Sheriff David Clarke's Greatest Hits
He's apparently been booted from Fox News. But we'll always have Cleveland.
Hey, remember Sheriff David Clarke? He was a MAGA media fixture in the early Trump days, a loudmouth cop who, like Arizonaās Joe Arpaio, managed to parlay his track record of brutal and bungling law enforcement into a tough-on-crime national brand. You probably havenāt thought of Clarke in a while, and on Tuesday the Daily Beast announced why: The peopleās sheriff was quietly blacklisted at Fox News in early 2018, and hasnāt been back on their airwaves since.
The weirdest part of the story is that it took this long for anybody to notice. Itās a cautionary tale in our era of 24-hour media saturation: You can make a national name for yourself yakking it up on TV, but that doesnāt mean people will miss you when your 15 minutes of fame are up. Thus will we all be swept into the dustbin of history.
Yet as the old saying goes: Donāt cry because itās over; smile because it happened. Here are a few of the gems Sheriff Clarke gifted to us during his brief moment in the limelight.
Humble beginnings with Alex Jones
Clarke first took over as sheriff of Milwaukee County in 2002, and quickly began to make a name for himself in local media (including on the radio show then hosted by our own Charlie Sykesāthe oughts were a wild time!). By 2013, he was making forays into national mediaāas when he went on Alex Jonesās radio show that February to discuss liberalsā plans to take away patriotic American citizensā guns, and to insist he would refuse to follow such an order if one came down from higher up.
āA lot of analysts I talk to think the Obama-Marxist types want to start a civil war in this country,ā Jones said then. āTheyāve got to know whatās going to happen if they try to confiscate guns.ā
āFirst of all, to me that would be an act of tyranny,ā Clarke responded. āSo the people in Milwaukee County do not have to worry about me enforcing some sort of order that goes out and collects everybodyās handgun or rifles or any kind of firearm and makes them turn them inā¦ The reason is I donāt want to get shot. Because I believe that if somebody tried to enforce something of that magnitude, you would see the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first revolution pale by comparison.ā
Bringing down the house in Cleveland
Clarkeās brand expanded over the next few years as he became perhaps Americaās most prominent African-American voice regularly denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement. āItās garbage,ā he said on Fox & Friends in October 2015. āItās as subversive movement. They advocate the overthrow of our legally constituted governmentā¦ There is no police brutality in the United States.ā
This sort of rhetoric led to his real big break in July 2016, when he was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In a fiery speech, he praised Donald Trumpās record on supporting law enforcement and extolled āthe importance of making America safe again.ā
āLadies and gentlemen, I would like to make something very clear,ā he began. āBlue lives matter in America!ā
The Twitter bandit
Although best known as a TV firebrand, Clarke saved some of his edgiest content for his followers on social media. In January 2018, Clarke was briefly suspended on Twitter after he wrote the following: āBREAKING NEWS! When LYING LIB MEDIA makes up FAKE NEWS to smear me, the ANTIDOTE is go right at them. Punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD. Nothing gets a bully like LYING LIB MEDIAāS attention better than to give them a taste of their own blood.ā
Clarke later deleted the tweet, and got the keys to his account back.
The Parkland incident
Alas, Clarke was soon to learn that some takes are too spicy even for Fox. On February 14, 2018, on the day of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Clarke made his final Fox TV appearance, going on Sean Hannityās show to discuss the incident. In his segment, Clarke stayed relatively tame, sticking to relatively boilerplate GOP mass shooting talking points:
āThe worst thing you can do I think in a time like this is, in the early stages, your emotion takes over. You canāt let emotion drive public policy. You will end up with bad policyā¦ This is not a gun control issue. We donāt need any knee jerk reactions, which is what I hear after things like this. My god, letās let the grieving period happen for these families.ā
Within a few days, however, Clarkeās views had evolved considerably:
https://twitter.com/SheriffClarke/status/965962123535966208
Someone at Fox evidently decided at last that theyād do well to steer clear of rhetoric like this, because Clarke hasnāt appeared on the network since.
Soldiering on
Of course, it isnāt all sad news for the peopleās sheriff. If he canāt do TV, he can still content himself with his massive following on Twitter, where he continues to rant about the issues of the day to his 900,000 followers.
Real legends never really die.
