Continuing his alliance with the white-supremacist right, it appears that Donald Trump may indeed pardon an Arizona sheriff now notorious for his department's rampant racial profiling and his own criminal contempt charge for ignoring court orders to remedy those actions.
The White House has prepared the paperwork for President Trump to pardon former sheriff Joe Arpaio when he makes the final decision to do so, CNN has learned. [...]
One of the [already-prepared] talking points is that Arpaio served his country for 50 years in the military, the Drug Enforcement Administration and as Arizona's Maricopa County sheriff, and that it is not appropriate to send him to prison for "enforcing the law" and "working to keep people safe."
We don't know if that "final" decision has been made or if the collective supposed cooler heads in the White House have any ability whatsoever to discourage Trump from preemptively pardoning the criminal Arpaio before he serves a day of his sentence. The move would be widely seen as an open embrace of Arpaio's past racial profiling orders and a gesture towards the racists and white supremacists of his base.
It would likely be met only by token condemnation from congressional Republicans, who have long sought to take advantage of the white supremacist and nationalist movements themselves and who continue to remain in Donald Trump’s pocket.