A Very Big Fish in a Very Small Barrel Sam Clov

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A Very Big Fish in a Very Small Barrel

Sam Clovis bit off more than he can chew.


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By Charles P. Pierce

Nov 1, 2017

Oh, Sam, my pal. Why didn’t you just stay in Iowa, where you were a big fish in a very small pond, instead of hitching yourself to the cowcatcher on the Trump Train and thus transforming yourself into a very big fish in a very small barrel?

Anybody who’s been around the Iowa caucuses is familiar with Sam. He used to work at the Pentagon, but he went back to the Midwest, got a teaching job in Iowa, and became one of the leading lights of that state’s Tea Party conservatism.

He became a popular—if predictably loony—talk-show host on a radio station in Sioux City. He even ran for statewide office twice, losing a Republican primary for the U.S. Senate to my new friend, Joni Ernst, and then losing a race for state treasurer to Democratic candidate Michael Fitzgerald. Sam Clovis was a star.

But Sam Clovis took one more grab for the brass ring, abandoning Rick Perry’s doomed second presidential campaign in favor of working for the president*. And, as has been the case with so many others who have danced that infernal dance, the fiddler is now coming around for payment.

From NBC News:

"George Papadopoulos was arrested in July and began cooperating with agents, records show — disclosing his interactions with a professor and other Russians whom the FBI suggested in court documents may have been working for Russian intelligence agencies.

He pleaded guilty to making false statements on Oct. 5. The court documents unsealed Monday describe emails between Papadopoulos and an unnamed "campaign supervisor."

The supervisor responded "Great work" after Papadopoulos discussed his interactions with Russians who wanted to arrange a meeting with Trump and Russian leaders. Toensing confirmed that Clovis was the campaign supervisor in the emails."

Clovis, a former Air Force officer and Pentagon official who unsuccessfully ran for Iowa State Treasurer in 2014, was the Trump campaign's chief policy adviser and national co-chairman.

He is currently serving as a White House adviser to the Agriculture Department, awaiting Senate confirmation before the Agriculture Committee for the scientist job. He is not a scientist.

Sam already has had one chat with a federal grand jury and almost certainly will be called back for a repeat performance. He should have stayed in Sioux City. Life was good there.

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