Donald Trump tried to sneak in Joe Arpaio’s pardon during a hurricane. It backfired.
When politicians need to announce bad news that they’re hoping will go under the radar, they dump it out on Friday evenings. They’re banking on most of the public not paying attention over the weekend, and other new headlines having buried it by Monday. Donald Trump tried to take things even further by announcing his pardon of racist criminal Joe Arpaio on a Friday evening during a major hurricane. But the plan was too clever by half, and it backfired on him.
What Trump failed to consider is that during a spectacle as dire as Hurricane Harvey, people around the nation start tuning in to cable news who don’t usually watch. Some are genuinely worried about the peril that their fellow Americans are facing, while others are just transfixed gawkers. But either way, more attention was paid to cable news last night than on a typical Friday night. And sure enough, that meant they were exposed to the Trump pardon story as it flashed across the screen under video of hurricane fallout.
Moreover, the opportunistic crassness of trying to sneak a pardon in during a hurricane handed Trump’s critics an opportunity to hit him even harder for it. Even if the average non-political American has no idea who Arpaio is, and no clue if he’s a good or bad guy, they can put two and two together and figure out that Trump knew the pardon was inappropriate when he decided to sneak it in during a hurricane. In the court of public opinion, it’s consciousness of guilt.
We’ll see how big of a news story Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is by Monday morning. But for now, his attempt at burying it during Hurricane Harvey is already backfiring. He’d have done better to wait a week and dump it next Friday. But he’s so craven in his villainy that he can’t even consider the possibility of dialing it down for his own good.
