OPINION:
Another day, another Donald Trumpism to exploit and enjoy. What the Republican candidate actually said about Hillary Clinton and the Second Amendment was quickly lost in the Democratic hysteria that always follows any hint of g-u-n-s. (We can’t even say the word.)
For the record, here’s the text of his remark, made at a campaign rally in Wilmington, N.C.: “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.” He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The hysterics quickly put their own interpretation on it, that he was inviting someone with a [g-word] to take matters into her own hands. “Oblique as it was,” said The New York Times, the voice of uptown delicacy and dispenser of Democratic talking points, “Mr. Trump’s remark quickly elicited a wave of condemnation from Democrats, gun-control advocates and others, who accused him of suggesting violence against Mrs. Clinton or liberal jurists.”
Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, called the remarks “distasteful, disturbing and dangerous.” By comparison to the unhinged Democrats, Ms. King’s description was a model of measured, modulated moderation. Some Trump critics might have hired a firing squad to correctly punish him if they could find a firing squad to do the job without [g-words].
Even Pocahontas piped up with sexist mockery. The Donald, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said, “makes death threats because he’s a pathetic coward who can’t handle the fact that he’s losing to a girl.” Hillary was said to be particularly pleased with the jibe, since it’s been dog’s years since anyone called her a girl. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who fell off the campaign truck days ago, apologized, sort of, for saying it, but blamed the Trump tweet on a chronic loose tongue and she doesn’t think he intended “in any way to be inciting violence.”
Hillary is sensitive to loose assassination talk, having suggested in 2008 that Barack Obama, her opponent then, might do well to recall what happened to Robert F. Kennedy, who fell to an assassin just after he won the California primary. It was an oblique reminder of what can happen to a front-runner. Hillary never said exactly what she thought the connection was and she quickly apologized.
Mr. Trump, on the other hand, never apologizes, never explains. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who famously cleaned up New York City, said the controversy was stoked by a hypocritical media ever eager to infer Mr. Trump’s meaning from his direct speaking style and his disdain for tiptoeing around delicate subjects.
If Donald Trump wanted to say something to incite trouble, he said, “nobody in the world would stop him from saying it. He isn’t going to say it. He doesn’t mean it. He’s not that kind of man. What this is, is part of their process of trying to demonize him. It’s the only way they can demonize him because [the Democrats] have a criminal at the top of their ticket.”
It’s an ill wind, as the saying goes, that blows nobody good, and this was not that kind of wind. Hillary sent out a plea for money, begging supporters to show a big hand for the little lady. “I’m asking you right now, will you chip in to get your free sticker and make 100 percent sure we stop him?”
Hillary has the gift for turning everything into money, and its always all hers to keep.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.