Sheng Thao blew Brenda Grisham’s mind when the mayor “walked up to me,” Grisham reports on Twitter, and said, “I don’t know what I did but I’m sorry."
Okay, some context is needed. Thao is, of course, the beleaguered Mayor of Oakland, whom we are about to recall. Ms. Grisham is co-leader of the Recall Pamela Price movement. The two recalls are not legally connected, but they’re spiritually attached: both have been launched against extreme left wing wokes who have brought Oakland to its knees.
Thao’s statement came out of nowhere; it’s not like Ms. Grisham asked for an apology. What did Thao mean? She seems puzzled as to why so many people hate her and are trying to toss her out of office. If Thao truly doesn’t understand, then she lacks the intelligence to hold public office of any kind. She’s been on the road for months, campaigning against being recalled. She’s heard from thousands of her constituents, and their message couldn’t be clearer: they blame her, in part, for the crime, the encampments, the garbage, and for businesses leaving Oakland. They blame her for the Police Department’s woeful understaffing and low morale. They know that Thao repeatedly voted to defund the Police Department. They know that she’s never acknowledged her role in bringing Oakland down. They know she’s never criticized her Squad Sisters, Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and Nikki Bas, for turning Oakland into a squalid Gotham City. They see Thao on T.V. and she seems clueless, with a deer-in-the-headlights stare, even as she mouths clichés and banalities. Yet in spite of all this, Thao asks, “I don’t know what I did.”
Look, Madame Mayor, you’ll soon have plenty of time to figure it out. When we recall you, you can sit at home with your boyfriend 24/7, Googling “Sheng Thao” and “recall.” You can read the comments that follow everything you tweet, where the public tells you how sick and tired they are of you. You can simply read the above paragraph written by me that summarizes the public’s brief against you. One of these days you’ll get it: You’re the worst mayor Oakland has ever had (and that’s saying a lot, considering some of your predecessors). Nothing you say or do will ever convince voters otherwise; in fact, every time you open your mouth, you simply confirm our impressions of you. You’re a political and moral nullity. You stand for nothing except bowing down to corrupt union leaders. When you fired LeRonne Armstrong, that was the last straw. You took a good man, beloved throughout the community, and threw him under the bus because the corrupt Robert Warshaw ordered you to, and your union overlords went along. Sheng Thao, you may be qualified to work at 7-Eleven, but not to hold elected office.
You’re not sorry, Thao, so don’t tell us you are. Your tears are those of a crocodile. We citizens of Oakland do deserve an apology from you, but a real one, not a phony-baloney one like yours to Ms. Grisham. The time to apologize will be after you lose the recall when you’re humiliated by disgrace. Until then, you can’t apologize yourself out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into. Everything you say and do until Nov. 5 is just self-serving BS written by your PR hacks.
No, wait, there is one thing you can do before Nov. 5 that wouldn’t be self-serving. You could resign. That would be the honorable thing. It would require honor, though, which you don’t have.
Steve Heimoff