Flailing Donald Trump is about to piss off his own base at his Phoenix rally tonight

| 5:01 pm EDT August 22, 2017
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Donald Trump has spent the past week hyping the idea that he would use tonight’s rally in Phoenix to pardon racist former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In fact many members of his base are traveling to the event just so they can witness the pardon in person. Trump even tweeted a story about the pardon. But, in the latest sign that Trump is flailing and hesitant about what he even wants to do, he’s just pulled the rug out from under them.

MSNBC and ABC News have announced on-air this afternoon that Donald Trump’s own White House is confirming he will not pardon Joe Arpaio tonight. Of course Trump is so erratic and indecisive that he could still change his mind at the last second. But as of right now, Trump is all set to march into his rally in Phoenix, stand before his racist supporters who worship Arpaio as a local hero, and not pardon the guy after all. It’s an utterly bizarre move. And it points to just how swiftly Trump’s political strategy is unraveling.

At this point Trump’s only real remaining advisers are military Generals like Kelly and McMaster. And that’s certainly less dangerous to the country than the advice he was getting from crazed wingnuts like Steve Bannon or clueless political amateurs like Anthony Scaramucci and Jared Kushner. But the Generals don’t care about partisan politics. They don’t care about whether Trump’s racist base abandons him or not. So if they’ve convinced him not to pardon Arpaio because they don’t want the distraction, then they’re not doing him any political favors.

Donald Trump has already gone too many miles down the road of promoting racism and hatemongering to now be able to win over anyone in the mainstream by pulling his punches. So he’ll gain nothing politically tonight by not pardoning Joe Arpaio. Instead, by having hyped the idea for a week, only to end up not doing it, Trump has risked alienating his own base. He’s scoring no points with any side.