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Trump Says He Pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio During The Hurricane For The ‘Ratings’

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Katherine Speller

One of the more controversial moves of President Donald Trump’s political career (one full of controversy) came on Friday evening when he announced his intention to pardon Joe Arpaio —the former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff convicted of criminal contempt for continuing to racially profile and detain people he suspected of being undocumented immigrants (despite being ordered by a judge to stop).

Adding yet another layer to the controversy? The former reality star-turned president said on Monday that he announced the pardon on Friday — during the beginning of Hurricane Harvey coverage — because he thought it would have better “ratings.” 

While many, including Senate Minority Leader and New York Senator Chuck Schumer, alleged that Trump’s timing on Friday was “using the cover of the storm” (AKA a move called a “news dump”) to avoid scrutiny, Trump himself said during a press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö that he wanted the story to be big.

“Actually in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening,  I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally,” Trump said.

 

The move of pardoning Arpaio did lead to significant outrage, storm or not. 

As the Washington Post reported, Arpaio’s reputation as being particularly cruel to hispanic individuals was well-documented. His local paper the Phoenix News Times compiled an exhaustive list of their coverage of his various controversies on Twitter, including allegations that he ran “concentration camp”-like tent-city prisons that had several instances of unexplained deaths of prisoners and documented cases of unnecessarily violent/aggressive treatment from guards. 

Given the widespread condemnation of Trump’s pardon from all sides of the political spectrum, the only ratings the President should probably be considering right now are his historically low approval ratings. 

(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore Joe Arpaio via photopin (license)) 

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Katherine (or Katie) is the News Editor and resident witch at Her Campus. She first fell in love with journalism while attending SUNY New Paltz ('14). Since then, she has worked on the staffs at MTV News and Bustle writing about politics, intersectional social issues and more before serving as staff researcher at Lady Parts Justice League. Her work has been published in Women's Health, the Daily Dot, Public Radio International (PRI) and WNYC and she's been a regular panelist on a few podcasts (mostly screaming about repro rights.)  She is a Libra with a Taurus moon and a Scorpio ascendant, which either means nothing or everything. She loves strong diner coffee, reading tarot for strangers at the bar and watching the same three horror movie documentaries. She lives in the Hudson Valley with too many animals.