They didn’t come up in the first presidential debate on Monday, but Donald Trump’s campaign wants to talk about Bill Clinton’s sex scandals from the 1990s and beyond.
Trump campaign memo tells surrogates to bring up Clinton sex scandals https://t.co/w22gt5fmwi pic.twitter.com/j0qeiVaZAD
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) September 29, 2016
The general reaction from the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the media, has been one of bemused mockery. What’s the point of bringing up decades-old scandals, especially when it’s nothing something that voters care about.
Debate Mention of Bill Clinton Issues Would Backfire: Fallon https://t.co/JWZAhLO0Gx pic.twitter.com/qp6kWE9z6y
— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) September 29, 2016
Meanwhile, the media has been devoting an extraordinary amount of time and resources covering the decades-old story of Alicia Machado, the winner of the 1996 Miss Universe competition, who claims that Donald Trump made fun of her for gaining weight.
I ate lunch with Alicia Machado last week and we talked about Trump (and life beyond Trump) https://t.co/DVa5sflNI4
— Prachi Gupta (@prachigu) September 27, 2016
Sat down with Alicia Machado in LA last week to talk Clinton love, Trump hate, and more inclusive visions of beauty https://t.co/e9mBePVXIh
— Lucia Graves (@lucia_graves) September 27, 2016
Here is what Trump wrote about Machado in his book pic.twitter.com/ZsdrjdQg7o
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 29, 2016
Some journalists are pretty excited about it.
It's thrilling that Trump’s boorishness toward women may be catching up to him. My column https://t.co/qTsXpIos54 pic.twitter.com/ajwFlRYWZF
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) September 29, 2016
Alicia Machado has been getting a lot of coverage after Hillary Clinton randomly mentioned her name during the debate.
Nearly 20 Mins on Trump’s ‘Miss Piggy’ Remark, Silence on Clinton Chief of Staff Immunity https://t.co/6Vj55FeaQ7 #TTT16 #tcot pic.twitter.com/MBcL8rXhm6
— Mike Ciandella ن (@MikeCiandella) September 29, 2016
Of course, Trump doesn’t really deserve a defense in this case because, not being able to control himself, he took the bait and now he can’t stop talking about how Machado “gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem.”
In any event, the media should probably decide if dredging up decades-old scandals and alleged remarks is something voters don’t actually care about, or if we’re just going to be seeing a lot more stories like this one:
A Journalist Just Told Her Story About the Time Trump Called Her the C-Word in 1988 https://t.co/Ow9vbUEyfz pic.twitter.com/OPJdq8GcGT
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) September 29, 2016
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