Shows how fucked up his thinking is. He thinks somehow what “the Clintons” did is just as bad. Except it was Bill, not Hillary. And compared to Trump they are a model of a good marital partnership as they stuck together despite it, while Trump divorced his first wife after cheating on her, and thinks nothing of such when he himself does it.
But most importantly when Bill Clinton’s infidelity was used as a political football in a failed attempt to impeach him his popularity rose significantly. Hillary Clinton’s popularity rose more. US Voters don’t care about politicians private lives, something Trump himself relies on, and punish anyone who tries to exploit them for political gain. There is no upside for Trump if he carries on mentioning Bill Clinton, it will only help Hillary and make him look worse.
Well the claim is Hilary abetted by threatening sexual assault victims.
He might wheel Juanita Broaddrick out. It was tested in court or even investigated by police afaik but I'm not sure that would stop Trump from going there.
She stood by and defended her husband? I think most people would understand that. In many legal systems the marital relationship is considered special and privileged: one spouse is assumed to be biased in favour of the other, and cannot be compelled to give evidence against them.
If it rose to the levels of actual threats, then that would be different. But I have not seen any evidence of that, and surely such would have led to her prosecution, funded by some Republican or other. As with all Trump’s statements it seems blown out out of all proportion.
pogo wrote:She stood by and defended her husband? I think most people would understand that. In many legal systems the marital relationship is considered special and privileged: one spouse is assumed to be biased in favour of the other, and cannot be compelled to give evidence against them.
If it rose to the levels of actual threats, then that would be different. But I have not seen any evidence of that, and surely such would have led to her prosecution, funded by some Republican or other. As with all Trump’s statements it seems blown out out of all proportion.
He's not gone there but in terms of his TALKING ABOUT BILL threats this is the most likely course. To be clear I'm predicting the stupid thing he'll likely do, not giving any credence to the claims.
Daily Beast names women Trump failed to furniture shop into bed and claims he subsequently tried to get her fired
That "apology" looks like a hostage video, where he's being made to say it at gunpoint.
I can understand that they wouldn't allow him to ad-lib and veer off-script, insisting that he just carefully reads what's on the teleprompter, because Trump's "stream of consciousness" is far too dangerous - and often largely incomprehensible - and his uncontrollable ego would kick in, making him say something stupid like "hey, what's wrong with grabbing a bitch by the pussy, I ask you?", completely sinking his campaign in one fell swoop. I wouldn't have any trust in him to speak off-the-cuff either.
But, equally, this is a miscalculation. Trump is clearly reading off a teleprompter. I guess he's always just made shit up as he goes along throughout his life and career, never learning how to do the teleprompter thing without coming across as a bored kid being made to read out a passage from a book aloud to the rest of the class by teacher.
The thing is, it's guarded. It's scripted. Trump's appeal, to those he appeals to, is that he's not an establishment politician. He's an outsider. He's refreshingly blunt, literally to a fault. He's not politically correct. And so forth.
So this "hostage video" is going to go down badly with his core supporters, as he's doing the politician thing of carefully choosing his words. He's caving to what they'd see as "political correctness" (but, yeah, sane people would recognise it as just being common fucking sense that you shouldn't really be saying and doing this shit). He's letting "the Establishment" - the Republican Party - tell him what to say.
With a candidate like Trump, the usual rules don't apply. As we've seen so far. Weirdly, they'd have been better off with Trump refusing to apologise and bragging about his sexual conquests as he did about his tax avoidance in the debate ("that makes me smart").
Because, simply, this "apology" is not really going to remotely convince anyone who's not already on his side to vote for him - so that's a lost cause - but it could well damage that "outsider" not-politically-correct "they can't tell me what to do" thing he's got going on with his core voters (you know, "the deplorables" who actually like his good ol' fashioned misogyny and racism).
The Bill Clinton thing is dumb. Yes, you could try to go down the "Hillary was an enabler" route, but that's a hard sell. Hillary was a victim of Bill's antics. She stood by her marriage regardless (that sort of thing plays well to the more puritanical religious crowd). It's just too complicated a narrative trying to turn Bill's indiscretions around as somehow Hillary's fault. And the whole thing entirely depends on assuming folks think that someone else's extramarital affairs is even their business.
I guess Trump's got nothing else here, so he's going to go for it anyway. But I just don't fancy his chances, as it just doesn't really work as some kind of "nail in the coffin" scandal to wreck Hillary's chances. Whereas, on the other hand, the phrase "grab them by the pussy" is exactly a "nail in the coffin" campaign smasher right there.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
Yes, he’s clearly reading from something, though probably something he had a hand in writing given how it veers off into dangerous territory at the end.
The danger is not so much his supporters will be put off by it. Likely few will see it, or their own filters will make them see it as an honest statement. The danger is that Trump is not always reading from a prepared script, and as soon as he’s not and starts ad-libbing it comes out very differently.
So if he tries to cover the same ground on Sunday in the debate it could go badly wrong in all sorts of ways. I can’t see how it won’t come up now, this or a more general question on his sexism and misogyny. Hard for him to prepare for too, as there’s so much ground to cover.
And in other news Wikileaks decided to release some speeches Clinton made to Wall Street. Problem is they are terribly dull. Newsworthy yes, and against another candidate it might make a difference. But Trump will be hard pushed to exploit this, given his own background and general inarticulacy. And the WaPo chose the same day to run their video. There‘s also the small matter of a hurricane tearing up the east coast. Whether by accident or design Wikileaks released them on probably the worst day possible, if they wanted to hurt Clinton.
pogo wrote:And in other news Wikileaks decided to release some speeches Clinton made to Wall Street. Problem is they are terribly dull. Newsworthy yes, and against another candidate it might make a difference. But Trump will be hard pushed to exploit this, given his own background and general inarticulacy. And the WaPo chose the same day to run their video. There‘s also the small matter of a hurricane tearing up the east coast. Whether by accident or design Wikileaks released them on probably the worst day possible, if they wanted to hurt Clinton.
Are Wikileaks backing Trump? if so, why?
"My way is the way of not fighting":- the book of Enter the Dragon.
zip accident wrote:Are Wikileaks backing Trump? if so, why?
Because it‘s run by a juvenile half-wit.
In more detail, I think Assange has a real dislike for the US government. Understandably perhaps, but he seems to have turned this into a personal vendetta against those at the top, i.e. Obama and Clinton.
But this shows a remarkable naïvety. The US government is not just Obama and Clinton; the people after him are agencies like the CIA and FBI, acting on laws largely put in place by the government before Obama.
If Trump is elected things could get worse for Assange and Wikileaks in all sorts of ways. His best chance of some sort of relief from US pressure is from a Democrat administration. But a Democrat president is going to feel a lot less sympathy towards him now, after his sustained campaign against Clinton and the Democrats.
That’s why I wonder if the timing of this release is deliberate. Wikileaks may feel they have to release it once they have it, no matter that it was supplied by Russian hackers supporting Trump. But maybe they realise that helping Trump is a really bad idea. So maybe they chose a day when other things would be dominating the news cycle.
zip accident wrote:Are Wikileaks backing Trump? if so, why?
#1 the former Secretary of State called on the President to prosecute Wikileaks after the 2010 leak of State Department cables.
#2 nihilistic, deranged narcissism.
