Clinton vs. Trump: Tale of the Tape
Hillary’s Ship Comes In
This year’s U.S. Presidential Election is a watershed moment in American history. For this year Americans are being forced by their owners in Washington to choose between a woman without a conscience and a man without a brain, sort of The Tin Man’s evil aunt vs. The Scarecrow’s megalomaniacal uncle. (Aha! We’ve figured out the hair at last!) In short, America’s next president will probably be her worst—and I only insert the qualifier “probably” in deference to the Cowardly Lion’s radicalized brother who currently occupies the Oval Office.
Let’s kick off the election countdown festivities, then, with some background about how this calamity arose, before I refer you to my latest assessment of the overall state of the campaign. Allow me to state up front that while I understand how America’s moral quagmire might lead an honest man to hold his nose, cover his eyes—oh heck, bandage his entire head in duct tape—and cast his ballot for the richer of two evils, my own sympathies incline toward that ad hoc alliance of constitutional conservatives who founded the “NeverTrump” movement before the catchphrase was co-opted by a few old guard establishmentarians. And while it’s always best to leave personal effrontery out of one’s political opining, I cannot deny that the typical response of Trump followers to any criticism of their hero has done nothing to soften my resolve as a NeverTrumper in absentia.
Donald the Wonder Rhino
Defenders of Trump, of whom there are apparently a great many, or perhaps just one with a lot of time on his hands, frequently leap in to attack me, and all other public skeptics about Trump, with an ever so clever chorus of “Funny how you RINOs never criticize Hillary this way!” or “You cuckservatives attack Trump, but you gave Obama a pass!” (Don’t ask what “cuckservative” means. I just take it to be Russian for “Frustratingly talented writer whose arguments I can’t refute.”)
Both to set the record straight on all of that and as a warm-up for the gut-wrenching fun ahead—for Americans, and for a planet whose last effective buffer against global tyranny is disintegrating before our eyes—allow me to establish a little personal background related to the key players in this election.
Over the past several years, I’ve written numerous articles about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama. I will share a few of them with you here, so you can judge for yourself whether I’m guilty of giving anyone a pass, and to set the stage for the new analyses I’ll be posting on these subjects in the days and weeks ahead.
First, since prior to winning the Democratic presidential nomination Hillary’s biggest accomplishment in politics—aside from milking her husband’s sociopathic behavior for pity votes to kick-start her career in elected office—was her role as lead truth-destroyer in the Obama administration’s Benghazi cover-up operation, we should begin our review right there. It’s often said that you find out who a person really is during a moment of crisis. What we learned during her post-Benghazi crisis was that Hillary Clinton is (a) a skillful and conscienceless liar, (b) a genius of disdainful “I have to wash my hair” stalling tactics to avoid questions from her “inferiors,” and (c) the kind of thug who, having escaped conviction by paying off the judge, can look you coldly in the eye outside the courthouse and say, “Yeah, I’m guilty—so what are you going to do about it?” In other words, a genuine progressive.
For a summary of Hillary’s political existence up to and including her infamous fainting spell and concussion on the eve of her scheduled testimony at the Benghazi hearings, go to Hillary in Hiding. (This piece got a lot of attention at the time after being picked up by Real Clear Politics.)
To revisit perhaps the most revealing moment of her entire career—revealing both of herself and of the heart of the progressive political strategy of the past century—you may return to her long-delayed Benghazi testimony, featuring her notorious “What difference, at this point, does it make?” See Hillary Gives the Game Away.
To summarize that ignominious chapter in modern American politics, which links Clinton with her old boss Barack Obama in a blood-brotherhood of death, my commentary on the ultimate civilizational significance of the Benghazi affair may be found in two articles from 2013, Benghazi Reveals the Heart of Progressivism and Benghazi and the Banality of Evil.
Finally, there is something almost too symmetrical in Clinton’s apparent involvement in arming Islamists in the Middle East while ardently wishing to disarm her fellow American citizens at home. In the fall of 2015, I wrote about one of her attempts to test the rhetorical waters with the idea of a “gun buy-back program.” See Arranging American Gun Confiscation.
As for Mr. Trump, I started writing about his political machinations back in 2011, when he first insinuated himself into a Republican Party presidential nominating process. Here’s a piece I wrote for Canada Free Press in February 2012, when Trump was playing footsie with the GOP establishment—gee, what a surprise!—by flamboyantly endorsing its poster-boy and (by that time) shoo-in nominee, Mitt Romney: Trump’s Paper Tiger Rebellion Against Conservatives. (With benefit of hindsight, it is amusing to re-read my own thoughts on the obvious sycophancy and toadyism of the Great Alpha Male even four and a half years ago. Or at least it would have been amusing, were it not so sad.)
During the 2015-16 primary campaign, while Romney did the right thing and separated himself from Trump, various paper tiger rebels such as Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter, who, like Trump, were moles for the pro-Romney establishment in 2012, came out early this time around as Trump supporters. (Hmm…isn’t that interesting? And as a side note for anyone who doubts me on Drudge’s establishment machinations, or thinks I’m only turning on him because he supports Trump, I encourage you to read any of the pieces I wrote about his methods back in 2011-12, such as Drudge in the Dregs Again.)
For Americans who refused to succumb to the pseudo-conservative pied pipers on TV, on the radio, or on the political websites, 2016 has been a rough year, not least due to the vitriol continuously spewed at them by the Trump cultists and their GOP enablers.
Having sworn off writing about this year’s GOP primaries at all, the rising Trump lunacy finally drew me in against my better judgment. From my position on the outside looking in, I sought to offer some cover fire for my many American friends fighting the good fight and dodging a lot of poo flung at them by the Trumpanzees. My efforts here, many of which garnered extraordinary numbers of readers’ comments by American Thinker standards (at least eighty percent of them venomous), began with Can Trump Restore America?
Over the ensuing months, as I dug deeper into Trump’s past and associations, I contributed quite a bit more ammunition to the case against him, some of it purely fact-based and immediately verifiable, and some more speculative but subsequently verified by events.
First, the practical stuff, beginning with Is Trump a McConnell-Rove Establishment Tool? which was based on facts but seemed speculative to some at the time, although it has since proved rather unquestionable. (This piece was re-posted by Mark Levin, and read on air by Glenn Beck, so its principal evidence ended up getting a lot of air time around the “new media.”)
Then we have Trump vs. Free Speech, in which I argue, against plenty of denial from the cultists, that words have meanings. And you might also want to peruse Why I Trust Trump, in which I simply suggest taking The Donald at his word, once again a no-no among true believers. (Mark Levin also re-posted this one on his Facebook and Twitter pages—cheers, Mr. Levin.)
I have also traced Trump’s character, history, and affiliations right into his current rhetoric and behavior. See Trump and the Art of Sycophancy and Donald Trump: Alpha Male or Mean Girl?
For his relationship with the Republican Party’s crony capitalist establishment, i.e., the latest instantiations of the phenomenon known as Rockefeller Republicans, I refer you to The Establishment’s Path to Victory, Three Simple Questions for Trump Supporters, GOP Primary Process Rigged, and my personal favorite—a piece that I wrote as allegory but which has quickly become literal truth—The Jester Who Would Be King.
For analysis of the literal, honest-to-goodness, reality-defying cult that surrounds this absurd caricature of a man, I suggest When Anger Trumps All, Is Trump the GOP’s Obama Moment? and The Cult of the Wall.
And as a little bonus offer, here in the final months of the Obama presidency, I suggest a couple of the most popular of the many pieces I’ve written about the Marxist-in-Chief: Obama’s Fake Twitter Followers Explained and Obama: Man Without a Conscience.
Now I invite you to peruse my latest observations related to the 2016 Election, perhaps beginning with America 0.5: NeverTrump vs. NeverHillary.