OPINION:
There’s an old biblical principle that goes like this: Don’t try and pull the speck from another’s eye without first removing the log from your own.
Democrats, on an all-courts-press to paint President Donald Trump as a mental nutcase, would do well to remember this adage.
It’s not as if Democrats were the sanest people on planet earth. Think Black Lives Matter wielding baseball bats in the streets.
But it’s this, from Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Dem on the House Intelligence Committee, who said during a nationally televised CNN interview: “We have a seriously flawed human being in the Oval Office.”
Hmm.
He also said, as Politico noted: “I don’t think there is anyone in Congress, frankly, of either party who does not concur at least privately with those observations and concerns.”
Well frankly, this whole line of mental instability aimed at the president is both weak and tiresome.
“New scrutiny for Trump’s mental fitness after book, tweets,” The Hill blasted in a headline, on the heels of the widely talked about salacious reporting of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff.
And then this, from Newsweek: “Trump Could Destroy the Entire Human Species, Says Yale Psychiatrist Who Warned Congress Members.”
And the latest, this, from CNNPolitics: “Trump physical unlikely to shed light on mental fitness.”
Give it a rest, left.
There’s enough in the Democratic Party to wonder about your own sanity level. Can you say Bill Clinton, purported rapist, admitted adulterer?
Clinton was ultimately impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in 1998, but saved from Senate conviction by party loyalists.
Hillary Clinton continues to face fire for alleged pay-for-play schemes involving her work while secretary at the State Department and simultaneous affiliation with the Clinton Foundation, and for the curious Uranium One dealings with Russia she helped shape while serving under Barack Obama. And Trump’s the one facing collusion claims?
Right.
Eric Holder — the same guy some in the Democratic Party now see as a possible presidential candidate in the coming years — was once held in contempt of Congress for stymying the Fast and Furious investigation. And about that whole Fast and Furious thing in the first place — imagine what would have befallen a Republican who ran guns south of the border, guns that ultimately were found at the scene of a Border Patrol agent’s shooting death. The media, the mouthpiece for the left, would still be howling for GOP heads.
Let’s not forget it was Holder’s leftist leanings that provided him justification to spy on the press, as well.
Then there’s Obamacare.
You can keep your plan and your doctor, anyone?
We need to pass it to find out what’s in it, anyone?
We passed Obamacare due to “stupidity of the American voter,” anyone?
There’s the leftist-led IRS targeting of tea party-type groups. There are the ongoing and escalating leftist-led Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein-type sexual scandals. There are the similarly egregious sexual scandals in media that have left many on the left in the lurch, either embarrassed or outright fired. Are these the acts of the mentally fit?
This is not to say scandal doesn’t hit the ideological right. In fact, Republicans have been tainted by many of the same acts of corruption that have marked the Democrats.
But it is to say that calling out Trump for mental instability because he speaks tough on foreign leaders, or fails to soften his rhetoric on Twitter, or outright engages in public spats with those who insult him or his family, is not only hypocritical. It’s also disingenuous.
After all, in a contest of mental fitness that compares, say, a liar, a rapist and Trump, most sane-minded would choose Option Three, the president — a frequent tweeter who happens to have a bulldog approach to politicking.
Democrats ought to look to their own camp to root out the nut jobs. There’s plenty there, it would seem, to keep the psychiatrists busy.
• Cheryl Chumley may be contacted at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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