WASHINGTON—Things are rocking away quite splendidly here in the nation's capital. The president* had a nice lunch with some sheriff-type folks and he threatened an inconvenient public official whom he never has met and whom he wouldn't recognize if the poor sod sat in his lap. From The Dallas Morning News:

At a meeting Tuesday with sheriffs from around the country, Sheriff Harold Eavenson complained about a state senator who wanted to make it harder for law enforcement to get control of assets forfeited by drug traffickers.

"I want to hear his name. We'll destroy his career," Trump offered.

The sheriff shrugged and declined to offer a name during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, where Trump met with about a dozen sheriffs. Reached later by cellphone, Eavenson again declined to identify the lawmaker. He said he didn't take the president's offer to destroy the senator literally.

"He was just being emphatic that he did not agree with that senator's position," Eavenson said, adding of the senator in question, "I'm not into assassinating his character."

Let us be clear. Civil forfeiture is a license to steal. It is an open invitation for your local law enforcement officials to turn into the Haitian security police or the South Vietnamese Army. I would say that it's a temptation for corruption but, frankly, experience tells us it's more like a conditioned reflex for cops.

There's a state senator in Texas that was talking about legislation to require conviction before we could receive that forfeiture money," Eavenson told the president. "Do you believe that?" Trump said. "And I told him that the cartel would build a monument to him in Mexico if he could get that legislation passed," Eavenson said. "Who is that state senator? I want to hear his name. We'll destroy his career," Trump said, prompting laughter.

Also for members of the extended Trump family, as we have learned. Free stuff? Me some too, yes?

See, this is a funny joke if you're sitting around the 19th hole at Turnberry, gassing with network executives and the gang down in marketing. If you're the President* of the United States and you're telling this to a bunch of guys who can be the absolute law in whatever flyspeck from whence they came, that's a whole different thing. That gets people hiding under the bed, and it requires that the president take a public position on the issue of civil forfeiture.

Eavenson said he appreciated Trump's sentiment. "He was making a point about how much he opposed that kind of philosophy," the sheriff said. "I appreciated what the president said. I can assure you that he is on our side."

Well, that makes one of him.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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