New York Daily News

Hil-haters con sour suckers

Lying Trump gang is new Barnum circus

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ou get the idea that “The Greatest Showman,” a movie about P.T. Barnum that Donald Trump reportedly watched at Camp David this weekend, wasn’t viewed by Himself as being theatrical, but rather more of a documentar­y. Or training film.

Barnum is the one who said, famously, that there was a sucker born every minute. Clearly, when you see how easy it is for the country to get rolled the way it’s being rolled now, Barnum was even more of a visionary than anyone ever knew. The only thing that hasn’t happened yet in America is turning the production of “Make America Great Again” into a musical.

Fourteen months after Trump was elected, moving up on a year from when he took the oath of office, the current Barnumesqu­e showmanshi­p at the White House involves making an old shiny object new all over again. Of course this means Hillary Clinton.

Because if you read this President’s tweets or listen to the headexplod­ers in the bullhorn media all this time after Trump won and Hillary lost, the only logical conclusion is that she is a greater threat to the republic than Vladimir Putin could ever be. The great “Greatest Showman” production number that continues to entertain suckers in America, one built on a rather amazing premise:

That she was in it with the Russians on an election that she lost.

You are supposed to reject the notion that the actual Russian collusion in the last presidenti­al election, which our intelligen­ce agency treats as fact and special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigat­e in his methodical way, was the threat to democracy. You are not supposed to worry that this President clearly thinks he can swing the rule of law in this country, and the Justice Department, and the FBI, like a Louisville Slugger even as he continues to act as if both agencies are engaged in a conspiracy against him.

No. You are still supposed to think that all we need to do to make the country great again is to send the feds after Hillary Clinton again.

“In theory, everybody tells me I’m not under investigat­ion. Maybe Hillary is, I don’t know, but I’m not,” President Donald J. Trump says to reporters at Camp David this weekend, as if telling them and the world what a lucky boy he is.

This came at the end of the same week when Trump put this up on Twitter, and thus in lights:

“Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid (sic), Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregardi­ng basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others.”

Perhaps the growth here is that the President isn’t calling for Abedin, formerly Hillary Clinton’s top lieutenant, to get the death penalty.

But Trump and all the members of his pep squad at Fox News get what they want now. We’re talking about emails again, talking about a uranium deal that occurred while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state that the bullhorn media wants their sucker constituen­cy to believe was something that only could have been conceived by better criminal minds than you get in the mob.

Sucker America is likewise supposed to ignore the fact that the deal with a Canadian company called Uranium One had to be unanimousl­y approved by nine members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and could only have been stopped by then-President Barack Obama. This is the one about not letting facts, and fairly stubborn ones, get in the way of the narrative being pushed by the President and his various bootlicker­s in Congress:

That Hillary Clinton is the modern version of John Dillinger.

Only here is what Shepard Smith, a fine and honorable journalist who sometimes seems embedded at Fox News, said about the pay-for-play accusation against Clinton last November:

“The accusation (of pay-forplay) is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not. A committee of nine evaluated the sale, the President approved the sale, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others had to offer permits, and none of the uranium was exported for use by the U.S. to Russia. That is Uranium One.”

Still: You’re supposed to look at Clinton, and her emails, and her private server, not at Mueller’s investigat­ion, which has already produced indictment­s for Paul Manafort, who once was chairman of Trump’s campaign, and Michael (Lock Her Up) Flynn.

Flynn, remember, was briefly Trump’s national security adviser, which now seems to have been part-time work for Flynn when he wasn’t taking money from foreign government­s with both hands.

Look over there. Talk about Hillary Clinton and not Michael Wolff’s book about the Trump White House, which portrays the current administra­tion as being something out of another movie, “Dr. Strangelov­e,” just without the laughs.

In “The Greatest Showman,” there is this exchange between a bank manager and P.T. Barnum:

Manager: “This venture is rather bizarre.”

Barnum: “People are fascinated by the unusual and the macabre.”

Guy had no idea how far into the future he could see, all the way to the current big top, where the ringmaster is still telling you to look at her, not him.

 ??  ?? As if taking cue from the P.T. Barnum biopic “The Greatest Showman” (top right), President Trump is selling his loyalists on a colossal fraud – that Hillary Clinton (right) is actually guilty of all the crookednes­s he’s accused of.
As if taking cue from the P.T. Barnum biopic “The Greatest Showman” (top right), President Trump is selling his loyalists on a colossal fraud – that Hillary Clinton (right) is actually guilty of all the crookednes­s he’s accused of.

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