That was just one of the many zingers Hillary nailed him with last night. It sort of dispelled a lot of illusions about her.
1. She can't handle a street fight. Huh? She's been in a street fight with Republicans since her and her husband were in Arkansas. In the national spotlight it's been 25 years with large parts of the Beltway press often acting like yet another political opponent.
2. She can't be funny.
3. There was also this illusion that somehow hitting Trump will be tough-mainly because his GOP opponents failed to badly.
But what a number of pundits noted yesterday is that while his GOP primary opponents seemed to diminish themselves when they attacked Trump, Hillary managed to attack him in a way that made him look small.
This is for a few reasons. A big one is GOP ideology and politics. They also waited way too late to try to define Trump.
Rubio only went after Trump U when his plane was already going down and he was desperately trying to take Trump's down with him before he hit the ground.
One of Hillary's best lines:
"I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants." -- Hillary Clinton on Trump
https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/738451451899445258
It is amazing how all the people Trump expresses admiration just so happen to be dictators. Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Chinese government in the Tinanmen Square massacre. He keeps a book of Hitler's speeches safely locked in a cabinet by his bed.
I honestly think that the day before Trump gets into the White House will be the last day of the Republic. Do you honestly think this is someone capable of the slightest restraint or recognizing the smallest amount of limits?
He's already saying he wants to reopen Trump U after he wins the Presidency and wins his case. I'm sure if he did win the Presidency he would win his case. He calls that judge in the case unfair and I agree. It's unfair to the 40,000 victims to have to wait to see if Trump is going to be President of the United States until after the election.
Many are observing that Hillary managed somehow troll Trump but diminish him and not herself. The opposite in fact. Chris Cillizza argues she shows she's very good at taunting Donald Trump"
"Hillary Clinton delivered what her campaign billed as a "major" foreign policy speech Thursday in California. But what the speech seemed primarily concerned with was taunting presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump as a know-nothing blowhard who is way out of his depth when it comes to international matters. It was startlingly effective."
"From the start, Clinton abandoned her typically cautious language. She called Trump "dangerously incoherent." She said he "doesn't have a clue." She described his foreign policy as "a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies." She did this: "I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants."
"Over and over (and over) again, Clinton cast Trump as a brash-talking buffoon who has "no clue" about foreign policy or how the world works more broadly. And it continued after the speech, too!"
"What Clinton seemed to be signaling in the speech was less that she and Trump have very different visions of America's role in the world, which they do, and much more that she could fight fire with fire. That if Trump wants to call her "Crooked Hillary," she will call him "no clue" Donald. That if he wants to turn this campaign into a war of (nasty) words, she's ready to go taunt for taunt."
"First, savaging Trump in unusually (at least for Clinton) blunt terms helps rally Democrats behind her. With the California primary looming and Bernie Sanders still lingering on Clinton's left flank, the best thing she can do is try to focus the lens on the common enemy: Trump. It's hard for me to imagine any Democrat watching Clinton's speech on Thursday and not feeling more favorably inclined to her by the end of it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a powerful piece of logic in primary politics and one that Clinton very effectively deployed in her speech."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/02/hillary-clinton-just-proved-she-is-very-good-at-taunting-donald-trump/?postshare=8621464900986899&tid=ss_tw
I actually thought the same thing. Her tough takedown of Trump may even help her in California next week.
After all, the only argument Bernie has left considering he's lost by 3 million votes is to claim that he's the better candidate based on these pretty speculative general election polls. You have to take them with a big grain of salt anyway as Bernie has not been vetted in a race with the GOP yet.
You often see candidates who are not running do better in hypothetical matchups than candidates who are really running.
But I think her strong performance yesterday showed that she is more than up to the task of fighting Donald Trump.
"Second, Clinton seemed to go out of her way to needle Trump as aggressively as she could without venturing into Marco-Rubio-small-hands territory. It was all part of a strategic effort to get under the real estate mogul's skin, which, as the Republican primary revealed, isn't all that hard to do. (Clinton even hinted in the speech at what she was doing — noting that Trump has "thin skin.") An angry Trump, the Clinton team believes, is a Trump who makes mistakes and a Trump who is less than appealing to a general electorate."
1. She can't handle a street fight. Huh? She's been in a street fight with Republicans since her and her husband were in Arkansas. In the national spotlight it's been 25 years with large parts of the Beltway press often acting like yet another political opponent.
2. She can't be funny.
3. There was also this illusion that somehow hitting Trump will be tough-mainly because his GOP opponents failed to badly.
But what a number of pundits noted yesterday is that while his GOP primary opponents seemed to diminish themselves when they attacked Trump, Hillary managed to attack him in a way that made him look small.
This is for a few reasons. A big one is GOP ideology and politics. They also waited way too late to try to define Trump.
Rubio only went after Trump U when his plane was already going down and he was desperately trying to take Trump's down with him before he hit the ground.
One of Hillary's best lines:
"I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants." -- Hillary Clinton on Trump
https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/738451451899445258
It is amazing how all the people Trump expresses admiration just so happen to be dictators. Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Chinese government in the Tinanmen Square massacre. He keeps a book of Hitler's speeches safely locked in a cabinet by his bed.
I honestly think that the day before Trump gets into the White House will be the last day of the Republic. Do you honestly think this is someone capable of the slightest restraint or recognizing the smallest amount of limits?
He's already saying he wants to reopen Trump U after he wins the Presidency and wins his case. I'm sure if he did win the Presidency he would win his case. He calls that judge in the case unfair and I agree. It's unfair to the 40,000 victims to have to wait to see if Trump is going to be President of the United States until after the election.
Many are observing that Hillary managed somehow troll Trump but diminish him and not herself. The opposite in fact. Chris Cillizza argues she shows she's very good at taunting Donald Trump"
"Hillary Clinton delivered what her campaign billed as a "major" foreign policy speech Thursday in California. But what the speech seemed primarily concerned with was taunting presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump as a know-nothing blowhard who is way out of his depth when it comes to international matters. It was startlingly effective."
"From the start, Clinton abandoned her typically cautious language. She called Trump "dangerously incoherent." She said he "doesn't have a clue." She described his foreign policy as "a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds and outright lies." She did this: "I will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants."
"Over and over (and over) again, Clinton cast Trump as a brash-talking buffoon who has "no clue" about foreign policy or how the world works more broadly. And it continued after the speech, too!"
"What Clinton seemed to be signaling in the speech was less that she and Trump have very different visions of America's role in the world, which they do, and much more that she could fight fire with fire. That if Trump wants to call her "Crooked Hillary," she will call him "no clue" Donald. That if he wants to turn this campaign into a war of (nasty) words, she's ready to go taunt for taunt."
"First, savaging Trump in unusually (at least for Clinton) blunt terms helps rally Democrats behind her. With the California primary looming and Bernie Sanders still lingering on Clinton's left flank, the best thing she can do is try to focus the lens on the common enemy: Trump. It's hard for me to imagine any Democrat watching Clinton's speech on Thursday and not feeling more favorably inclined to her by the end of it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a powerful piece of logic in primary politics and one that Clinton very effectively deployed in her speech."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/02/hillary-clinton-just-proved-she-is-very-good-at-taunting-donald-trump/?postshare=8621464900986899&tid=ss_tw
I actually thought the same thing. Her tough takedown of Trump may even help her in California next week.
After all, the only argument Bernie has left considering he's lost by 3 million votes is to claim that he's the better candidate based on these pretty speculative general election polls. You have to take them with a big grain of salt anyway as Bernie has not been vetted in a race with the GOP yet.
You often see candidates who are not running do better in hypothetical matchups than candidates who are really running.
But I think her strong performance yesterday showed that she is more than up to the task of fighting Donald Trump.
"Second, Clinton seemed to go out of her way to needle Trump as aggressively as she could without venturing into Marco-Rubio-small-hands territory. It was all part of a strategic effort to get under the real estate mogul's skin, which, as the Republican primary revealed, isn't all that hard to do. (Clinton even hinted in the speech at what she was doing — noting that Trump has "thin skin.") An angry Trump, the Clinton team believes, is a Trump who makes mistakes and a Trump who is less than appealing to a general electorate."
Right. She avoided the Rubio mistake. Rubio ended up diminishing himself more even than Trump. Little Marco kind of stuck because Rubio ended up looking like a frat boy making penis jokes.
Hillary was able to attack Trump in a way that diminished him and not herself.
What the speech also did is serve as a reminder that Clinton is best as a candidate when she is on the attack. Part of the reason she has struggled to put away Sanders is that she can't, really, go after the senator for fear of alienating his liberal supporters ahead of the general-election fight to come. When Clinton is able to go full bore at someone — as she did with Trump on Thursday — she clearly relishes it.
If this was a peek at the general-election version of Clinton, Democrats have every reason to be excited. This was one of her strongest performances of the campaign."
I don't agree she's struggled to put away Bernie. The race has been over for two months. But he is right that Hillary is actually strong on the attack.
Jamelle Bouie observed that this is the first time we've really seen Hillary in a national race against Republicans.
In 2005 when they were looking forward, most of Hillary's advisers-Mark Penn, et. al-had thought that the 2008 general election would be the toughest part of the race.
Bill Clinton was one of the few who argued the opposite: he correctly foresaw that the Dem primary would be the tougher race for her. He kind of saw early that Iraq would be a problem.
What the speech also did is serve as a reminder that Clinton is best as a candidate when she is on the attack. Part of the reason she has struggled to put away Sanders is that she can't, really, go after the senator for fear of alienating his liberal supporters ahead of the general-election fight to come. When Clinton is able to go full bore at someone — as she did with Trump on Thursday — she clearly relishes it.
If this was a peek at the general-election version of Clinton, Democrats have every reason to be excited. This was one of her strongest performances of the campaign."
I don't agree she's struggled to put away Bernie. The race has been over for two months. But he is right that Hillary is actually strong on the attack.
Jamelle Bouie observed that this is the first time we've really seen Hillary in a national race against Republicans.
In 2005 when they were looking forward, most of Hillary's advisers-Mark Penn, et. al-had thought that the 2008 general election would be the toughest part of the race.
Bill Clinton was one of the few who argued the opposite: he correctly foresaw that the Dem primary would be the tougher race for her. He kind of saw early that Iraq would be a problem.
I do think that she is going to find the general election kind of liberating. Primaries are sort of tough in general because you have to really magnify every small difference.
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