IS IT NOVEMBER YET?
WHAT’S REALLY DEPLORABLE
It is absolutely laughable — in a sad way — that Donald Trump is on his high horse about Hillary Clinton’s half “basket of deplorables” comment.
And, no, we cannot possibly write about those “deplorables” as well as Charles Blow of the New York Times does. Please read his column immediately to the right of this one.
But on Monday, Trump took to the megaphone again to bash a small piece of Clinton’s talk about fringe white nationalists (we here in the South still know them as white supremacists) who support Trump. That faction of his supporters are the folks and groups that he retweets rather than distance himself from.
But Trump, saying Clinton should “retract her comments in full,” added that she spoke “with hatred and derision” for the folks who make this country run. Actually in her full comment, which you can read in the Blow piece, was exactly the opposite. Still, she apologized the following day for saying that “half” his supporters fall into that fringe category.
But “hatred” was Trump’s projection. And just seconds later, without a blink, he declared that America’s inner cities “are a disaster.”
It must have been a moment when he lost his place on the teleprompter.
ANTIBIOTICS FULL DISCLOSURE
Yes. It turns out that, for at least a few days, Hillary Clinton has been campaigning with pneumonia.
A 68-year-old woman, with walking pneumonia, still kept a schedule for two days that most of us wouldn’t make it through — flying here and there, holding multiple events and briefings each day.
As the Huffington Post concluded, that’s not weak. “That’s actually strong and tough as h___.”
But not if you’re a woman. Not if you’re Hillary Clinton. Not if your opponent Donald Trump and his surrogates have been coding for weeks that you lack “stamina” to be president.
Let’s just be clear. Dick Cheney, having smoked three packs of cigarettes a day for nearly 20 years, had his first of five heart attacks in 1978 at age 37. He had subsequent attacks in 1984, 1988 and 2000 — even while he held a number of high-level public offices. He was still declared fit for office as vice president in 2001. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter collapsed as he jogged. What was first whispered to be a heart attack turned out to be exhaustion.
So if Clinton’s cough and now fairly common walking pneumonia, along with the antibiotics she has been prescribed, suddenly become the new code for lacking presidential stamina, something’s really wrong.
The Clinton campaign fell on its sword Monday and said it could have “handled it better” by announcing Friday that her allergies had progressed to pneumonia, but that she was pushing through it.
“That’s on the staff, that’s on us,” said her campaign manager Brian Fallon on Monday, adding that Mrs. Clinton will release more medical information later this week that will show her to be in good health — more information beyond the extensive letter with a comprehensive medical history and family history that she released a year ago.
Trump, on the other hand, has released a ridiculous letter from a gastroenterologist that the physician himself said was written in five minutes while a Trump car waited outside. Trump says he plans to release more to Dr. Oz. How appropriate: Another quasi-reality television show.
The true take-away here is that between Clinton’s released health records, her thousands of released emails and her years of released tax records, we have more information about Hillary Clinton than about any other presidential nominee in modern history.
And Donald Trump hasn’t released anything: Not his taxes, not his real health records, not his financial dealings with Russia — nothing.