WEINERGATE REDUX IS NOT NECESSARILY A WIN FOR THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN

So now we know that last year Anthony Weiner tweeted a crotch shot to a woman who's an NRA-supporting Donald Trump fan while his toddler son was next to him. The New York Post broke the story. Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, has had enough and has announced that the couple is separating.

Bad news for the campaign of the woman Abedin advises, Hillary Clinton? Sure, I suppose -- at least for the moment.

Excellent news for Donald Trump? I don't think so.

Consider this tweet from an accounting parodying the Associated Press:

Clinton Aide Marital Spat to be Campaign Issue When Donald Trump Gets Phone Back

— AP_Headlines (@AP_Headlines) August 29, 2016

Trump has yet to tweet about this. Trump is probably under strict orders not to tweet about this. But I don't think the campaign can keep him quiet on this subject forever, either on Twitter or in his speech ad libs. We're eventually going to get more from him than this, a written statement that probably originated with the candidate but clearly went out only after the roughest edges had been beveled off:

“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” he continued. “Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.”

(Yeah, Donald, he might have passed missile secrets on to this Trump supporter he was sexting with, who might have passed them on to your Putin-friendly campaign.)

That national-security angle probably works with Trump's base. It don't think it will work with the voters Clinton is targeting -- her base voters and moderate suburban Republican women. To a lot of people outside the Trump base, this will be a human story. Abedin is a repeatedly wronged wife who made a heroic effort to keep her marriage together and just now reached her breaking point. That makes her a sympathetic figure. That makes her similar to Hillary Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.

Can Trump restrain himself from kicking Abedin when she's down? Can he resist the temptation to go down this road?

Drudge running with classy, classic "Hillary is a lesbian" angle pic.twitter.com/Zp8c6mYLO1

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 29, 2016

Maybe heartland white men won't feel this way, but much of the rest of America is going to want Huma Abedin to bounce back from this without jeers and catcalls from the GOP presidential candidate and the right-wing media. I suspect Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump get this. I suspect their candidate doesn't. We'll see who ultimately controls the message from Trump World. And we'll see whether the conservative press can avoiding making Abedin even more sympathetic.