Raw Story reports:
President Donald Trump on Monday defended his decision to pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio by citing applause from one of his rallies — and then attacked former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
“Well, a lot of people think it was the right thing to do and 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. You know the hurricane was just starting and I put it out we were pardoning as we say Sheriff Joe.
“When I mentioned him the other night, you saw the massive crowd we had, the people went crazy,” the president said. “The place went absolutely crazy when I was in Arizona last week.”
#Harvey on the way, but Trump's focused on TV ratings for pardoning a racist who ran a concentration camp in Arizona pic.twitter.com/SpTjbuM1Tz
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) August 28, 2017
Trump just said he pardoned Arpaio during Hurricane Harvey because it would get better "ratings" from people following the storm on TV.
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) August 28, 2017
Trump says he chose hurricane time to pardon a sadistic sheriff who ran concentration camps because the ratings would be high
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 28, 2017
Trump says President Obama "perhaps pardoned" Chelsea Manning, whom he did not pardon.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) August 28, 2017
Trump is purposefully misgendering Chelsea Manning on top of confusing a pardon with a commutation. Bigoted and stupid. https://t.co/tnKozX5IK6
— Calvin (@calvinstowell) August 28, 2017
President Trump slams Obama pardon of Chelsea Manning "who leaked to Wikileaks": "Horrible, horrible, horrible things he did."
— Steve Peoples (@sppeoples) August 28, 2017
"Whataboutism" all the way to the top. Trump says Arpaio? What about Marc Rich? What about Chelsea Manning? (So Arpaio is in that camp?)
— Jonathan Weisman (@jonathanweisman) August 28, 2017