We all know by now that Donald Trump is a “racist”, “Islamaphobe”, “mysogonist” and an “anti-immigrationist” (I made up the last one). Well, actually we don’t know that - what we do know is that he can be boorish, crass and a dirty fighter when he wants to win. I don’t think he was ever tagged with the “homophobe” or a “transgenderphobe” charge - we haven’t heard him slur gays and he actually said that Kaitlin Jenner could use the ladies restroom in Trump Tower. He was deemed a racist for different reasons: he promoted the birther movement, a notion that Barak Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., wanted to impeach a judge of Mexican heritage that was hearing the Trump University case who was not ruling in Trump’s favor and Trump attributed it to the judge’s antipathy for Trump’s plan to build a wall bordering Mexico and the case of the housing development that he and his father owned decades ago that was sued for racial discrimination for which the Trump organization settled with no admission of guilt. The left is right when they say that he’s a carnival barker or more charitably stated a creative marketer. The birther ambit was an example of that and the focus on the judge’s heritage was a grasp to win popular support in case of a final bad ruling. As far as the housing case - well maybe Fred Trump was the racist. Maybe neither was and they decided as a business decision to settle. Well he’s a racist because he pointed out “my African American” at one of his rallies and that after all proves that he would treat an African American worse than anyone else - no - it just means that his sarcastic comment about race wasn’t well received. We know from the left that he’s an Islamaphobe because he wants to do extreme vetting of refugees or immigrants who come from countries where radical Islam is common. We know he’s a mysogonist because he made fun of Megyn Kelly who asked him a tough question at a debate and made fun of Ted Cruze’s wife’s looks - oh yes, he made fun of his competitor’s, Carly Fiorena’s looks too… Yes, he’s a dirty fighter when he wants to win. Yes, all not nice but to his credit, he has apologized for his inappropriateness both in individual cases and collectively. Bully talk is all it is and though it is not Abe Lincolnesque perhaps he is a man for our times willing to fight a bare knuckle fight on the country’s behalf. He’s an anti-immigrationist because he has the temerity to want to establish enforceable borders.
The 2 areas of concern where Trump really seemingly hurt people through his own doings are the bankruptcies in Atlantic city of his casinos and the Trump University where evidently it was a sham of an operation. In both cases he exhibited a certain recklessness and a disregard both for his own welfare and the welfare of others. In the bankruptcies he left suppliers and contractors unpaid for most of what they were owed and with the “university” he accepted hefty tuition from many leaving them wholly unsatisfied with the “education” that they got. The sin of the bankruptcies which happened about 25 years ago he surely learned a big lesson from. At that time he owed $4 billion and almost one quarter of that (about $900 million) he owed personally. If he would have defaulted on that he would have had a personal bankruptcy to his name and he may not have survived. That is the opinion of financial analysts. The Trump University matter is one where I think he is guilty of being a “Chaim Yankel” and leaving the management of the school to others of which I do not believe he had much understanding or involvement. Secondly, he naively believed that people were trying to deceive him after getting the benefits of the education to want to get their money back - all because he relied on the psychologically coerced high ratings the students would give to a course while being overseen by an instructor and before they had the chance to try out what they’d learned. So the case is in front of the courts and we will in due time (perhaps not in time for the elections) hear the outcome.
Hillary, on the other hand, is the one who is “refined" (leaving aside the stories told of her throwing an ashtray at Bill or how she cursed out secret service personnel who disappointed her). She is not an “ist” of any kind unless you want to say that she is a converted “socialist” as a result of Bernie. Hillary is a “seasoned" public servant with 30 years of service to her resume - 10 as a First Lady of Arkansas, 8 as a First Lady of the White House, 8 years as U.S Senator from NY and 4 years as Secretary of State. Over the years she’s had her share of “scandals” such as Travelgate and Whitewater but has come through all of them mainly unblemished. Recently however, she’s had 3 major scandals that she is defending herself against. 1) State Department emails that she sent and kept on her own private server against Department regulations 2) meeting with and treating differently at the State Department those major donors to the Clinton Foundation and clients who paid exorbitant fees, as high as $750,000 for Bill Clinton’s speeches (pay to play) and 3) the Benghazi affair.
Regarding the first - of the classified emails - she has been exonerated only because the head of the FBI, Jim Comey, says that she placed the nation’s security in peril not from an intentional criminal state of mind but rather from extreme carelessness despite the fact that we know that she had someone bleach 30,000 of her “personal” emails and bust her cell phones with a hammer. But it’s reassuring to know that if Hillary becomes president she would not put our nation’s security in jeopardy intentionally only carelessly! The second - pay to play, is being investigated and what needs to be explained is how a Canadian mining firm making a donation of over $2 million to the Clinton Foundation and paying Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech was allowed to sell its massive uranium mining stake, that stretches from Central Asia to the American West, to the Russian government. The uranium supply, a commodity sensitive to American national security, consisting of 20% of the U.S’s reserve, would have had to been approved by the State Department. As Donald Trump would say “not good”.
But now let’s look at the Benghazi case - a consulate we had in newly liberated Libya where different attacks had taken place and from which the Red Cross had pulled out of as well as the British consulate. Let’s set aside for now that there were 600 emails from our ambassador, Chris Stevens (a good friend of Hillary’s) stating that the security wasn’t adequate. Let’s however look at the behavior of a “seasoned" public servant with decades of experience on how to handle an emergency with proficiency and resolve.
The State Dept was notified about the attack 3:45 PM, Sept 11, 2012 (no reason to be extra vigilant on this date, right?). She contacted
the White House at 4:05 PM - so far so good. Obama then gave the order to “do whatever was necessary to support our people in Libya… with all possible sources.” - ok, that’s brilliant. Clinton then called the State Dept to demand of the Tripoli embassy “to get our people to safety and to break down the doors of the Libyan government (the newly minted government born out of the chaos of the takeover) if necessary to demand more support”. Does that sound like the State Department had a reliable ally in which country this vulnerable consulate and embassy were housed? 2 hours after the attack she called the CIA director, David Petraeus, because the CIA had a nearby post with a strong security force. Incidentally, there is much controversy whether there was a stand down order given by the CIA because the surviving CIA contractors who shot it out with the terrorists swear that they went to the fight despite an order not to. Did Hillary have some influence to slow the CIA force (as you will see later). But why wasn’t Petraeus called right away? Isn’t his security force the most logical to fight off the attackers? If in fact they weren’t, again, why wouldn’t he have the adequate forces? At 8 PM Hillary spoke with the Libyan embassy in Tripoli and they spoke mostly about trying to search for our missing Ambassador and what to do with our other personnel in that embassy - certainly very important, but it doesn’t sound like the embassy was able to garner much military assistance from the Libyan government. Then wasn’t there a poor assessment by our State Department of potential cooperation or assistance from our counterpart, the Libyan government? Hillary’s defenders point out that the mission to save our personnel under attack fell under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, and the chairman of the Joint Chief of staff, Marty Dempsey. Fair enough and congressional reports reviewing the U.S. response go on to say that the Secretary of State was not negligent of any undue delays in dealing with the attack. The Independent Accountability Review Board states in its report: “Quite the contrary: the safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack and subsequently to Ramstein Air Force Base was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response,”. Really?
By 10:30 PM Hillary left the State Department and was home when she made another phone call to the WH and spoke directly with the president (almost 7 hrs after the attack began). She left the State Department because her home was outfitted with communication equipment and because, as she wrote in her book, she knew that "the days ahead were going to be taxing on us all, with the entire Department looking to me to lead them through this shocking tragedy while keeping everyone focused on what lay ahead,”. So instead of dealing with the crisis at hand she planned already for the days ahead and how to guide the department through this shocking tragedy - all from her home! That makes sense - right??? In fact she was at home when the 2nd attack at the annex happened where we lost the 2 CIA contractors occurring 11:15 PM . But she wasn’t being idle then - she emailed her daughter to say that our consulate was attacked by an al Qaeda-like group but for the next five days went on to say to the country and the world that the attack was a spontaneous response to the video about Muhammed despite what we know that these al-Qaeda types plan their attacks well in advance. She also conducted her “stately" duty of emailing her colleagues 11:38 PM at the State Dept to ask when to announce the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.
So why blame Hillary when she was not in charge of the response team? As it turns out a Congressional report shows that the State Dept slowed the response of a 50-man Marine Fleet which launched on a C-130 aircraft from Spain about 2,000 miles away. The team was held on the aircraft for 3 HOURS before being cleared for take off. Why? The report states that the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified that the State Department had dithered about how to "send forces into Libya without creating a larger incident”. According to the report the State Dept didn’t want it to look like “an invading force”. Part of the prevarication was how the security team was to be dressed - military or civilian - subsequently changing in and out of uniform 4 different times! For whatever reason the 50 man Marine Fleet was not sent ever. This is just disgraceful! C-130 planes travel around 370 miles per hour taking about 6 hours to get to Libya. If they had been dispatched right away without concern about protocol perhaps they could have gotten there before the 2 CIA contractors were killed. This is why it is said that Hillary failed before, during and after the attack to do her job. Before - is when she should have known about the perilous security in the consulate and if she didn’t get the cables, as she says, then she should have known to ask since the Red Cross and the British consulate had left there already. In fact no one was fired for not relaying the crucial cables that the ambassador sent crying for help. During - among other delays she held up the rescue operation worrying about what attire the marines were supposed to wear not to offend the Libyan government. After - by lying to the country and having her surrogates lie about the source of the attack, such as Susan Rice on all the Sunday talk shows saying how it was a spontaneous attack due to the mocking video of Muhammed, to make it seem more random and not something that our intelligence should have know about especially considering that it happened on 9/11.
Hillary keeps saying that Trump is a mysogonist but if Trump is really the mysogonist he is purported to be then he would already have told Hillary that her feminine temperament is not befitting the job of being president since she was more concerned about our military’s wardrobe than saving our agents' lives that night, but that wouldn’t be right. Maybe it’s just best that he tell her that if after 30 years of being in public office she still doesn’t know that how our military personnel are dressed is not as important as showing up to save those under attack - then she should leave the job for someone else.