Donald Trump was very proud of himself for not explicitly attacking Hillary Clinton over her husband’s past infidelities in Monday night’s debate: “When she hit me at the end with the women, I was going to hit her with her husband’s women and I decided I shouldn’t do it because her daughter was in the room.” That was always a veiled way to raise the issue, but it looks like Trump and his team are deciding to go full-on and blatant with that line of attack after all.
Past adulterer Rudy Giuliani thinks past adulterer Trump should definitely go for it. Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie, of Citizens United fame, is pushing the attack, and:
Against them, you have a host of Republican operatives wincing in the knowledge that this is nothing new, it has not worked in the past as an attack on Hillary Clinton—and in this case, it plays into Clinton’s message that Trump is a misogynist creep:
If the thrice-married Trump hits Hillary Clinton for her husband's infidelity, he's effectively taking her bait again. "He's walking right into her trap," Packer said. "She's making the case that he bullies, degrades and humiliated women. And this will be Exhibit A."
This is Hillary Clinton we’re talking about. It’s not just that she’s been dealing with exactly these attacks for decades. She’ll have practiced how to deal with a Trump-specific version of them. And she’ll have about a dozen easy examples of Trump treating other women in the same way he’s treating her.
But even though it won’t work, and even though Clinton will be ready for it, it’s going to be an ugly thing to watch. It’s even uglier when you consider it’s coming from a major party presidential nominee.
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