Monday, August 08, 2016

I'M RUBBER YOU'RE GLUE: TRUMP TRIES TO PAINT HILLARY AS UNFIT -- WITH HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS

Dave Weigel has an excellent post up right now about the sudden uptick in Hillary Clinton's health on the pro-Trump right:
... the Drudge Report, WorldNetDaily and a small army of would-be Twitter sleuths [have] tried to build the case that the Democratic nominee for president has serious health issues and only they had noticed.

... The highest-profile #HillarysHealth discovery came at the American Mirror, an obscure conservative news site with what it packaged as a scoop -- "SHOCK PHOTO" -- but had been aggregated from Twitter.

... the site's editor, Kyle Olson ... shared two photos of Clinton, shot from behind, being helped as she unsteadily ascended the stairs. He left out the context: The photos were from February. As CNN's Brian Stelter first noticed, Getty Images had published the photos during Clinton's South Carolina primary campaign. The photo agency noted, in its caption, that Clinton had been steadied after slipping on the stairs.

But the American Mirror's version of the story went viral, with help from the Drudge Report.
There's more. Right-wingers are again sharing a YouTube video posted last month that supposedly shows Hillary Clinton having a seizure (in June); it actually shows her trying to do an exaggerated comic recoil after two reporters close in on her to ask her a question, as another video of the same incident shows. And elsewhere, Mike Cernovich -- described by Weigel as "a self-help author best known as the attorney for a central figure in the 'Gamergate' saga" -- speculates that the Secret Service agent who rushed to Clinton's side during a recent protest by animal rights activists is actually a medical professional who travels with Clinton to help her stave off a stroke or a seizure.

(This story is being pushed by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. Yesterday, Hoft, citing Cernovich, posted analyses of photos showing this Secret Service agent, in an effort to prove that the agent carries an anti-seizure epi-pen for Clinton at all times.)

Oh, and Paul Canning notes, this speculation is also being relayed by Trump's Russian pals at RT.com.

Why is this happening now? Weigel's Washington Post colleague Aaron Blake explains why Trump is speculating about Clinton's health:
Last week, the speculation over Donald Trump's mental health kicked into high gear. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked whether Trump was a "sociopath." A former Harvard Medical School dean said Trump was the very definition of narcissistic personality disorder. A Democratic congressman called him "mentally unstable." Mark Cuban called him "bats--- crazy." Dr. Drew even weighed in because ... well, Dr. Drew....

Trump's response? Pull the "unstable" label off himself and slap it on his opponent.

The Republican nominee spent much of the weekend arguing that it is actually Hillary Clinton who is mentally ill -- not him. Call it Trump's (to borrow a playground retort) "I know you are, but what am I" strategy.

On Friday, he told a Des Moines crowd that Clinton was "pretty close to unhinged, and you've seen it. ... She's like an unbalanced person."

He pushed even harder over the weekend. "Honestly, I don't think she's all there," Trump said Saturday night in New Hampshire. "She took a short-circuit in the brain," he added. He also called her "unstable," "unbalanced" and "totally unhinged."

... Trump does this often. He'll be attacked for one thing or another and look to muddy the waters by arguing the same thing applies to someone else -- usually Clinton.
But as Weigel notes, it isn't just Trump who's doing this -- it's Trump's fanbase in the right-wing media as well. Weigel cautiously says that Trump's personal attacks on Clinton along these lines took place "at the same time" as the wingnuttosphere's attacks. Do you believe that's a coincidence?

I don't think I'm making a large leap of faith when I say that word clearly went out from Team Trump to sympathetic conservative media outlets that it was time to dredge up all the rumors about Clinton's health. I don't believe it was spontaneous.

It's not as if the health problems Clinton actually has are being covered up. Go here for a 2015 New York Times story that reports on her 2012 concussion and blood clot, as well as her ongoing use of the anti-clot drug Coumadin and thyroid-regulating medicine.

Well, at least this story can't be revived, at least in its original form:



The National Enquirer, which is published by Trump's close friend David Pecker, said Clinton had six months to live in the issue dated October 12, 2015.

That was ten months ago.

7 comments:

Never Ben Better said...

I can just imagine what Der Trumpenfuehrer will come up with if someone accuses him of being a thespian.

Raymond Smith said...

Trump and his followers will say anything to try to take the heat off of Trump. Everyone needs to use this come back to the Trump followers I have and it works great.
If Trump is really wanting to put the Mental Health issue to bed. Then Trump should agree to going to the APA and having a battery of testing done. As Trump and his followers are so sure of this issue being nothing. The testing from the APA will answer the questions once and for all.
Seems they always go quiet when I post a variation of the above.

Victor said...

Let's see:
-We've seen tRUMP eating a slice pizza - with a knife and fork. NYer's know that as BLASPHEMY!!!

- We've seen fat fuck cabana-boy-wannabe Chris Christie haul-up some McDonald's for his Lord and Master.
And not just once, either.

-We've seen tRUMP eat KFC - with a knife and fork! Again: BLASPHEMY!!!

And it's Hillary who is not healthy.
Right...

"Projection:"
It's all conservatives know.
Besides hate, fear, and bigotry, I mean.


Feud Turgidson said...

Per National Enquirer, GAWD! I almost wish I were story editor there right now: Zombie Hillary! Hillary as Night of the Living Dead Pod Person!

And it FITS! All those stories on her talking about UFOs and Roswell. I've been New Mexico - I've been to the weirdo alien buzz cafes and road-side museums - we've got SEVERAL HNDRED pictures of downloaded vids of weirdo signs and weirdo sights and weirdo people, picked up over several few trips over the actually more decades.

And yes, it's true I wasn't actually aware of HRC's presence, her psychic footprint, her cosmic e-dna at the time, perhaps it was just TOO STRONG a signal for my human perception apparatus to sort out, and really what we were sensing at that time was her spirit vapor trails, laid down time and time again as Secret Service officials truck in huge gas tankers of her spirit vapor trail for each time she's replaced by a new pod.

I'm kicking myself here. I KNOW how to feign nuts - it's not even that hard for me! I could have had that job - I could have been some somebody whacko a con tender, instead of a boring average sit on my bum, which is what I am.

Ten Bears said...

So he eats shit, with a knife and a fork, on his aircraft while reading the Wall Street Journal, and that appeals to the rubes because... they eat shit?

Oooooo... Kay.

As an aside, I've been telling white dogs for years that showers just aren't enough, if you don't want to stink you have to change your diet, and the place to start is with real food. Not shit. But nobody listens to me, which is ok, as I'll outlive them all.

Clarification: pizza is real food.

jsrtheta said...

The other day in the checkout line I caught the cover of the latest Enquirer, which was festooned with stories alleging all manner of horrors committed by Hillary.

I don't normally see the Enquirer, but I'm guessing this has become a weekly thing with them now.

maxk1947 said...

Welcome to the Pee-wee Herman presidency!