Less than 24 hours after his foreign policy speech began with a scripted plea for unity and an end to bigotry, President Trump hinted Tuesday that he will soon pardon a lawman known for racial profiling, political vendettas, and the criminal brutality of prison inmates, including pregnant women.



Joe Arpaio has been known as "America's toughest sheriff," but he's actually a sociopathic nutball. He's also a criminal, convicted last month of contempt charges after defying a federal judge's order to cease his signature practice of illegally targeting Latinos, citizens or not, in his immigration roundups - and detaining 150 of them for years despite the absence of a crime.



Trump and the Maricopa County (Ariz.) sheriff are both nativists who co-founded the Birther movement, but it is Arpaio's lack of humanity that seems to appeal to the president, so he used him as an applause line during his dog whistle stop Tuesday night in Phoenix.



And though he has yet to pardon Arpaio - sentencing for the misdemeanor isn't until October, and applications take time to process - the president will likely seize this moment to endorse racism and lawlessness.



But since he likes to have "the facts" before he condemns the actions of Very Fine People, here are a few as they relate to Arpaio:

For years, he has ordered deputies to target residents solely on ethnicity, detaining them without reasonable suspicion, even after such stops were ruled unconstitutional.



The conditions of his outdoor prison - the infamous Tent City - have been compared to a concentration camp, where temperatures reach 141 degrees and inmates are subjected to humiliation like public parades. Health needs are ignored, particularly for women. A 2008 study from the Phoenix New Times showed many pregnant inmates were malnourished and miscarried as a result of the conditions - including a water well infested with mice, which carry toxoplasma.



His illegal enforcement practices compromised the community, as a 2011 Associated Press report found that Arpaio's office ignored hundreds of sex crime cases. The Justice Department confirmed that while he was busy rounding up Latinos just for being Latino, Maricopa County had an explosion in violent crime.



And taxpayers foot the bill for Arpaio's malpractice. Through 2008, Maricopa County had to pay more than $43 million in settlements to families of jail-abuse victims during his tenure. That year, a man received $1.6 million for wrongful arrest after being framed in an assassination plot against Arpeio - a plot staged by Arpaio to bolster his 2004 reelection bid.



In the end, the contempt charge is minor for such a monster. Arpaio, 85, is not going to jail while he has a pal in the Oval Office - one who asserts his appreciation for police brutality, and inflames conflict for his own amusement. In the aftermath of Charlottesville, the pardoning of a contemptible racist is this president's way of throwing snake oil on the fire.

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