Thursday

March 28th, 2024

Insight

How the left has matched Trump's gaffes

Jay Ambrose

By Jay Ambrose

Published Oct. 20, 2016

You want a list of stuff that has people castigating Donald Trump? Here we go.

He keeps talking about making America great again as if it is not great right now. He has called Hillary Clinton hateful. He has been accused of sexual abuse. Trump University is said to have been a scam. He has said the media is rigged against him.

On top of the above, he thinks Saddam Hussein should have stayed in power in Iraq. He did not pay taxes he did not owe. He said the inner cities in this country are hell holes. He is against gun control. He wants to build a wall on the Mexican border. He once talked of punching protesters at a rally.

The thing about all of the above is that there are equivalents on the other side, the Democratic side, the leftist side. Let's review them.

In his first campaign, Bill Clinton also said let's make America great again. He didn't say it as often, but he said it and, as far as I know, went unscathed, maybe because a Republican was president.

The sexual abuse allegations are serious stuff, but not as serious as Bill Clinton being accused of the vicious rape of a woman who talked to a friend soon afterwards about the horror she had endured. He is accused of groping another woman in the White House. He ended up paying $850,000 to settle a suit from still another woman who said he had exposed himself to her while encouraging sex.

The Monica Lewinsky affair was not just about sex, as even feminists often said on his behalf, although he did take advantage of this subordinate half his age by enjoying oral sex in the Oval Office. The affair was also about lying, obstruction of justice, perjury and disgracing the presidency. Clinton is charming and smart and a moral mess who is now his wife's top surrogate on the campaign trail and will play an important role in the administration if she is elected.


Trump has accused the press of prejudice and has threatened libel suits against newspapers. Some news outlets are in fact discarding normal standards to finish him off, and President Barack Obama has never been shy about taking on Fox News or talk radio. His administration has spied on the Associated Press, and one New York Times reporter has called him "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation." Hillary Clinton is so against free speech as interpreted by the Supreme Court that she wants to rewrite the First Amendment.

Saddam Hussein would have done more to quell terrorism than the U.S. war on Iraq if he had stayed in power, Trump says, to the anger of quivering critics. Don't almost all liberals say the same?

Trump's remarks about blacks in the inner cities living in hell holes have the left crucifying him even though that has been a leftist message for some time and still is in some quarters. He wants a wall on the Mexican border, which is far from as crazy as what Hillary Clinton once said about wanting open borders.

Trump has been thoroughly castigated for not paying taxes he did not owe, thereby enabling him to rebuild his businesses, while the Clintons once claimed deductions for old underwear. Which speaks loudest about being cheap and cheesy?

Clinton is for extending background checks for gun purchases. It would do no harm but the evidence is minimal it would do any good. She is against Trump's advocacy of stop-and-frisk, which took 34,000 guns off the streets of New York and, by the reckoning of some top analysts, helped save thousands of lives.

Trump once said something at a rally about punching protesters in the face. Hillary Clinton once said something in a meeting about droning Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame. Those present say she did not seem to be joking.

None of this means Trump should be president, but if it is Hillary Clinton, we need a Republican Congress to check her.

Jay Ambrose
(TNS)

Comment by clicking here.

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.

Columnists

Toons