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Trump plays the Cosby card with the Clintons

John Kass

By John Kass

Published Jan. 7, 2016

Trump plays the Cosby card with the Clintons

Question: Why would Hillary Clinton send husband Bill out on the presidential campaign trail to help her with the women's vote?

Answer: Because Bill Cosby was busy?

Right about now some of you are sighing in disgust, or giving me a rude hand gesture (sorry, I really can't see it), while others are asking the eternal question:

Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, what difference, at this point, does it make?

And then Donald Trump, the Republican candidate Democrat Hillary is most determined to ignore, appeared Tuesday on the Howie Carr radio show in Boston to explain.

Trump played the Cosby card on Bill Clinton. Boo-yah.

"The whole Cosby thing is a weird deal and he's got himself some big problems, and you'd almost have to ask Bill Clinton that," Trump told Carr.

Carr asked Trump what the difference between the two men would be.

"It would be a very interesting question to someday ask him," Trump said. "Certainly he has a lot of strong charges against him, and it's pretty bad stuff."

As he said it, imagine a few ripe melons being dropped from a second-floor landing to the ground. What exactly is that sound?

The sound of Clintonista heads exploding across America.

The Cosby card on Bill? And why not? Of course it's fair game. And those who say otherwise are partisan meat puppets.

I'm on record saying Trump is a vulgar buffoon. And I don't think he really wants to be president but instead is a shallow man out of his depth, trapped in a reality TV show.

But I'm also on record loathing the Clintons, Bill for his terrifying and pathological narcissism and sexual predation of women, and Hillary for defending him while pretending to be a feminist, with that fake Southern accent of hers, babbling about vast conspiracies and turtles on fence posts.

"You know if you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident," Hillary famously drawled on "Good Morning America" in 1998.

"And I just look at the landscape around here, and I see just lots of big ol' turtles sitting on lots of fence posts. And I think we need to find out how those ol' turtles got on those fence posts," she said.

Her problem isn't turtles or a cheap and obvious cynicism. Her problem is what she said a few months ago, at a September news conference in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in her Midwestern voice.

She aimed her message at college women, young women ready for internships and careers, women who might run into the wrong kind of men. The kind Hillary knows.

"Today I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault," Mrs. Clinton said. "Don't let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed, and we're with you."

This from the same political crew that maintained a "bimbo eruption" team, a group that sought to discredit any woman who dared complain about Bill?

Now she's released her "secret weapon" and let him run across New Hampshire, then Iowa, so voters might see her virtue reflected through his eyes.

In the Clinton mind, what must be most infuriating about Trump is that they are very much alike. Trump is as shameless as they are and just as relentless.

Now he's put Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton, two American icons, in the same soundbite sandwich.

One Bill is a disgraced TV personality and alleged sex abuser who is treated by the media as a leper; and not as a social leper, either, but a real one, as if he were dripping with sores.

And the other Bill is an alleged sex abuser, defended and excused and beloved by many in the liberal media, a man who may very well make a triumphant return to the White House as the First Laddie of the United States.

I'm thinking of the Clinton Restoration inaugural ball, and Bill in a kilt, dancing, doing that white guy dad-dancing-at-the-wedding overbite thing.

Bagpipes play Sisqo's "Thong Song" and Bill shakes his head, laughing, maybe does a fist pump.

One difference between the Bills?

Only one lost his license to practice law, and it's not Cosby. And here's another difference:

Cosby allegedly used quaaludes in his alleged sexual attacks and faces criminal charges in one case. But Bill Clinton didn't use quaaludes. Cigars aren't quaaludes, are they?

Clinton's powerful aphrodisiac was the presidency of the United States, once employed even while he was on the phone in the Oval Office with a congressman, talking about appropriations to send young Americans to war, and while they talked the intern Monica Lewinsky proceeded about her business.

Some might say that Hillary Clinton's decision to bring her true love Bill out to the campaign could be a dumb political move. It reminds us of all that pain America has forgotten, and offers a promise of more pain to come.

Or it could be a smart move, because she can't hide him forever, can she?

America must realize that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, we'll be seeing Bill for quite some time.

He'll be smiling, the First Laddie, head shaking, in that kilt of his.

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.

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