I was chatting via text with a friend Thursday in the wake of the news that Trump loyalist Michele Fiore had been pardoned after being convicted in federal court of pocketing money she had claimed was for a police memorial.

I told him that I was not surprised, to which he replied: “But I think when we stop being shocked, it just moves the goalposts a little bit further.”

My riposte: “When we stop expressing outrage is the point. No need to be shocked anymore.”

I think this holds for anyone these days, but perhaps especially for journalists. Even though we hear about the Trump strategy of flooding the zone so we Fourth Estaters can’t focus on one story, the Fiore pardon should not be glossed over because it is so redolent of how easy it is to become inured when we simply cannot be insensate.

This is news that cries out to be contextualized, to not simply report that Fiore was pardoned, but to show that there literally was no justification for the presidential action, nor did he provide any. And that is par for Trump’s course, his hope that he utters so many obvious falsities in one day (hour? press availability?) that we can’t possibly focus on one and so our distillation and contextualizing is lost in a tweet. And an X post is lost as quickly as Elon exited DOGE.

Facts matter. Don’t they? Context matters. Doesn’t it?

The Fiore pardon is an exemplar of this and again why journalism matters more than ever: Eric Neugeboren’s story pointed out some of her history, but there is more I can say, having been there to cover her since 2010.

Fiore has skirted propriety and the law since she first burst on the scene a decade and a half ago after a brief stab at acting. Since then, Fiore has cycled through a series of elected and appointive jobs (Assembly, city council, justice of the peace) and electoral failures (Congress, state treasurer). Her stock in trade is as a skilled retail politician (hey, she can make a great spaghetti!) who hides behind a mask of civility and grandmotherliness to try to conceal an unhinged, vulgar grifter.

She glommed onto Trump when he came on the scene just as she had previously been an apologist/defender of the Bundy clan, which turned years of trespassing on federal land to a far-right cause célèbre. I can’t detail all of her idiocies here, but she has proven to be a crass public figure (she once told a colleague on floor of the Assembly to “sit your ass down” and had a physical altercation with a city council member and former BFF ) and a failed businesswoman (she had seven figures in tax liens and had her enterprise shuttered by the state) whose litany of insane utterances include saying cancer is a fungus that can be cured with baking soda and saltwater and who left the council (and Las Vegas) after being accused of making racist comments.

Trust me; this is the tip of the iceberg. She has done so many inexplicable, weird things that her gun-filled Christmas card is but a footnote. She is a proverbial piece of work who was ostracized by those she worked with and who maintained a small core of rabid MAGA supporters. Although many were slightly surprised when Nye County made her a justice of the peace even though she has no law degree, very few were shocked when she was indicted and then convicted for a transparent scam. The Indy had reported on similar behavior with campaign contributions and her daughter years earlier.

Trump pardoned her with no explanation for what was widely seen as an open-and-shut case, made stronger when Gov. Joe Lombardo suggested in his testimony he was, as sheriff, “a victim” of her mendacity. From the Department of Justice release after she was convicted:

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Michele Fiore, 54, of Pahrump, Nevada, while serving as a Las Vegas city councilwoman, solicited donors for money to build statues honoring two Las Vegas police officers who had been killed in the line of duty. The evidence at trial demonstrated that Fiore promised donors that “100% of the contributions” would be used towards the construction of memorials for the fallen officers. However, Fiore did not use any of the more than $70,000 in charitable donations she raised for the memorials. Instead, Fiore spent the money donated by the victims on a variety of personal and political expenses, including political fundraising bills, personal rent payments, and payments to family members.

All Fiore has ever had is conspiracy theories and bilious attacks. Speculation that she would be pardoned began shortly after Trump’s election – she happily wore the mantle of “Lady Trump” during her career and her pal and successor as GOP national committeewoman, Sigal Chattah, was soon appointed by Trump as interim U.S. attorney while retaining her RNC post (yet another outrage).

Fiore’s Facebook post in the wake of the pardon was full of faux sanctimony and Scripture-quoting as she thanked God (presumably she didn’t mean Trump) for delivering her from the manifest evil of a federal government that has set out to ruin her for many years — without a shred of evidence.

(How ironic – and yet not shocking — that unless the attorney general or Judicial Discipline Commission step in, Fiore will return to the bench in Nye County.)

Fiore’s story is astonishing on its own, but it also serves as a stunning emblem of Trump’s first 100 days: An administration that touts the rule of law, then signals it doesn’t care about the rule of law. With Republican jellyfish running Congress, and Democrats searching for a message that appeals to Bernie and Chuck, the courts are the only check on the abundant lawlessness.

I am also not shocked, nor can I even summon much outrage for the whataboutism that has ensued since the pardon was announced. Yes, any fair-minded person saw Joe Biden’s abuse of the pardon power to shield his family; you can’t be on a high horse and then wallow in mud at the same time. Granted.

But Trump has pardoned those who tried to protest (some violently) an election he falsely said was rigged, and he has never had to answer for that seminal lie that changed so much and with the cowering assent of many so-called GOP leaders.

I don’t think that story should be left behind, either — and I know I am in the minority. But if you are willing to pardon the Jan. 6 throng and you are willing to defy court orders, then of course pardoning Lady Trump in Nevada is a no-brainer.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, never has journalism been more essential to ensure that these abnormal times are not normalized. This is true in Washington, D.C., and Carson City, Nevada.

Yes, what Trump has done, with no explanation, is not shocking but it is outrageous. And it truly is sad that our capacity for shock dissipated long ago.

But the moment we lose our sense of outrage, and our passion to not take the path of least resistance, all is lost.

Jon Ralston is the CEO of The Nevada Independent.