Sheriff who called Orlando massacre a ‘distraction’ joins Trump super PAC

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 28: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke leaves Trump Tower on November 28, 2016 in New York City. President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Former sheriff David Clarke, who referred to the Orlando massacre as a ‘distraction’, has landed a job at a pro-Trump super PAC.

The controversial former Sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, confirmed this week that he is joining the America First Action super PAC, which supports Trump’s election campaigns.

The official, who had been rumoured for a role in the Trump administration itself,  has made a string of extreme anti-LGBT comments in the past.

Speaking on his show on TheBlaze Radio Network last year, Clarke claimed discussions after the massacre at an Orlando gay club were a “distraction”.

He said: “Folks, we took the cheese. It refers to a mouse trap, with a nice big chunk of cheese on it. You know what’s going to happen if that mouse touches the cheese.

“That’s precisely what we did following the Orlando terror massacre. We allowed the left to use gun control as a shiny object to distract us from Mrs Bill Clinton’s flaws.

“We were hammering her over Benghazi, and what the left do is exploit these distractions, something came up, a shiny object… they know they can bury us in this thing that isn’t going to change anything.

“Don’t take the cheese! We spent a whole week taking about what they wanted us to talk about… it got us off of the momentum about the Clinton e-mail scandal.”

(Photo by MIKE THEILER/AFP/Getty Images)

Clarke added: “We could have talked about a lot of things around Orlando, the failure of Barack Obama… we missed that opportunity.

“When the Democrats throw a shiny object out there, we need to take that and turn it into tying it around the neck of Mrs Bill Clinton.”

In the same podcast he attacked the “freakish lifestyle” of transgender people, claiming they have mental disorders.


He fumed: “Folks, more evidence that transgender persons suffer from mental disorders more than physiological disorders.

“Too often in this assault on the First Amendment, and this very totalitarian attitude from the left that any freakish lifestyle is now considered part of the norm, and they’re shoving it down our throats.

“If you’re not careful when you engage in this conversation, they’ll look for the trap, and they’ll catch you saying something that’s clumsy or not well articulated, and then they’ll just attack you with it… Transgender-phobic and all this other nonsense.”

In a statement today he said: “It’s truly an honor to join the America First Action team, most importantly because we share the same values that most hard-working, law-abiding Americans do.”