David Alexander Clarke Jr. is the former sheriff of Milwaukee County, and a personification of the concept wingnut. He has been a regular contributor to Fox News – including being a co-host on Sean Hannity’s show – and hosts a podcast on TheBlaze. As a sheriff, Clarke was best known for mistreatment of prisoners (and don’t confuse that with being “tough on crime”); for abusing his office to serve his own, personal interests (including detaining people he had personal disagreements with over sports); and for forcing employees to undergo fundamentalist, proselytizing “training” sessions. He also advised Milwaukee County residents that 9-1-1 was not their best option, instead encouraging them to pursue vigilante justice; in taxpayer-financed radio ads, Clarke urged citizens to arm themselves and shoot people by whom they felt threatened, calling 9-1-1 only after potentially shooting and killing someone.
Clarke is the recipient of e.g. the 2013 Sheriff of the Year Award from the brazenly fascist Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, and has appeared at CPAC and on the Alex Jones show. As a sheriff, he was easily recognizable by his tendency to wear lots of pins and badges on his uniform when in public, many with no official meaning or purpose, to bolster his fascist credentials.
Trite wingnuttery
A staunch Second Amendment advocate and NRA spokesperson, Clarke has stated– in an appearance on Alex Jones’s show – that a federal assault weapons ban could spark “the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first revolution pale by comparison.”
Being adamantly anti-abortion, Clarke has also pushed the Black genocide conspiracy, asserting (lamely) that Planned Parenthood should be renamed “Planned Genocide”.
He has also been a vocal critic of Black Lives Matter, calling them“Black Lies Matter” (he’s got a penchant for inane wordplays) and constantly referring to BLM as a hate group and as “subhuman creeps”. He also, for good measure, claimed that BLM would eventually join forces with ISIS in order to destroy American society. Part of the blame for BLM lies at the feet of Obama, of course; no fan of Obama, Clarke has repeatedlyasserted that Obama has “classic narcissistic personality disorder” and criticized him for instance for having “pitted blacks against whites, he’s pitted Hispanics against Americans. It just turns to crap. But that’s part of his M.O., you know, he’s an Alinskyite.”Obama is, in fact, “a straight-up cop hater” and the Department of Justice hates cops and is leading an “ongoing witch-hunt” against police officers.
Here’s Clarke on why accepting Syrian refugees is “national suicide”.
LGBT rights
Like wingnuts in general, Clarke is no fan of LGBT rights. After the Orlando massacre, Clarke claimed that the massacre was a problematic “distraction” as it provided fuel for gun-control acvocates.
Clarke reacted to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality with predictable idiocy: “Next is rage, then revolt,” said Clarke, adding (because details and distinctions are irrelevant – Clarke really doesn’t care about details) “who would have thought that in the 21st century homosexuality would come out of the closet and churches would be forced to go into the closet?” Then he called for revolution: “If you call yourself an American, then you have to start a revolution in this country after what happened last week at the United States Supreme Court,” and for “pitchforks and torches.”
Conspiracy theories and denialism
In 2015, Clarke called for the suspension of habeas corpus in the US to round up “internal enemies”, because there ostensibly were “hundreds of thousands” or “maybe a million” people who “have pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort”; he promptly called for the president to imprison them at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp “and hold them indefinitely under a suspension of habeas corpus” (yeah, “fascism” might be a term that is thrown around a lot, but come on). In 2018, he claimed that students calling for gun control after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, were enmeshed in a Soros-backed conspiracy: “The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS’ FINGERPRINTS all over it”, just like BLM is, ultimately, the creation of Soros.
Not one to let the COVID nonsense denialist train leave the station without him and his clown horn, Clarke has of course dabbled in COVID disinformation. Calling the virus “just the damn flu”, Clarke labeled measures to prevent the spread of the virus “an orchestrated attempt to destroy capitalism.” He also suggested thatSoroswas somehow involved in the pandemicbecause why not, given his audience. (“Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s involvement in this FLU panic. He is SOMEWHERE involved in this,” asserted Clarke).
More lately, he has (but of course) been pushing MAGA 2020 election conspiracy theories and calling for Congress to establish a commission to investigate the FBI (and fire FBI Director Wray fired and replace him with either Michael Flynn or Ken Cuccinelli), while seeking, according to his spokesperson Judy Wilkinson, “to become a thought leader in the conservative movement.”
Trump
Because he is a wingnut moron, Trumpappointed Clarke, an ardent fan, to the position of Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Partnership and Engagement in the Trump Administration.After a bit of backlash, Clarkehad to rescind his acceptance of the offer a month later.He was later a central part of Steve Bannon and Brian Kolfage’s We Build the Wall scam.
Diagnosis: An unapologetic fascist. Yes, that term is thrown around a lot, but it’s hard to overlook Clarke’s willingness to “strike first” and use violence against what he perceives to be internal enemies of the Sate, and his explicit push to suspend due process to suppress political opponents. And he has huge audiences who apparently share his views. Extremely dangerous.