Is the glass 99 percent empty or one percent full? With hope — like water — such calibrations don’t matter. You take what you can get. I say that as someone with a chronic case of Trump fatigue. All the ranting and raving seems futile and boring. Can we please change the channel?
I’m here to say don’t touch that dial. There’s reason for optimism. However, you need to squint squarely into the Arizona sun to see it. I’m speaking of Trump’s decision last week to pardon Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, America’s favorite colorfully cranky unrepentant racist. Earlier this year, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for flagrantly flouting court orders to stop racially profiling. Trump would have pardoned Arpaio — famous for dressing his inmates in pink underpants and incarcerating them in desert tents where the mercury hits 145 — even sooner, but even officials at his own Department of Justice resisted. Not even Trump, they cautioned, could issue a pardon before a conviction had been handed down. To do so, they objected, defied the laws of physics.
As dog whistles go, the Arpaio pardon qualifies as a screeching two-fer. First, it allows Trump to double down with the “white makes right” crowd in the wake of the uproar over his “very fine people” equivocations about Nazis and the Klan. More to the point, it signals Trump’s absolute willingness to pardon anybody for anything — no matter how shameful. For those worried about being brought up on charges of lying to FBI investigators about Trump’s ties to Russia, the Arpaio pardon was engineered to offer more reassurance than a year’s supply of Xanax.