Robert Mercer's Secret Adventure as a New Mexico Cop [View all]
Source: Bloomberg
Why was the fabulously wealthy Trump donor wearing a badge and a gun in a tiny desert town? To obtain something thats impossible to buy.
Robert Mercer probably would have flown into Roswell. From there1,800 miles from homehe wouldve traveled south through the high desert plains of southeast New Mexico, flat as a tortilla, past abandoned homesteads and irrigation machines moving in slow circles.
His phone reception wouldve gotten spotty when he turned left off Highway 285. He wouldve seen the bare limbs of a pecan orchard and a graveyard decked in plastic flowers. At the town hall in Lake Arthur, population 433, he wouldve met Police Chief William Norwood, a barrel-chested man with two spare rifle magazines on his belt. There, Mercer, the fabulously wealthy computer scientist who helped bankroll the election of President Donald Trump, wouldve reported for duty as a volunteer policeman.
If Mercers trips to Lake Arthur resembled my recent visit, he mightve climbed into the passenger seat of Norwoods police truck, whose black-and-white paint job is fading in the wind-whipped sand. He and Norwood mightve rolled past the house where someone reported spotting a stolen cara false alarm, it turns out. While monitoring radio chatter, the plutocrat and the chief might have jawed about the latest news in a town so small it has no stores: the recent pursuit of a motorist across half the county; the record of the high schools six-man football team; reports of stolen pecans. Pulling up a chair at an Italian restaurant in nearby Hagerman, the chief mightve urged Mercer to try the lasagna.
For most of the past six years, as Mercer became one of the countrys political kingmakers, he was also periodically policing Lake Arthur, according to the department. If he followed Norwoods protocolsand Norwood insists no volunteers get special treatmenthe wouldve patrolled at least six days a year. He wouldve paid for travel and room and board, and supplied his own body armor and weapon.
What they REALLY want, apparently... all these billionaire weapons connoisseurs- is to be in some kind of Hollywood fantasy along the lines of James Bond, Sylvester Stallone and Marvel Comics combined. And they can afford to create it for themselves, because when you've got billions, "Dude, Viagra's cheap" is irrelevant.
amazedly,
Bright