If you hang around with criminals, sooner or later you are likely to be dragged into some illegal activity.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox was caught red-handed this week turning a visit to Arlington National Cemetery into a campaign fundraiser. Which is both illegal and in incredibly poor taste. Of course, Cox was in the company of former President Donald Trump.
Cox quickly disavowed the fundraising messages that were sent out with his signature and a photo of himself, the former president and a party of others who desecrated the nation’s most hallowed military cemetery in a crude attempt to blame the Biden-Harris administration for the nation’s bloody exit from Afghanistan three years ago.
“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” Cox’s office said. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent.”
Of course, Utah’s governor would not have been caught in the position of having to apologize — to blame unnamed campaign staff members for an appalling lack of judgment that Cox was responsible for — if he had stuck to his eight principled, if soft-spoken, years of Never Trumpism.
But, no. Cox recently flipped the most disgusting political flop since Sen. Mike Lee did the same thing and became a Trump supporter.
Why Cox would show such astoundingly bad judgement is not altogether clear. He seems to be coasting to re-election in a state that, while deeply red, has never been that fond of Trumpism.
For some reason he seems to think that he needs to be in the good graces of someone who has been convicted of 34 felony counts and faces many more federal and state indictments. Including a recently refiled case that rose from Trump’s alleged role in the violent attempt to block the legal transfer of power on January 6, 2021.
It is odd, too, that he would think it a good idea to visit a shrine of honor to American soldiers in the company of a man who has called our fallen heroes “losers” and “suckers.”
Maybe Cox is angling for a job in the next Trump Cabinet. Many of the people who worked in his last administration are now outspoken Trump critics, so there will be a lot of vacancies.
Though, in a macabre sort of way, a photo of Trump and Cox in a cemetery is appropriate.
It was where they came to bury Spencer Cox’s honor.