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Trump Threatens Clinton Over Lewinsky? Really?
Donald Trump, always the hero of his own tales, closed out the first presidential debate with a tribute to his own courtesy and high-mindedness: “I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary, to her family,” he said. “And I said to myself, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. It’s inappropriate, it’s not nice. But she’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me.”
Later, the candidate’s son, Eric Trump, offered that it required not just magnanimity for Trump to avoid mentioning the topic, but “a lot of courage.”
The rhetorical term for what Trump is up to here is called paralipsis. It’s raising something by claiming to abjure it. “I could mention your DUIs, but I’ll refrain.” Thanks.
Once the campaign boiled down to two tabloid candidates, this pass was inevitable. I’m old enough to remember 2015, when many in both parties opposed the specter of another Bush or another Clinton precisely because of weariness with all that they represent. The voters decreed otherwise, so let’s iron out a few wrinkles.
Trump must presume that the Clinton sex scandals (and it must be those, and not the financial and other scandals he’s referring to because Chelsea Clinton’s presence supposedly stayed his tongue) represent a vulnerability for Hillary Clinton. That’s a large presumption. Most voters probably think of her as the victim of her husband’s behavior. Her favorability ratings shot up during the Lewinsky scandal.
Does she deserve sympathy? Rep. Marsha Blackburn expressed what she perceived to be the Trump camp’s view when she offered: “I find it so interesting that there continues to be this conversation about what he has said when you look at what she has done: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky. My goodness.”
Blackburn is a little confused. The party line on Trump’s wild, cruel, and dangerous remarks on many subjects is to contrast what Trump has said with what Clinton has done. But in this case, what Clinton did was entirely verbal. She made comments about the women who accused her husband of sexual harassment and/or affairs. There are suggestions that she may have participated in behind-the-scenes efforts to discredit the women who revealed encounters with him. Her actual public comments were few, though she famously claimed that the Lewinsky story was part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
It’s not entirely clear that this is a slam-dunk against her. In the first place, people grew bored with the subject in 1998, so it’s hard to imagine that it’s some sort of silver bullet now.
Second, while it’s possible that she is a total cynic, using her marriage as a vehicle for her ambitions, it’s also possible that it was more complicated than that — that she actually loved him and chose to forgive him — who knows? Perhaps her determination to discredit Bill’s accusers had two motives: 1) to help his career, and 2) to delude herself as well. There may be shades of gray here.
But whatever the peculiarities of her psychology and however nasty (not to say pathetic) her decision to go after Bill’s women, there is certainly no doubt that as between Bill and Hillary, he was by far the more culpable. He disgraced himself, humiliated his wife, and embarrassed his daughter. That he was beyond shame – and carried the whole country with him in the 1990s — is his lasting legacy.
Here’s the twist: Look at the man who threatens to pull the trigger on mentioning the Clinton scandals – a serial adulterer who is more removed from twinges of conscience than any figure in American political life. He boasts of his extra-marital affairs. He humiliated the mother of his children. He is the Playboy Philosopher made flesh. He even found the time to mock Paula Jones as a “loser” and argue that Bill Clinton’s conduct was “totally unimportant.” His factotums, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, are also serial adulterers, though they didn’t boast about it. Still, their boss’s crudeness has now rubbed off. Giuliani sniped that if Hillary Clinton really didn’t detect her husband’s affair with Lewinsky, she was “too stupid to be president.”
Neither political party has a monopoly on virtue. But there was a time when Republicans at least paid lip service to the ideal of marital faithfulness, and even felt constrained to resign their offices when caught out (see, Livingston, Bob). But Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party. A Clinton now leads one party, and the other is Clintonesque. Pots/kettles.
Published in General
He should have put Juanita Broaddrick in the audience. It’s possible they asked and she didn’t want to, which is understandable.
It appears from this opinion piece that @monacharen is unable to distinguish between adultery and condoning rape.
(Pardon me, condoning serial rape).
And it’s possible that unicorns do actually exist. I swear I saw one disappear into the woods behind our office this morning.
Mona
I agree that an attack by Trump or his surrogates on Bill’s behavior would be seen as an attack on Hillary and the family and is a bad idea.
However, where Hillary is potentially, and justifiably, vulnerable with one of her key demographics is on her disgraceful behavior, which was about defaming and attacking women in order to further her husband’s career.
Hillary’s built a consistent record, going back to her days in Arkansas, of enabling harsh, intimidating, and false, attacks on any woman who leveled accusations of sexual misbehavior against her husband, or even, for that matter, claims to have had consensual sex with Bill (also known as “bimbo eruptions“, a term coined by the Clinton’s hatchet-woman, Betsey Wright). For a more recent example of Hillary’s compromised position on feminism, read Hillary Scrubs Sexual Assault Pledge After Allegations Against Bill Resurface.
She makes an incredibly flawed flagbearer for feminism and she can be legitimately and effectively attacked for it.
On the other hand, I have zero confidence that Trump and his surrogates have the deftness required to make the attack effectively.
You are not incorrect. The thought of Bill back in the WH boffing interns is incredibly disturbing to me nevertheless. The main point for me is that the Clintons are far more dirty than sexual indiscretions. Those are the points this suburban,white, educated woman is focused on.
Given your now well-established determination not to brook any possibility of shades of gray regarding Trump, you might want to consider how giving the benefit of the doubt to a rapist defender might come off as a bit creepy.
Who knows? Seriously? You would think a couple that was in love may actually, I don’t know, live together. Some ANY time together that wasn’t on a campaign trail. So I may be making an assumption but using intelligence and experience I guess I can gleen that the former is by far more likely the case.
Why is it beyond the pale to mention that Hillary threatened and destroyed the lives of the women Bill Clinton abused sexually? She knowing enabled a sexual predator to continue to hurt women for decades for her own personal gain, nothing wrong with mentioning that as a way to discredit her, because it’s true.
The difference is that while Hillary Clinton forgave her husband, who committed sins of lust, Donald Trump is a creature who has devoted his life to lust.
Hillary forgave the sin.
Bill committed and repented the sin.
Trump lives for the sin.
Pop Sunday school quiz; which of these outlooks is worthy of heaven, which of purgatory, and which of hell?
How did you come to this conclusion?
Hillary forgave him for raping and otherwise assaulting countless women? How noble of her.
How noble and omniscient of you.
Sick.