Trump in the Muck
If you want to get an idea about how low this year’s presidential campaign can go — how insulting and demeaning and dispiriting it might get — look no farther than Donald Trump’s recent actions.
Trump — who, remember, has no governmental experience and who has shown no knowledge of foreign affairs — has decided to attack Hillary Clinton over her husband’s personal affairs decades ago.
That’s right — Trump wants the presidential race to be decided over Bill and Hillary’s personal lives — though his, Trump’s, personal life has been filled with sexual indiscretions.
Have we all gone nuts in this country? Is hatred against the Clintons so intense that anything Trump says about them — anything — is okay with Trump’s supporters? Sadly, the answer is “yes.”
“HIllary Clinton was married to the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics,” Trump told the New York TImes. “Hillary was an enabler, and she attacked the women who Bill Clinton mistreated.”
Meanwhile, Trump dismisses any idea that his own marital history should play any role in the campaign. Trump’s been married three times — his first marriage ended in an ugly divorce after he began a relationship with the woman who became his second wife — and he has repeatedly bragged about his sexual exploits over the years.
And when the Times asked if he’d ever cheated on his wives, his response was: “I never discuss it.”
But Trump’s sexual improprieties are just fine with those who will vote for him because — well, if they’re honest, they’d say it’s okay because they just hate the Clintons. So anything goes when it comes to destroying them.
And it doesn’t matter how crazy — just crazy — Trump sounds when he attacks a former Miss Universe winner for gaining weight — or says that she once took part in a sex tape, though he declines to provide any evidence to prove that.
It doesn’t matter that Trump denigrated Arizona Sen. John McCain for being captured in Vietnam. It doesn’t matter that Trump criticized a Gold Star family who had the audacity to appear at the Democratic National Convention. It doesn’t matter that Trump made fun of a disabled reporter, that he made fun of Carly Fiorina’s looks and that he implied Fox’s Megyn Kelly was having a menstrual flow during one of the GOP primary debates.
Nope. None of that matters. Anything Trump says or does is really, really okay for the Clinton haters because — well, partly because they’re haters and partly because they don’t give a damn who’s elected president or whether they lack any qualifications — as long as it’s not someone named Clinton.
I could comment on the intelligence of all that, but you can judge it for yourself any day. Just tune in to your local right-wing talk radio station and hear the fanatical hosts whipping up Clinton hatred for their crazy listeners. All that anger — which seems to just pour through your radio speaker — is enough to make you fear for the future of our political system and for our country.
There’s no doubt that Hillary Clinton is a bad candidate. She lies about her emails, and she lies about Benghazi. I wish the Democrats had nominated someone else — truly I do.
But Trump is an absolute disgrace. And this presidential campaign — and his candidacy — cannot end soon enough.