By Cliff Montgomery – Nov. 8th, 2016
To hear the 2016 presidential candidates tell it, one would think that they are polar opposites. For months both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have whipped their followers into a state of near-mania against ‘the opponent’, making it sound as if America, freedom, the Bible, apple pie and the lives of our children are at stake in this election.
Neither campaign has given voters many reasons to vote for either candidate – but they sure have worked to convince you there are a host of reasons to vote against the other person.
We at must point out that manipulating a person’s fears in the hope that he or she will vote against a political opponent is tacitly an attempt to get that person to vote for someone who does not represent the voter’s actual beliefs and real interests. It is a thwarting of democracy that only empowers the least offensive candidate.
Such activity might not be so odious if the two candidates actually hate and fear each other. Then we could at least say that their all-too-human failings have gotten the better of them.
But in reality, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are at least very friendly acquaintances, and quite possibly real friends.
It is a friendly acquaintance that spans decades.
Not long after Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, Donald Trump visited the White House with his two elder sons and happily met with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. Trump later wrote of Mrs. Clinton:
“The First Lady is a wonderful woman who has handled pressure incredibly well.”
In this presidential race, Hillary Clinton claims to be outraged at the stories of sexual misconduct now swirling around Donald Trump. She claims they are proof he is ‘unfit to serve’ as a U.S.president.
But in 1999, then-President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton were proud to accept Trump’s public defense of Bill Clinton’s own misconduct with Monica Lewinsky. Trump told the New York Times:
“It’s sad because [Bill Clinton] would go down as a great President if he had not had this scandal. People would have been more forgiving if he’d had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were on a different level.”
In fact, Trump’s relationship with Hillary Clinton was friendly enough for the billionaire to invite the former first lady to his nuptials.
On Jan. 22, 2005, Hillary Clinton sat in the front pew at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida and watched as Trump married Slovenian former model Melania Knauss.
Bill Clinton did not attend the wedding, but made it to the party held after the ceremony at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, a posh resort in Palm Beach. The reception included performances by Tony Bennett, Billy Joel and Paul Anka, and featured a massive 5-foot-tall, 200-pound wedding cake.
The cordial relationship between the Trumps and the Clintons was on display as recently as 2012, well into the Obama presidency. In March of that year, Trump proudly told Fox News that he truly likes Bill and Hillary Clinton, and added that they’ve been acquaintances for a very long time.
Bill Clinton was equally gregarious in May 2012, just two months after Trump’s interview. Clinton told CNN:
“You know, Donald Trump has been uncommonly nice to Hillary and me. We’re all New Yorkers. And I like him. And I love playing golf with him.”
It didn’t end there. On Sept. 21st, 2012, Trump gushed on Twitter:
“I really like Chelsea Clinton – an amazing young woman. She got the best of both parents. (@Ivanka Trump agrees)”
And as you might expect, Trump has contributed to Hillary Clinton’s senate campaigns and to the Clinton Foundation.
“I’m a businessman, I contribute to everybody,” Trump declared to Fox & Friends on July 15th, 2015. That may be true, but everybody wasn’t invited to sit in the front row of a church and watch the billionaire marry his third wife. Hillary Clinton was there, though.
The Trumps and the Clintons sure seemed awfully friendly for what they now claim were mere acts of political and economic expediency.
In their sad little grab for power, the two presidential candidates have each whipped their supporters into a frenzy of hatred and fear against ‘the opponent’. Yet we at the Spark must wonder: Why should Americans take this hate-filled talk so seriously when the candidates clearly don’t believe it themselves?
