All signs now point to a showdown between Trump and Hillary
in November.
We’ll be treated to two ethically challenged rich people,
with more skeletons in their closets than the Grim Reaper, hammering away at
each other in what’s likely to be the grittiest, nastiest campaign for
President in modern times.
This will make even the most bizarre
reality-TV shows seem tame.
I have to admit I don’t like either Trump or Hillary. I’m
not alone. There’s never been a pair of probable nominees running for President
with such high negatives. It’s not simply that people don’t agree with their
policies; they genuinely dislike or perhaps despise Trump and Hillary.
That includes a lot of folks in their own respective
parties.
For me it’s a visceral thing. I can’t stand watching either
of them.
Trump is an arrogant, narcissistic prick. But most everybody
knows that.
His mannerisms are practically cartoonish, with the
flipper-like arm movements coupled with the thumb and index finger pinch and
air quotes, and the smug, Il Duce face he makes, he’s an impressionist’s dream
come true. He begs to be mocked.
More seriously, I’m appalled at what he says; not just the
misogynist and ethnic slurs, but the sheer stupidity of some of it, especially
from someone who wants to be President.
He’s apparently unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution, which
branch of government does what, how laws are made and enforced, and what our
military can and cannot do. He clearly
doesn’t understand international trade and the consequences of trade wars. He
may have bullied his way to the top of the business world, but his
adversaries there never had the resources, or ability to retaliate, that world
powers like China and Russia have.
In short, he sounds and acts more like a banana-republic
dictator like Hugo Chavez than the brilliant, worldly international business
genius he’s supposed to be. His professors at Fordham and Wharton must be
hanging their heads in shame.
He says he’s going to surround himself with “really smart
people” to advise him, but in the next breath says he gets his information on
world affairs by watching the Sunday news shows. I guess he doesn’t find enough
international news in the National Enquirer.
Trump may be ultra-rich, but he’s like Rodney Dangerfield in
the movie Caddyshack. He’s got all the toys, beautiful women, private jets, and
gobs of money to burn, yet his over-the-top ostentation and crude jokes belie a
low-brow attitude about everything. His
ad hominem attacks on the other Republicans who ran against him, and even their
wives at times, reached new lows. He openly mocks the disabled, brags about his
penis, and calls women pigs and sluts.
Truly money can’t buy class; Trump’s proof.
Hillary is a weasel always playing the edges. But again,
everybody knows that.
She lies when the truth would do as well; in fact, she’s
lied about so much so many times I don’t think she knows what’s real and what
isn’t. You can’t believe anything she says. You’re never sure she knows she’s
lying, or if in some nutso way she thinks it’s true.
Pathological liar or delusional – either way it’s a big
problem.
Then there’s the fact that she’s damaged goods with a
history of backroom deals, shady financial transactions, skirting the law, and
money grubbing. Trump may have bullied his way to the top, but Hillary sleazed
her way there.
People want to blame Bill for a lot of the Clintons’
questionable ethos, but while he’s certainly no paragon of virtue and a rapist
at worst and sexual predator at best, Hillary’s always been the one driving the
bus on enriching herself and her family.
She’s the first-timer who made $100,000 overnight in a
commodities bet on an insider-trading tip from a friend. She was the lawyer on
the Whitewater fiasco. She’s the one who tried to make off with $200,000 worth
of White House china. She’s the one who helped her brother broker pardon deals
for money at the end of Bill’s Presidency.
She’s the one who got $675,000 from Goldman-Sachs for three 20-minute
speeches. She’s the one who took in millions from foreign countries and
companies for the “Clinton Foundation” while she was in a position as Secretary
of State to approve trade deals that benefitted those same countries and
companies.
She’s apparently willing to anything for the right amount of
money. That’s scary.
And, of course, she’s willing to lie about it. She had no
problem saying she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House,
even though they had book deals for millions already. She didn’t stop there,
either; she went on to claim they had to “cobble” together the money to buy two
– count ‘em, two – houses and pay for Chelsea’s education at Stanford.
She may be running almost exclusively on becoming the first
female President, but she’s got brass balls, nonetheless, to say stuff like
that with a straight face.
I suspect the Hillary camp is secretly pleased the
Republicans seem obsessed with Benghazi and her e-mail server. That takes the
focus off Hillary’s much larger character issues, her actual Achilles’ Heel,
which should frighten anyone thinking of electing her.
Her campaign posters have a big “H” and an arrow. I suppose
that’s for Hillary, but for me it’s for “Hypocrisy, this way …” It’s one thing
to change positions; it’s another to be a blatant hypocrite, especially when
digital media captures everything you say.
Recently, while pandering to a bunch of climate-change
activists, Hillary clearly said she planned on putting a lot of coal miners out
of work. Later, when confronted by one of those coal miners in West Virginia,
she said that was taken out of context. Like I said, brass balls.
She claims she’s in touch with what real Americans want and
how they feel. This from a woman worth millions who admits she hasn’t driven a
car in more than 20 years.
When she starts on about how she’s always been a warrior for
women’s rights, I think of the women Bill assaulted or had affairs with and how
she tried to portray them all as trailer trash.
I also remember her on camera in 1996 talking about
the need to put “super predators” in jail for long terms, which resulted in substantially
increased incarceration rates for black males. Now that she’s courting the
black vote again she claims she’s in favor of “criminal justice reform” that
would reduce sentences disproportionately affecting African Americans.
Hillary says she’ll
crack down on the financial industry – the same industry that’s contributed
millions to her campaign and millions more to her “Foundation.” Hillary says
she’ll crack down on lobbyists and special interests – the same lobbyists and
special interests who’ve also given her and her Foundation millions and sit on
her campaign committee. Hillary tries to portray herself as just like the rest
of us – but she and Bill managed to get Chelsea a part-time job at one of the
networks for $900,000 a year; I don’t know many of “us” who could pull that
off.
Face it: we have two awful choices ahead of us – Trump who
can be bought off with flattery; Hillary who can be bought off for money.
I don’t know which is worse.
But I can tell you this:
I wouldn’t want to sit next to either of them at a baseball game – an
old Ed Rendell test.
I honestly can’t imagine either of them as President.
No comments:
Post a Comment