Trump says he pardoned Joe Arpaio during Hurricane Harvey for the ratings

Hello, Houston is experiencing catastrophic flooding and North Korea fired a missile over Japan earlier today, but we can all rest easy tonight knowing that Donald Trump timed his pardon of Joe Arpaio, a vile racist who tortured mostly Latinx prisoners in what he freely described as “concentration camps,” in order to get better ratings. In a press conference with Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto earlier this afternoon, Trump insisted he did not pardon Joe Arpaio (or “Sheriff Joe,” as Trump and other racists affectionately call him) just as Hurricane Harvey began to bear down on the state of Texas in order to bury the announcement. He did it to maximize ratings.

“Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they were normally,” Trump said, adding that Arpaio is a good guy who’s “loved in Arizona,” even though only 21 percent of Arizonans supported the pardon in a poll conducted by Az Central last week.