-By Warner Todd Huston
The Clinton campaign’s “October surprise” appears to be the coordinated release of a decade old audio tape of GOP nominee Donald Trump’s boorish locker room yapping about women. Since its release the left and the media — but I repeat myself — have been suitably outrageously outraged. But it all brings one to ask, how can the left be so morally outraged, how can they be more upset at Trump’s trash talk than they can about 40 years of Bill Clinton’s rape cases and Hilary’s anti-woman actions in response to them?
Right off the bat, though, I need to note that I find such locker room talk distasteful. I personally never engage in it. You could ask just about anyone who knows me to pinpoint a time when I trash talked a woman and they won’t be able to think of one I can assure you. I know many people feel the same way about this sort of behavior.
However, I know an awful lot of men who I otherwise respect and trust who DO talk like this among other men. It’s braggadocios and ill-mannered, but it is extremely common among those with testosterone flowing through their bodies. No man who has ever left his house and walked into a bar, a gym, a locker room, a conference room or anywhere other men are gathered has not heard talk like this. Would that such talk could be eschewed, but the fact that some engage in it doesn’t automatically make them evil human beings.
So, do I wish Trump hadn’t said these sort of things? Sure. Does the revelation that he has said such things mean he should be thrown overboard? If it did we’d likely have to throw half the men we all know overboard for the same reason.
And don’t give me that “but Trump is supposed to be a leader” line, either. If we are to be outraged that Trump said it, we need to be just as outraged when our plumber, co-worker, or golf buddy says such stuff. A standard isn’t a standard if only some people are held to it.
This whole controversy began on Friday afternoon. The 2005 tape recording of Trump bragging about trying to have sex with a woman (and failing to swing the deal) was published by the Washington Post on October 8. Naturally, almost immediately the outrage machine sped up to its highest RPMs.
The left went wild with spittle specked glee over the revelations and like dutiful little lemmings, many Republicans trotted right behind with lamentations and the wearing of sackcloth and ashes as they raced to condemn Trump and proclaim that they are no longer supporting him.
The Trump campaign realized they had to get out their position on the issue ASAP, so only hours after the story went live, Donald Trump offered an apology:
Transcript:
I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong and I apologize.
I have traveled the country talking about change for America, but my travels have also changed me. I’ve spent time with grieving mothers who’ve lost their children, laid-off workers whose jobs have gone to other countries, and people from all walks of life who just want a better future. I have gotten to know the great people of our country and I’ve been humbled by the faith they’ve placed in me. I pledge to be a better man tomorrow, and will never, ever let you down.
Let’s be honest, we’re living in the real world. This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues we’re facing today.
We are losing our jobs, we are less safe than we were eight years ago and Washington is totally broken. Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground. I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.
This didn’t quell the outrageously, outrageous, outrage on the left, of course. In fact, even these three days later you can bring up any news webpage, tune into any radio news break, or flip on any TV news broadcast — whether cable or Big Three networks — and it will be the story you see and hear about. The wringing of hands over Trump’s locker room talk is ubiquitous, so much so that I don’t have to bother recounting it all here. You can find it yourself with as much ease as breathing.
But all the outrage really does ring hallow coming from the same people who for forty years excused and waved away as irrelevant Bill Clinton’s many accusations of sexual harassment, rape, and infidelity as well as Hilary Clinton’s acts of the politics of personal destruction as she worked to destroy the lives of the women her husband abused.
Not only that, but this outrage comes from the same sort of people who celebrate rap music as a worthy cultural treasure despite that it is filled with lyrics that call women “bitches” and “hos” at every turn.
Further more, why hasn’t the left simply accepted Trump’s apology and moved on? After all, they were OK with it when Democrat Senator Robert Byrd “apologized” for helping to run the Ku Klux Klan when he was a young man. How is it OK to accept a belated apology 40 years after he helped run a racist, domestic terror group but not OK to accept an apology for trash talk that is only 10 years old?
It all reeks of left-wing hypocrisy.
Regardless, the way the left treated Clinton’s rapes is really the more trenchant. When Clinton was finally felled by his sexual exploits in the Fall of 1998 and his lying about it led to his impeachment in the House of Representatives, the out cry from the left was “it’s just sex.” We were told that his constant horndogging was an endearing aspect of his personality. His glinting eye, avuncular personality, and general good ‘ol boy demeanor was cool and funny. And, besides, it was just sex and all those women were asking for it because Bill was so gosh darned cool.
In fact, all the way up to 2010 liberals were waving off Bill’s constant acts of sexual abuse. Take this piece by the far left-wing website Gawker.com where we were all scolded: “Can We All Please Leave Bill Clinton’s Penis Alone?”
Liberals led by Hillary Clinton insisted we forget all about these sexual assaults. They were meaningless, we were told.
But for decades the women Bill abused have never just gotten over it all. That point was recently driven home by the heartbreaking story of Bill Clinton’s rape as re-told by Juanita Broaddrick:
Just read some of these accusations… is THIS something we should just “get over”?
And then as he points over my shoulder, he grabs me and turns me to him. And that was a shock. And I tried to push him away. And I only weighed about 120 pounds at that time. He was a very large man. And I kept telling him, ‘No. I don’t want this at all.’
…And he grabbed me again, very forcefully. And started biting on my top lip. And this was extremely painful. I thought he was going to bite my lip off. And that’s when he pushed me back onto the bed.
…I was completely dressed. I had a skirt and a blouse. He tore the waist of my skirt. And then he ripped my pantyhose. And he raped me. It was very vicious. I was just pinned down… I did not know what to do. I was so frightened. I was only 35 at the time. And it was horrible. I just wanted it to be over with. So he would go away.
…he held me down for a long time. And then he did it again. I was so ready for him to leave me alone. When he started raping me again. And it was very brief… And he did get up and he straightened himself. And my mouth was bleeding and it was hurting. And he just straightens himself and goes to the door.
Broaddrick is hardly an outlier. There are at least a dozen women with similar stories going back all the way to when Bill Clinton was the Arkansas Attorney General in the late 1970s.
Recently three of these victims gathered together to assert that what Bill Clinton did were crimes. But they also all confessed that they’ve lived in fear for decades because of Bill Clinton’s powerful and vindictive wife, Hillary.
Here is some of what Breitbart News reported on this meeting.
Later in this interview, Jones, Willey, and Broaddrick expressed fear at how a potential President Hillary Clinton would use the power of her office.
“It terrifies me and it should terrify all women,” Jones stated about Hillary’s presidential ambitions.
“It should terrify all men and women,” Willey added. “She will annihilate any enemy. All of her enemies. Anybody who has spoken against her. Across the board for I don’t know how many years. She will get rid of them.”
“No woman who advocates for women attacks the victims of sexual assault be it by her husband or anybody else,” said Willey.
The women argued that the term “enabler” best describes Hillary Clinton’s role in her husband’s alleged sexual crimes.
Indeed, Hillary was famous for having been the chief attacker to help cover up Bill’s “bimbo eruptions,” as Hillary so disgustingly called her husband’s victims.
For a woman who claims that victims of sexual assault should always be not only believed simply by the declaration of assault, but treated as morally pure compared to the evil man who attacked them, Hillary Clinton has spent decades in a vicious campaign to destroy the women who accused her husband of sexual assault.
Now, some of you out there may at this point be saying, “this is all decades old news. Who cares? Bill obviously learned his lesson and has been cured of this stuff.”
Au contraire. We don’t have to go back to the 1970s, 80s and 90s to find evidence of Bill Clinton’s disgusting abuse of women. His evil sexual abuses have continued to this very day.
Take the case of a girl who said she was held as a sex slave by one of Clinton’s close pals and frequently saw the ex-president in sexual escapades with underage girls on an island in the Caribbean as well as in the air on a private jet.
Former President Bill Clinton took a romantic jaunt in 2002 to convicted pedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein’s “orgy island” with “two young girls” from New York, according to a shocking new interview.
Virginia Roberts, who’s accused Epstein of turning her into a “sex slave” at age 17 and forcing her to sleep with his powerful friends, claimed Clinton stayed in one of the many villas on Epstein’s US Virgin Islands estate — where group sex was a “regular occurrence.”
“I remember asking Jeffrey, ‘What’s Bill Clinton doing here?’ kind of thing, and he laughed it off and said, ‘Well, he owes me a favor,’ ” Roberts told her lawyers in a 2011 interview obtained by RadarOnline.com. “He never told me what favors they were.”
Bubba was accompanied by two of Epstein’s regular girlfriends and “two young girls that I could identify,” Roberts claimed.
“I never really knew them well anyways. It was just two girls from New York,” she said.
Bill’s close pal, Jeffery Epstein, called his private island “orgy island.” What Republican could get away with this sort of outrage?
In 2008 Epstein was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month prison sentence. He is now a registered level three sex offender.
The sexual abuse Bill participated in with Epstein did not happen 40 years ago and in the last century. It was THIS century and only ten years ago!
Then there are the rumors from Bill’s security personnel that he has been engaged in a running affair with a woman they nicknamed “the energizer” for her long sessions with Bill in his Chappaqua, New York, home. There is even evidence that Bill awarded this woman a $2 million payoff using funds from his “charity”foundation to keep her quiet.
Through all of this, Hillary remains publicly quiet but privately seething and vindictive. So, the left’s excitement and faux moral outrage at this Trump trash talk revelation is entirely manufactured and false. They absolutely are not outraged by this behavior when their side does it.
Finally, I want to close by reiterating something. I am not excusing away Donald Trump’s boorish behavior. With this piece I am only noting that the left’s sudden moral outrage over such behavior is 100 percent hypocritical. If you are the sort who holds the people in your life to a higher standard and Trump’s actions outrages you, then you have every reason to hold Trump to that same standard. But make sure you aren’t as hypocritical as the left over this topic. Moral outrage is only effective if it is applied to everyone equally. You cannot pick and choose who you deem to be a moral reprobate based on the same behavior.
Now, hopefully we all grow and improve with age. None of us want to feel we haven’t gotten better than we were a decade ago.
What Trump said about the woman was horrible. But at least Trump manned up and took responsibility for his words and apologized for them.
But compare this with even Hillary’s recent misdeeds. She has called children with learning disabilities “retards” and demanded that her aides get them away from her. Hillary told a congressional hearing that the deaths of four Americans during the terror attacks in Bengazi, Libya, should make no difference and then lied to the parents of the victims about the cause of their deaths. All she does it make excuses and blame other people. We must consider words vs. deeds. While we can all agree that Trump’s words were horrific, they are still a whole lot less egregious than what Hillary has actually done.
Certainly none of us is perfect. We all make mistakes and do things we later regret. The issue is, do we learn from these mistakes? Or do we continue to repeat them? And do we grow in character? He who is without sin cast the first stone, as they say.
Neither Trump nor Hillary are perfect. Both made and continue to make mistakes. The issue is what do they do about it. So far Trump has stood up and taken responsibility for his mistakes. All Hillary does is blame other people and make excuses.
So, the decision is your, America. Take action in November, but do so without hypocrisy dogging your actions.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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