The Trump campaign planned to spend this week talking about sexual assault … but the fact that they’re talking about the growing list of women who say Trump assaulted them was definitely not the plan. No, the Trump plan was to continue to try to make Bill Clinton an issue to inflict maximum pain on Hillary Clinton. Remember this?
Donald Trump believes his ploy at the Oct. 9 presidential debate to invite three women who claim they were assaulted by former President Bill Clinton—Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones—has left Hillary Clinton “shaken” and helped unify Republican voters behind his embattled campaign.
So he’s doubling down on the strategy, which his advisers believe will make his opponent toxic and depress turnout among a key demographic group—young women—Clinton is counting on to win. A senior Trump adviser says the campaign will soon bring forward new accusers: “Women are coming to us who have been groped or sexually abused by Bill Clinton.”
That was being reported Wednesday, just as the floodgates opened and women began coming forward to report their experiences being assaulted by Trump. So while the Trump campaign was planning “a new media blitz” for Thursday, including a Fox News special with Bill Clinton’s accusers, Trump surrogates are going to spend Thursday talking about a different set of accusers—Trump’s. They’ve made clear that the plan is to smear, smear, smear, but as the list keeps growing, that much smearing is going to start taking up a lot of time and energy, and looking awfully desperate.
It’s almost like it’s a bad idea attacking your opponent for something her husband is accused of that you yourself are on tape bragging about doing. Like maybe the Trump plan was most of all a recipe for instant karma.
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