OPINION:
Donald Trump may have made some mistakes in Sunday night’s debate, but telling Hillary Clinton she’d be in jail under his administration wasn’t one of them.
Mrs. Clinton tried to take Mr. Trump to task over his temperament, but it backfired.
“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country,” Mrs. Clinton snipped.
“Because you’d be in jail,” Mr. Trump retorted, in a mic-drop moment.
It was one of his best lines of the debate — but not according to the left, which hyperventilated, comparing the quip to the likes of Adolf Hitler and other dictators.
“OK, not to sound too corny, but what makes this country different from countries that have dictators in Africa or Stalin or Hitler or any of those countries with dictators and totalitarian leaders is that when they took over, they put their opponents in jail,” CNN’s Dana Bash said after the debate.
Wowza.
Jonathan Katz, a freelance journalist at The New York Times, agreed.
“Far scarier than Trump’s full-dictator turn last night is the fact that many Americans don’t understand what was wrong with it,” he wrote on Twitter.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder also responded on the social-media site, writing, “In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents. @realDonaldTrump said he would. He is promising to abuse the power of the office.”
It’s all feigned outrage sparked because left refuses to assign any accountability to Mrs. Clinton’s law-skirting.
One of the biggest liabilities of her campaign, is that many in the electorate perceive her as above the law. After the FBI concluded its investigation into her private email server, 56 percent of Americans felt she should’ve been indicted, according to an ABC/Washington Post. Only 39 percent felt the issue wasn’t related to how she would handle the presidency.
Moreover, after the federal investigation was completed, it was revealed to Congress just how corrupt and tainted it was by the Justice Department — from the sweetheart immunity deals Mrs. Clinton’s closest staffers received, to allowing them to destroy their laptops.
All Mr. Trump — and those who believe she is guilty of mishandling classified information — suggested was for someone to hold her accountable for her law-breaking — something the left refuses to do. So instead, it tries to flip the narrative. Except it doesn’t make sense in this case.
Mr. Trump never said he would throw Mrs. Clinton in jail without due process. He said he’d elect a special prosecutor to hear the case. As Ben Domenech, founder of the Federalist, wrote, “Appointing a special prosecutor does not equal throwing in jail. Unless she’s, you know, guilty.”
A special prosecutor is designed to specifically take the politics out of the process — something that was clearly in play during the Obama administration’s investigation.
Regardless of what the pundrity said, Mr. Trump’s jailing quip was a highlight of GOP consultant, Frank Luntz’s, focus group.
“The pundits are saying Trump’s “special prosecutor” line was the worst part of the debate,” Mr. Luntz tweeted. “But the people are saying it was the best.”
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