Trump’s potential pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, explained

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I don’t think Trump will pardon Arpaio. There’s too much for Trump to lose politically on it and Trump only gives a shit about himself. But it would give credence to the Inverse Trump Square Law if he does. With his head swelling from the pundits calling him Presidential last night, this would be the perfect example of him going immediately off the rails:

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump is returning to the place where, in some ways, it all began for him: Phoenix, Arizona, where he held his first multi-thousand-person rally in July 2015.

This time, he won’t have (now-former) Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio by his side — Arpaio has said he hasn’t been invited to Tuesday’s rally. But Arpaio’s shadow still looms large over the rally. After all, President Trump has floated the possibility that he might soon bestow his first presidential pardon upon Arpaio, absolving him of the criminal contempt-of-court conviction he got last month for continuing to engage in aggressive immigration enforcement in defiance of a 2011 court order.

Pardoning Arpaio, who hasn’t even been sentenced yet, would be an unusual move, to say the least. But it would make a tremendous amount of sense for Trump. Not only would the president be doing a favor for an early endorser, who helped validate Trump among the immigration hardliners who have since become a large share of his base; it would send a powerful message to sheriffs around the country who are worried that cooperating with federal immigration authorities could get them into trouble with the courts as well.

The Inverse Trump Square Law is in Effect

Chris Leave a comment 5 views

The Inverse Trump Square Law states that every victory for Trump is inversely proportional to the clusterfuck of bad decisions that he does immediately afterwards.

Last time he had a “victory” was when he got the repeal debate vote passed. Immediately following that he tweeted a call for a transgender ban in the military, gave a speech to the Boy Scouts which was so bad that they actually had to apologize for it, he fired his chief of staff, his director of communications went on a rant with a New Yorker reporter and was fired within the next few days and McCain torpedoed the repeal bill.

Last night, Trump gave a speech and the pundits immediately declared it a victory for Trump:

Oh boy. Let’s see what’s on Trump’s schedule. Oh, a rally in Arizona. What could go wrong?

There’s Always a Tweet, Always (Part 1,832,009)

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That Game of Thrones Episode

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Instead of watching President Shit for Brains read words off of a teleprompter, hence allowing him his moment where he finally becomes President of the United States, I caught up on the latest episode of Game of Thrones. I have some questions but there will be spoilers so scroll past this if you haven’t watched it yet. One more time:
SPOILER ALERT:

What the fuck was that about? This zombienapping plan was so bad that I’m assuming that Daenerys’s new slogan is “Make Westeros Great Again.” I am bad at watching tv shows because I have a tendency to surf the web during it so sometimes I miss the finer points. But was Tyrion’s plan basically:

  1. Capture zombie and bring it to Cersei
  2. ???
  3. Profit

Even in the best possible scenario of this going down without a hitch, it’s not like Cersei has ever acted rational. What is the best case outcome? Is sending the King of the North out on some suicide mission the best use of your resources? And even if they did decide it was worth the gamble, shouldn’t you have your air support a bit closer to the action. In fact, why not just ride a dragon beyond the wall, swoop down and capture a damn wight like it was a goat. At the very least bring an emergency raven along with you to save Gedry a marathon.

This plan was so half-baked that they are lucky they weren’t all wiped out by that bear attack. We won’t even get into the distances covered, how long it took for Gedry to make it to the wall then to send out the ravens then for the dragons to come to the rescue. Well, kind of.

Everything just felt really clunky. Dany’s dragons are too powerful and they needed a way to balance the playing field a bit which is understandable. But did they need the Rube Goldberg machine to accomplish it?