Confirming rumors that Sarah Palin might crawl out from under her frozen tundra to endorse Donald Trump, the big moment came today in a statement from the Trump campaign. For Trump this means that his campaign has now been validated by perhaps the most comically ignorant mainstream politician in decades. He must be so proud. [Update: video of Palin’s endorsement speech added below]

Trump getting an endorsement from Sarah Palin is a fairly predictable turn of events. After all, both Trump and Palin are former reality TV characters who pretended to represent an entirely scripted version of their cartoon personas. Both of them are unashamed of displaying rank idiocy (and then defending it). Both of them are flagrantly racist, homophobic, and itching to declare war on any little country they think looked at us funny. Both of them support unfettered proliferation of guns in America, where more than 30,000 people die every year from gun violence. They even refuse to support legislation that would prohibit terrorists from getting guns. Both of them have a visceral hatred for President Obama and an unsettling infatuation with Vladimir Putin (Trump thinks they’d be best buds and Palin is hot for his bear-wrestling manliness).

Left in the lurch is poor, old, and universally disliked, Ted Cruz. Palin had previously backed Cruz’s senatorial campaign and they have been fast friends ever since. They also share a spiritual bond that Donald Trump, with his blatantly irreligious posturing, cannot possibly match. But getting jilted has inflamed Cruz to caution Palin that her endorsement of Trump would tarnish her reputation. Assuming for the sake of argument that Palin has a reputation capable of being tarnished, the gist of Cruz’s warning is that an association with Trump is a dirty affair. And Cruz knows dirty affairs as evidenced by his proud acceptance of an endorsement from Palin pal Phil Robertson of the Duck Dynasty (in the most bizarre political video I’ve ever seen).

The question now is: What can Trump expect to get from a Palin endorsement? Palin is a has-been political loser who resorted to trashy TV in order to salvage her floundering career and advance her greed and lust for attention. She was fired from Fox News (twice). Following that humiliation she launched an online video channel that went offline less than a year later due to lack of interest. Then she announced, with great fanfare, her hosting of a nightly program on the wingnut fringe “One America News” network. That lasted less than a dozen episodes. Notably, the second to the last episode was an interview of Donald Trump.

Palin’s most recent endorsement prior to this was of France’s Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the leader of the openly fascist Front National Party (she lost). Palin praised Le Pen as the “It Girl” on whom she has a crush. Palin, Le Pen, and Trump all share the same ideology that advocates deporting all them evil foreigners, carpet bombing civilians, and imposing Christianity as the mandatory faith of their hoped-for theocracy. Then Palin could implement her plan to force everyone in the country to “speak American.”

And what’s in it for Palin? Well, Trump is easily the biggest spectacle in the GOP circus. Palin undoubtedly hopes that hitching her rickety wagon to Trump will get it rolling again. She has proven repeatedly that her primary motivations have always been promoting herself. Never mind that she is the mother of a special needs child who is embracing a man who callously mocked a reporter with physical disabilities. That’s not as important as getting a pitchman like Trump to raise your profile and hawk your books. Cruz would not be nearly as useful from that marketing perspective. Also, Cruz would not likely consider Palin for a cabinet post in his administration, while Trump has already speculated on it, specifically mentioning Energy Secretary.

What’s more, Palin’s base of support has dwindled severely. When was the last time anyone made reference to the Tea party in anything other than a joke? Palin even had a brutal falling out with Glenn Beck, who recently said that “I don’t care what Sarah Palin says any more. Sarah Palin has become a clown. I’m embarrassed that I was once for Sarah Palin. Honestly, I’m embarrassed.” Coming from someone that once described himself as a “rodeo clown,” that’s pretty scathing.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The farce surrounding Trump’s candidacy just keeps getting more bizarre. His pathological lies (see the Trump Bullshitopedia), his noxious bigotry, his unabashed ignorance, are setting new lows for a Republican Party that was already underwater. And now he’s excited about an endorsement from a washed up grifter whose public profile has been in a steep free fall for the past few years. She didn’t help John McCain get to the White House at the height of her popularity, so there’s no reason to think she would be much help to Trump, the guy who insulted McCain as not being a war hero because he had been captured and held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. And there’s something else That Trump and Palin have in common, a complete lack of any sense of loyalty.

Here’s a heaping serving of Palin’s Word Salad.

[Addendum:] Last night Sarah Palin’s eldest son, Track, was arrested for punching his girlfriend and brandishing a gun while drunk. So while her son was facing multiple violent criminal charges in Wassilla, the Grizzly Mama was partying with Trump. It’s funny that a woman whose son is a divorced domestic abuser, and whose daughter has two out-of-wedlock kids, is constantly lecturing other people about family values.