How Trump's Pardon Of Joe Arpaio Is Normal And Also Super F***ed Up

(intense music)
- Oh hello, welcome to some bonus news.
Twitter and the internet and the terrible car crash
that's so bad you can't not look at it -esque
actions of our president have turned everyone
into constant media consumers and citizen pundits.
Everyone is a media personality now, everyone has a take,
and everything seems like the end of the world,
so to simplify things and add some context to the outrage,
I'd like to introduce a new Some News game--
we do games on this show, right?
Called normal, not normal, and holy (bleep) (bleep).
Today in normal, not normal, and holy (bleep) (bleep),
a game we regularly do now, the topic is the controversial
pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Now at a base level, it's normal for a president
to pardon someone, literally all but two presidents
have issued pardons and FDR offered 3,687 pardons.
It's not normal but not unprecedented and crucially
not illegal, darn it, for a president to issue a pardon
without a sentence or DOJ review
and it's holy (bleep) (bleep) that he pardoned a guy
while clearly not understanding why he was in trouble
because President Trump said he's in trouble
for doing his job, when Arpaio is explicitly accused
of doing the opposite of that.
(intense music)
So let's dig into some specifics.
A lot of people are outraged because Sheriff Joe
has violated civil rights, and you should be outraged,
but pardoning someone who's violated civil rights
is not unprecedented, which I guess makes it normal?
Ronald Reagan granted pardons to W. Mark Felt,
aka Deep Throat, and Edward S. Miller, who were convicted
of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights
of anti-war radicals in the early '70s.
Reagan said he pardoned them because they broke laws
to bring an end to the terrorism that was threatening
our nation, which is not at all like President Trump's
reason for pardoning Arpaio, which was, again,
doing his job, aka a gross misunderstanding
of why we were all mad at Arpaio.
(intense music)
Sheriff Joe was one of the first prominent people
to come out in support of Trump back in the candidate days.
Oh, the candidate days.
So a lot of people are understandably upset
because the president is clearly just pardoning people
who were his buddies, which is awful,
because literally everyone who is nice to Trump sucks,
and is a bully, and most of them are doing crimes.
But still, pardoning someone clearly just because
they're a buddy is also not unprecedented.
Clinton pardoned his brother, who was in jail
for selling cocaine to an undercover police officer.
So there is another win for normal, I guess?
(intense music)
Now the subtext in all of this is that President Trump
pardoned Sheriff Joe to send a message on policy.
He's publicly told law enforcement officers in the past
that they can be harder on criminals and feel free
to rough them up and basically treat them like animals.
Now, by pardoning a racist, abusive sheriff
who among other things is racist and abusive
and tortured prisoners until some of them died,
President Trump is sending a message to other racist,
abusive law enforcers around the country.
If you get caught and in trouble,
don't worry, I'll bail you out.
It's a bigger and grosser version of this.
- So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato,
knock the crap out of 'em, would you?
Seriously. (cheering)
Okay, just knock the hell, I promise you,
I will pay for the legal fees, I promise.
- This is very holy (bleep) (bleep)
on an intellectual level because it means
that the president is endorsing Sheriff Joe's tactics
and that other law enforcement agencies
should behave similarly, but hardening to send a message
on policy is also incredibly common.
Obama commuted the sentences of a ton of prisoners
serving long sentences for nonviolent drug-related offenses
because he thought mandatory minimums for nonviolent
drug-related offenses was stupid, because it is.
Don't worry, this still isn't normal.
Sure, every unpopular thing surrounding this particular
pardon has a precedent, he hasn't done anything
that another president hadn't already done
but the not-normal aspect is about the number of things
that all apply to one pardon, a pardon without review,
a pardon for someone who violated civil rights,
a pardon for someone who's responsible for lives being lost,
a pardon for someone who didn't request it,
a pardon for someone before a sentence was even issued,
a pardon for someone who's a stooge,
a pardon to broadcast your policies, it's all been done
but stretched across multiple presidents.
This pardon checks more controversial boxes
than any one pardon in presidential history,
which makes it not normal.
Ah, we got one.
Holy (bleep) (bleep), our president sucks.
Thanks for watching.
(gentle music)
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How Trump's Pardon Of Joe Arpaio Is Normal And Also Super F***ed Up

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