Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Hillary Clinton's bad week

Here is a list of gaffes, mistakes, or scandals that came out of the Trump campaign, just in the last seven days, just off the top of my head:
Let’s begin with the Commander and Chief Forum. Trump lavished praise on the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He then made the unprecedented error of discussing his classified intelligence briefings and claiming his briefers were unhappy with the current President. After that, Trump lied, yet again, that back in 2003 he opposed the Iraq War.
It was then revealed by the Washington Post that Trump had taken credit for charitable giving by others. It reported he lied to the IRS, claiming donations he never made. What’s more, he illegally used $20,000 earmarked for his charity to buy a six-foot portrait of himself.

Trump then gave a TV interview to the Kremlin’s propaganda network RT, and afterwards claimed he only did it because he was “tricked” by Larry King. In another appearance he gave an incoherent monologue about something he called “nuclear warming,” which included false accusations against Clinton and sentences like, “Uranium is big, big stuff because it means the ultimate.”
Next, as the terror attacks of 9/11 were remembered, a radio clip emerged of Trump (on the very day of the attacks!) boasting that his building was now the highest in New York. Then it was reported Trump has publicly lied about helping to recover bodies at Ground Zero. He also claimed he personally had “hundreds” of friends who died in the attack, not one of whom his campaign was able to name.
While all of this was going on, he made an unprecedented personal attack on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen. He renewed his attacks on Elizabeth Warren, once again calling her “Pocahontas.” He promised he would start a war with Iran if its sailors made inappropriate gestures. After his VP released his own tax returns, Trump once again refused to do the same. His son tweeted a neo-Nazi meme. And one of his chief surrogates disavowed the Geneva Conventions.
By comparison, how was Hillary Clinton’s week? She failed to smile at Matt Lauer. She echoed numerous polls by asserting half of Trump’s supporters are racist. And she almost fainted while suffering from pneumonia. Which is all to say, the media consensus as delivered by the pundits and the headlines is that Clinton had a really bad week. This is absolutely, unequivocally, insane.