Murphy
Want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt? Try a brain MRI. It occurred to me last night that if I represented the guy, the only truthful defense might be a brain tumor. So, take a look: “Infrequently, psychiatric symptoms may be the only manifestation of brain tumors. They may present with mood symptoms, psychosis, memory problems, personality changes, anxiety, * * *. Symptoms may be misleading, complicating the clinical picture.” There are small and slow growing brain tumors. I know that’s he’s always been a racist and damn liar. But I hear far and wide that he’s not at all the man people used to know as recently as three years ago.
“Symptoms that suggest work-up with neuroimaging include: new-onset psychosis, mood/memory symptoms, occurrence of new or atypical symptoms, personality changes, and anorexia without body dysmorphic symptoms.”
Yeah, yeah, I know, anorexia is not his problem.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582304/
Marty, might be easier to get Congress involved if there was a suspected medical condition as opposed to mental disorder. BUT I think the people that have not witnessed this behavior may not have seen him challenged or opposed and therefore not seen his reaction to something like that. There are also a large number of people who said something along the line of ‘he’s always been like this’ – so who knows. One thing good about your thoughts is the “medical” approach. Why the hell is there a doctor in an office in the White House if he does nothing? Maybe send him a letter. I believe I recall you already have his name. 🙂
– Murphy
I imagine a sufficiently imaginative Congress could interpret pardoning people for violating court orders as a presidential misdemeanor or high crime, even though the president does have the power to pardon people. After all, what’s the point of pretending to be governed by the rule of law if the executive simply pardons any government official who violates it?
However, I can’t see this being a “red line” for Republicans. For one, the primary voters they are concerned about are probably tickled pink by the pardon. For another, this is an oddly procedural moment to suddenly pick as your hill to die on after months of reluctant acquiescence.
My own feeling, and I’ve told this to people going into both bureaucracy jobs and politics several times, though with no apparent effect, is that you should always decide on red lines before starting the job and tell someone you trust what they are. Otherwise, no matter how low the descent may take you, it’s always one step at a time, and taken in isolation, each small step doesn’t seem so bad. Like pardoning Arpaio, just for example.
At least the pardon does NOT change the guilty verdict. In order to receive a pardon, the person has to agree they are guilty and that is forever. So when that racist pig dies, and he will, his legacy will be forever written what he did and that he was guilty. The icing on this cake will be that trump is “punished’ for doing it. So when the racist pig starts with his campaign that he has threatened to do next week, this “witch hunt” claim, it will not go well for him!
– Murphy
Although I agree with you, my guess is that to a growing number of Trump supporters, the court system — not to mention the whole concept of the rule of law — is already sufficiently in ill repute that a technical admission of guilt won’t matter to them. It’s just one of those things you have to say, kind of like when Trump does “presidential” for a couple of hours when it’s really, really important.
Ryan, McCain, Flake, Graham, etc. all they do is talk, talk, talk. Nothing more. Never any action. All “cover your ass” talk to preserve their futures post-Trump, which will come eventually as it does to all presidents.
Milbank – agree on that! which is why I make it a point every single month I send Cruz and Cronyn (TX) a note of discontent and I don’t mince my words. Sometimes I may have to send a special note based on some stupid thing they said or did or even worse, did NOT say or did NOT do! ha! I do not know if my emails get past some lower level person who reads them and calls me a name and tosses the email or reads it out loud to a fellow worker as a joke because I do say some stuff that may make one blush (!) or what actually happens to the emails they receive from their websites. I have called them chicken shit and lazy and worthless and crooked and have thrown trump in their face constantly. I have addressed notes to Lying Cruz. I have reminded him that trump told the entire planet that his wife Heidi was ugly and he was a wimp about it. I have done research on Cronyn and thrown deals in his face that were questionable and seemed more like self-service than working for the public. I have told them they may have got away with this crap for years but their time was up and if they couldn’t figure it out by now that trump had cooked their goose and we all saw what lazy jackasses they are and how they let that pathetic prick push them around and we were now done with them and they better bring their resumes current because they would soon be looking for a new job. Their free ride on my ticket was fucking over. So get busy and tell them how you feel. We know how you feel, we all feel the same way but nothing will change by all of us telling each other! Tell them often. Website for any of them is easy to find and fill in the blanks and send them your comments. I have an answer every single month. A stupid form letter thanking me blah blah blah and then I write them and tell them I got their stupid worthless bullshit and it just made me more angry and more determined to see them out of office! Try it. You just never know what rock you may turn over! (btw, I kinda think McCain is more on our side than on any of their sides)
– Murphy
McCain is now terminally ill and months away from death. He has nothing to lose anymore. When he did have something to lose, his run for senate last year, he ultimately and publicly backed Trump. McCain is just as amoral as Trump, he’s just not a sociopath like Trump. He is now more interested in his posterity than anything else.