New Trump Ad Scolds Hillary for Palling Around With Sexual Predators; Others Target Her Treatment of Bill’s Accusers
The new ad, released on Instagram, lands in the middle of growing discussion of Hillary Clinton's alleged enabling of Bill Clinton's escapades.
Donald Trump sent a new broadside at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton Thursday, tying her not only to the predatory escapades of her husband Bill Clinton, but to those of comedian Bill Cosby and disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.
The ad, released on Instagram, is called “Hillary and Her Friends.”
Cosby campaigned with Hillary Clinton during her 2000 Senate run and Weiner is the husband of Clinton’s right hand assistant Huma Abedin.
Hillary invited Trump’s attacks in December when she ripped his use of a Yiddish term to describe her 2008 defeat to Barack Obama. She called his rhetoric “hateful,” “incendiary” and said it’s “not the first time he’s demonstrated a penchant for sexism.”
Since then, the GOP front-runner has repeatedly called attention to Bill Clinton’s behavior with women and to Hillary’s actions toward her husband’s accusers. Drawing a direct comparison between Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby — who is accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and has now been charged in a 2004 incident — ups the ante.
But is it fair to Hillary? She’s hardly responsible for Cosby’s assaults and Weiner’s obscene tweets.
Dustin Siggins argues in a new column at The Stream that instead it’s Hillary’s practice of demeaning and trying to silence those who came forward with allegations against her husband that should concern voters. And at Townhall.com Derek Hunter argues, “She was more than just an enabler. Hillary was a co-conspirator.”
If correct, than Hillary furthered the co-conspiracy be screaming conspiracy against her husband’s accusers. In 1998 Hillary publicly dismissed the various (often criminal) claims against her husband as a non-story. According to the then First Lady, the real story was “this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
“The media, being the media, followed her lead and this ‘conspiracy’ became the story,” Hunter noted. “The Clinton machine even painted Monica as a ‘stalker’ crushing on a sweet, trusting, father figure Bill.”
All of this is context for Hillary’s tweet late last year: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”
One of the many Clinton accusers who might insist that she is simply trying to be “heard, believed and supported” is Juanita Broadderick. After years of silence — and a generation of new voters with no memory of her story — she tweeted Wednesday:
I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away.
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) January 6, 2016
Broaddrick, now retired, told The Hill that she’s determined to play a more visible role in 2016. “I’ve been quiet for too long,” she said, “and now with the possibility of [Hillary Clinton] being the Democratic nominee and possibly president, I feel the need to get involved.”
Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones also came forward this week, retelling her story to talk radio host Aaron Klein. Jones demanded an apology from Hillary Clinton for trying to “discredit all of these women” that her husband “abused and sexually harassed.”
The danger for candidate Hillary Clinton is — as the epic fall of her former supporter Bill Cosby shows — in the age of social media, people may at last hear, and listen.
