OPINION:
Chelsea Clinton, daughter of the president who was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice, nonetheless found the nerve to tell an overseas newspaper, The Guardian, that Donald Trump is not only less than presidential — but he’s also less than American.
He’s not a real American, she suggested.
He’s degrading “what it means to be an American,” she said.
How very Clinton-esque. Here’s a woman whose very parents epitomize scandal and corruption — whose dad, for instance, wagged his finger in the face of the American public to falsely state he wasn’t lying and whose mom, for example, was deemed by former FBI Director James B. Comey to have been “extremely careless” with the “handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” — and yet here stands Chelsea, finding cause nonetheless to wave a flag of righteousness and find fault with the moral and political compass of this current White House, this current president.
It’s not just ironic. (So real Americans lie, cheat and deceive? That’s the Clinton definition of “what it means to be an American?” Hmm. OK.) But wait. There’s more. Clinton’s remarks are also over-the-top hypocritical.
“If I lived in Britain,” Clinton said, when asked about Trump’s scheduled July visit to the that country, “I would show up to protest because I don’t agree with what he’s doing to degrade what it means to be an American.”
Well, isn’t that special. Clinton, of course, is absolutely entitled to her opinions — absolutely free to comment on political matters and on the president as she sees fit. But here’s why her remark goes beyond ironic into hypocrisy: The left loves to paint the right as racist, narrow-minded, discriminatory, misogynist and so forth for simply holding views that amount to nothing more than law-and-order ideas — that, for example, call for confines on the country’s borders, or for freedoms for firearms’ carriers, or for non-regulated access to scores of other provisions that are simply based on God-given, constitutionally protected individual rights.
The Democrats like to portray themselves as the party of the little people, the voice of tolerance, the open-door welcome to the downtrodden and poor and to-be-pitied factions of America.
And as part of that narrative, the left likes to suggest socialism-type solutions for a country that’s actually a republic — that’s actually a government of limited powers.
As for those who don’t abide the socialist solutions, who can’t stomach the idea of government intruding onto every aspect of human life and exerting controls, regulating behaviors, extracting tax dollars?
In leftist-speak, they’re un-American. They’re not real Americans. They’re bucking the true American system. It’s one of the left’s favorite tools of slamming the right — confronting conservatives for their (gasp!) conservative views, and trying to skew those views as negative rather than what they really are: Founding visions. Constitutional ideas. Genuine American beliefs.
Well, note to Clinton and all those of her ilk: Founding Fathers were pretty clear in how they intended this country to be governed. And when it comes to Donald Trump versus the Clinton Family, it’s not Trump who’s running roughshod over that Founding Fathers’ vision.
On scandals, corruption, deception, dirty dealings, and overall views of how a U.S. government should be run — on the utter absence of a moral compass tied to the Judeo-Christian principles that birthed the great nation America is today — it’s Team Clinton that takes the cake. It’s Team Clinton that falls short of the true American ideal, the true-blue “I cannot tell a lie” standard for good governance. It’s Team Clinton that fails to live up to “what it means to be an American.”
It’s Team Clinton and Team Clinton types that are hardly real Americans.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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