Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who you probably first learned about when he began encouraging violent uprisings against President Obama despite being, you know, a sheriff, has announced that he has accepted a position as an "assistant secretary" in Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security. Even for a White House that is already well-versed in handing out positions of power to dangerous people who are demonstrably bad at their jobs, Sheriff Clarke's appointment would be a new and despicable low.

Over the past several years, Clarke has parlayed his position as a municipal law enforcement official into bona fide right-wing pseudocelebrity status thanks to his willingness to go on Fox News and recite what sound like mad libs fashioned out of whatever blog posts happen to be leading Breitbart at that moment. He has carefully crafted his image to appeal to a right-wing media audience, rarely making public appearances without his comically oversized, Turd Ferguson-esque cowboy hat—which, given that he's a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, he presumably wears because he learned most of what he knows about what it means to be a "sheriff" from watching other people play them on TV.

Lately, Clarke has made the news in conjunction with the story of Terrill Thomas, a mentally ill inmate in Clarke's jail who died after staff "disciplined" Thomas by shutting off water to his cell for seven days. (He is the fourth person to die in Clarke's custody in the last year.) Thomas lost 35 pounds during that week and reportedly spent his last hours begging for water before dying inside his cell. After the incident was ruled a homicide—"profound dehydration"—Clarke allegedly responded by calling the chief medical examiner and vowing to have his license revoked. Just this month, a grand jury recommended that prosecutors file criminal charges against Clarke's staff. Now, the Trump administration is happily welcoming him into the fold.

Sheriff Clarke likes to portray himself as a no-nonsense, old-school cop, but he's really just a savvy opportunist who sees where political winds are blowing and responds in kind, the responsibility to protect and serve be damned. He is a lightweight version of Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former sheriff of Maricopa County whose swashbuckling tough-guy act ended in a humiliating election defeat last November. (Clarke's departure, incidentally, comes at a time when his approval rating is at 31 percent—worse than Trump!—and 65 percent of respondents think Clarke negatively affects Milwaukee County's image nationwide.) It took the Journal-Sentinel only a few hours after his announcement to post their "good riddance" editorial.

Clearly, he lost interest in being sheriff long ago and was no longer doing the job that voters elected him to do. But before he goes, Clarke owes this community an explanation for the four deaths that occurred in the jail last year. Voters deserve at least that much.

A proven track record of spewing race-baiting bile, encouraging social unrest, and literally killing inmates in your custody would torpedo one's job prospects under any other presidential administration, but for Trump, being "tough on crime," no matter the consequences, is a feature, not a bug.

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