KATIE HOBBS WANTS TO TALK ABOUT PRIORITIES
Governor Hobbs went on KTAR this week to tell Arizonans that Andy Biggs is disqualified because he called for pardons for January 6 defendants.
He did call for those pardons. He tweeted it. I’ll defend that position all day. Most of those people were nonviolent, and a country that jails citizens for years over a protest has bigger problems than the protest.
But since the Governor wants to talk about priorities, let’s talk about hers.
March of 2023. ARIZONA state senator Wendy Rogers had Defend the Guard moving through the Arizona Senate. One page. One sentence. Arizona’s Guardsmen don’t get sent into combat unless Congress declares war, the way the Constitution requires. The Arizona Senate passed it. First legislative chamber in the entire country to do it.
And where was the Governor of Arizona?
On a plane to Muscat, OMAN!
Nine weeks into her first term as governor. Second foreign trip of her governorship. She flew eight thousand miles and eleven time zones to a palace on the Arabian Peninsula, and she stood in a room while her adjutant general (a community college professor and career lawyer…..PUKE) signed a document binding the Arizona National Guard to the armed forces of the Sultanate of Oman.
Training together. Exercising together. Co-deploying together. Joint defense.
She didn’t sign it herself. She crossed half the planet to be in that room and let somebody else hold the pen. Then her own press office put out a statement calling her, and I’m quoting, “the Governor and Commander in Chief of the Arizona National Guard” who “participated in” the ceremony.
Participated in.
She wanted the constitutional title in the press release and somebody else’s name on the paper.
Then she went sightseeing.
Her own office published the itinerary, so I’m not guessing at any of this. She toured the Grand Mosque. She toured the National Museum. She went to a private school and took questions from eighth graders.
Her staff had a phrase for it. Cultural touring.
And there she is in the photographs. The Governor of Arizona, head covered, moving through the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque…in a head scarf…Grateful for the hospitality, as her own statement put it. Grateful for the privilege.
Governor, I want you to hear what that looks like from Phoenix.
You covered your head for the customs of a foreign nation. You would not lift a pen for the sovereignty of your own.
You had the deference to observe every protocol the Sultanate asked of you. You did not have the nerve to sign your own name to what was being done in yours.
You were grateful for the privilege of working with the Sultan’s Armed Forces. You have never once said you were grateful for the Arizona Guardsmen who would be the ones deploying alongside them.
And here is the thing that should end this conversation.
The Arizona Legislature never voted on that document. The United States Senate never ratified it. And you cannot read it. I have looked. The text isn’t published anywhere on this earth.
Last week the President of the United States said that if Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.
So line them up, Governor.
Andy Biggs sent a tweet about pardons.
You flew to a middle eastern Muslim sultanate, claimed the title of Commander in Chief in writing, watched an unelected appointee sign Arizona’s militia over to a foreign army, toured their holy sites in a head scarf, and came home. Three years later the President is threatening to bomb the country you partnered our kids with.
One of those is a political opinion.
The other one is a state’s militia bound to a foreign military under a document its own legislature has never been permitted to see.
You want to talk about working against the will of Arizona’s voters?
Arizonans deserve answers about Andy Biggs’ role in planning January 6th.