Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo is all but putting orange makeup on his face in an attempt to look like a true Donald Trump Republican and get the former president’s endorsement in his run for governor.
His campaign is promoting him as “the law enforcement candidate,” a la Trump’s “I am the law and order candidate” mantra in his 2016 campaign. Lombardo is promising to “take our state back,” which sounds an awful lot like Make America Great Again. He’s scapegoating Gov. Steve Sisolak and the Democratic-majority Legislature for fueling a rise in crime by going soft on criminal statutes.
While he hasn’t outright begged for Trump’s endorsement, his campaign told Fox News last week that Lombardo would be “honored” to receive it.
But it’s a con job, and Trump would be a fool to fall for it.
Lombardo’s no Republican extremist, or at least he wasn’t before he began playing one during his run for governor. He sounded moderate notes on immigration and gun policy, for a Republican: For instance, he was neutral on the 2016 ballot question on universal background checks for firearm sales, and he’s since said he supports it.
Meanwhile, he’s tap-danced when pressed on his position on the Big Lie, and ducked questions on his stance on other issues. There have been three debates between Republican gubernatorial candidates — Lombardo has participated in none of them.
In his role as Clark County’s sheriff, Lombardo had an obligation to investigate if he thought there was a crime committed in the election. He didn’t. He sat on his hands because he knew the Big Lie was a Big Lie and there was zero evidence of fraud. If he was a true Trumper, Lombardo betrayed his god and left him hanging.
You listening, Donny? Of course not. And Lombardo is playing you for a fool.
Yet here Lombardo is, jockeying along with his rivals in the gubernatorial race for Trump’s endorsement. And with some polls showing him as the front-runner, Trump may very well be considering giving it to him.
If so, though, Trump’s allowing himself to be had. Based on Lombardo’s performance so far as a gubernatorial candidate, it’s clear he would betray Trump in a hot second if doing so would work to his political advantage.
Trump talks about RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) but Lombardo is a TINO, Trumpist In Name Only.
Trump appears to be too dumb to know this, given that he hasn’t rejected Lombardo or anybody else in the race despite giving his stamp of approval to candidates for other offices.
We don’t pretend to know what happens in Trump’s hamster cage of a mind, but surely he sees that there are other real apostles of his in the race. Michele Fiore is one, and she can prove it after being one of the first prominent Nevada Republicans to back Trump in 2016. She has been a backer ever since. Lawyer and former boxer Joey Gilbert, who was at the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, is another.
Trump can endorse true allies like one of these two, or get played by Lombardo and presumably by one particularly wealthy GOP contributor who we believe is funding Lombardo. Both are no doubt laughing at Trump behind his back. As he has demonstrated time and again, Trump is too simple to know when he’s being manipulated by people vastly more clever than him.
Lombardo is a pretender. Everybody sees it, including his GOP rivals. They justifiably criticized him recently when he rescinded Metro’s vaccination ban for reasons that he claimed were related to a downturn in infections. In reality, he was caving to political pressure to adopt the GOP’s anti-vax mentality.
Love or loathe Fiore, she hit the right notes for the Trump extremists in her party by saying that politicians like Lombardo “are conservatives when election time comes, but the minute they get elected they screw us over.”
“If Lombardo believed in freedom, he never would have instituted a vaccine mandate,” she said.
North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, who’s also vying for governor, got it right by saying that “Everything (Lombardo) does is calculated politically to maneuver the system, but it’s not working.”
Beyond that, here’s another big difference between Lombardo and Trump: For all of Trump’s faults, he isn’t afraid to answer questions from people who are critical of him. Lombardo, on the other hand, hasn’t participated in any of the three debates between GOP candidates and has routinely ducked reporters. He did so again last week after presenting his annual State of the Department address where his deputies rushed him out of the room before a question could land on his snowflake ears. Lombardo makes Lindsay Graham’s spinelessness look brave.
Trump may be the only important player in this situation who isn’t seeing Lombardo for exactly what he is.
The former president, who brags about his ability to read people and get over on them when they’re trying to take advantage of him, is letting Lombardo make him look indecisive and weak. Really weak.
Is Trump a chump? Lombardo’s counting on it.