OPINION:
Hillary Clinton is trying to talk about the housing crisis today — and how Donald Trump played a role in it. But all I’m hearing from the cable news networks and reading in the daily newspapers is Mr. Trump’s tawdry Instagram video detailing former President Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults from the women themselves.
“In 2006, Trump said ’I sort of hope’ that the real estate market crashes so that he could ’make a lot of money,’ ” Mrs. Clinton’s team said in a press release Tuesday morning, attaching their new video of how they believe Mr. Trump “rooted” for the housing crisis.
Who cares.
Not when you have Mr. Trump releasing his own video late Monday afternoon, highlighting the words of Juanita Broddrick and Kathleen Willey describing their alleged assaults by Mr. Clinton. The video ends with Mrs. Clinton’s shrill laugh, slamming her for “not protecting women.”
This is a classic example of how Mr. Trump won the Republican primary, and how he could win the general election — by dominating the headlines on a daily basis.
“Campaign turns nastier as Trump revives controversies around Bill Clinton,” a Washington Post headline read. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” spent their entire first segment detailing whether bringing up Mr. Clinton’s past controversies were a good or bad political move for Mr. Trump.
The point is, it doesn’t matter.
No matter what the topic, Mr. Trump continually wins news cycles, and in doing so, has been denying Mrs. Clinton airtime for the policy agenda she so desperately wants to push. This presidential contest could simply come down to personality — who voters are less sick of come November, and which candidate can best shake up the political status quo.
And it’s safe to say Mr. Trump is doing just that – playing the game of politics with a set of rules that no one has ever seen before. Nothing is off-limits. Everything is fair game. And no establishment candidate has a clue on how to react, including Mrs. Clinton.
“The truth is we are as puzzled by this as everybody else, and have no idea what the hell is going to happen with him,” a Clinton insider told Politico earlier this year. “[Democrats] knew what they were getting in 2008 with McCain; they knew early in 2012 they’d be getting Romney. You could plan for those guys. You can’t really plan for Trump yet because he’s so unpredictable.”
And Mr. Trump has proven to be a master of the media. So far this election cycle, he’s racked in more than $2 billion worth of free, earned press, simultaneously dwarfing his nearest competitor and drowning out their voices.
“[Trump] basically makes the television media cover him just about every day by offering some new controversy or revelation; he’s mastered the art of attaching himself to breaking news,” wrote Jim Geraghty of the National Review wrote. “A plane disappears, he asserts that it’s terrorism, and then a good chunk of the coverage is, ’is this premature, did he jump the gun’, etc.”
Sure, a good amount of this press is negatively focused, but so goes the old adage, all press is good press. If they’re talking about you, they’re not talking about anyone else.
It’s been debated about whether Mr. Trump is jumping into the gutter with his attacks about Mr. Clinton, and if they’ll backfire.
I doubt it, because the news-cycle moves too fast and the American people pay little attention to much of it. Today’s news will be old news tomorrow, and the press will have moved on to another story and topic.
So, too, will have Mr. Trump.
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