Viciousness is it?
Aaron Blake collects some of Don’s viciousness in response to his children’s complaints about the viciousness of people who dislike Don:
For the second time in a week, one of President Trump’s children took to the Fox News airwaves to complain about just how rough-and-tumble our political system is.
A few days after Eric Trump decried the political left as “not even people” over its “hatred” and treatment of his father, Ivanka Trump went on “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning and decried the “viciousness” of Washington.
“There’s a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,” she said. “I was not expecting the intensity of this experience.”
I guess she must think that her loathsome bullying father has some sort of right to be vicious because he’s so rich, and thus that she has some sort of right to complain about “viciousness” in his critics because she too is so rich (thanks to her vicious father).
In case you’ve blocked out everything that happened between June 2015 and November 2016 (which=understandable), here is a quick refresher of the things Donald Trump did as a candidate:
- Called his chief opponents “Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary” and “Little Marco”
- Suggested “Lyin’ Ted’s” father may have taken part in the Kennedy assassination
- Said he would put “Crooked Hillary” in jail when president
- Seemed to allude to potential violence again and againand again
- Continued his years-long effort to question the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s U.S. birth and, by extension, his entire presidency
- Appeared to mock a reporter’s physical handicap
- Suggested a judge was inherently biased against him because [of] the judge’s Mexican heritage
- Said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wasn’t a war hero because he was captured
He also attacked Alicia Machado on Twitter and alluded to a non-existent “sex tape.” He also repeatedly called Senator Warren “Pocahontas.” He also brushed off his “you can grab them by the pussy” boast by calling it “locker room talk” – as if it were normal for men to talk about women like that.
He’s a bad, poisonous man, with a bad poisonous character. He’s malevolent and cruel and, yes Ivanka, vicious. Look to thine own nest and clear the excrescences therein.
Meanwhile, every pundit I read analyzing the last election lambastes Clinton for her “basket of deplorables” comment, suggesting that this was over the line, unacceptable, and outrageous. How could she say something so awful? Saying awful things about people loses elections.
I wish this election would put to rest the erroneous idea that the person who runs the “nicest” campaign will win, because people don’t want “unpleasant” or “aggressive” candidates, but it apparently won’t. They are ignoring the reality that often the candidate who runs the smear campaign gets elected (though not always), and you can’t predict by that. And in order to keep that dangerously inaccurate meme alive, they are pretending that Clinton’s comment was somehow unique, and her campaign hit below the belt, while the other campaign gets ignored, in spite of much, much, much more vituperation and nastiness.
And the other thing people don’t bother to notice is that Trump is attacking decent, ordinary people who just happen to disagree with him, while Clinton was speaking about misogynist white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Yes, but Clinton is a woman. She’s not allowed to fight dirty. It would be unladylike. Or something.
The forces arrayed against Clinton were going to hate her guts no matter what she said or did (and would have continued to do so had she been elected). The “basket of deplorables”, however accurate, was just another thing to hang around her neck. If saying she wasn’t “nice” (while at the same time throwing the stench of murder, child porn, e-mails (!!!) and corruption her way) was good to knock a few more votes from her, then great. The stories used to tar your opponent don’t have to be logical, consistent or even true. Different smears will work for different demographics. It’s not like Republicans have never characterised Democratic voters, but the opponent is always held to a higher standard than your own candidate (this, in spades, for Trump).
Look, none of those cited examples count, because they involved being mean to someone other than Ivanka. Duh.
Also, the second half of HRC’s comment was about the need to empathise with Trump’s non-deplorable supporters, which has been ignored by every such analysis. It’s like empathy and actual policies don’t matter, and it’s all about being all vice, all the time.
Well that was certainly something Madame Secretary was wrong about… Fuck empathizing with evil doers.