Scores despite being triple-teamed
The following excerpt is from two of our “sometimes favorite” commentators at The Federalist, David Harsanyi and Mollie Hemingway. We highlight their reaction to last night’s debate because they are respectively, not a Trump supporter and never a knee jerk supporter of any politician (actually the latter fits them both).
These are of interest because the debate is on the heals of the take-our-breath-away “scandal” that Trump sometimes talks salaciously. Some #NeverTrumpers and weak-kneed hand-wringing supporters have cluck-clucked extravagantly and redoubled their outrage or pulled their tepid support, a Hillary presidency somehow less worrisome to them (and some of those call themselves conservatives).
The back and forth from the two is much more extensive about various aspects about the second debate. We highlight the “you might be jailed” implication of a Trump comment that probably has the most legs from the debate, more so now than the locker room talk scandal. Score one for Trump.
Journalistic Reaction
DAVID: As you know, I’ve been #NeverTrump from the start, so I have no sympathy for his cause. Still, I feel like I don’t live in the same political dimension as the anti-Trump commentariat.
The big takeaway from the liberal talking heads — CNN’s Van Jones, in particular, seemed to think this was the most precarious thing that’s happened in American history — was Trump’s promise to put Hillary in jail if he is elected. They act like he’s threatening her only as political opponent rather than a corrupt bureaucrat who was cleared in a dubious FBI investigation. It’s difficult to trust people who are shocked by Trump’s vulgarity but fine with Hillary’s favor trading and criminal behavior. We should have the bandwidth to be scandalized by both these things.
MOLLIE: I am not #NeverTrump but I have written critically of him for well over a year now. However, I try to be fair about him. When he does well, I acknowledge it. Our media are the equivalent of crazy exes with Trump. They loved him so hard during the primaries and are in some ways responsible for much of his rise. But now that he threatens their political goals, they just can’t control themselves. They get freaked out by literally every single thing he says and does.
Everyone ran with the groupthink talking point that the big take-away of the debate was that Trump said he’d throw Clinton in jail. Here, for example, is Jeffrey Goldberg: “The headline so far: Donald Trump threatens to throw his political rival in jail if he wins. This is what happens in dictatorships.”
There are multiple problems with this. For one, that’s not what he said. He did make a devastating jail line. Watch it here:
The room in which I watched the debate loved this line. Just imagine a bunch of people saying “holy [expletive redacted]” over and over and over. It was a moment. An absolute moment. One of the problems Clinton has is that she is perceived as above the law. People in both parties think she’s been able to get away with breaking laws that the rest of us would serve jail time for. So this line was very well delivered. Earlier, he’d said he’d appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her lawbreaking. This is because of the highly partisan and completely corrupt investigation that seemed designed in every way, shape and form to not hold her accountable.
But to say that Trump promised to jail Clinton only makes sense if you believe she’s guilty. As Ben Domenech wrote, “Appointing a special prosecutor does not equal throwing in jail. Unless she’s, you know, guilty.”
The other problem with the Democrats and their many allies in the media running with this line is that while journalists and pundits find it distasteful, normal people love the idea that Clinton might possibly someday be held accountable for her lawbreaking. The more they freak out about Trump saying he’d bring justice, the more it reminds people that Trump is different from the people currently in charge. The media like to present it as if Trump is saying he’d be a dictator. Many people hear that he’d make politicians be treated the same way other people are.
DAVID: Speaking of dictators: the one thing Hillary didn’t think to mention when asked about the Supreme Court last night was the Constitution. She did remind everyone she wants to overturn Citizens United and empower government to ban documentaries critical of her and her friends (and perhaps Trump is in favor of this, as well, I don’t know where he stands on this issue right now.) For all the supposed anxiety the media claims to have over Trump’s authoritarianism and assaults on free expression, they never never ask Hillary about this blatant attack on the First Amendment. It’s another clue that there’s a lot of feigned outrage out there.
R Mall
