CLINTON FEEDS OFF MEGYN KELLY’S “WAR ON WOMEN” QUESTION: Hillary Clinton has unsurprisingly begun to capitalize on the “war on women” narrative amplified by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly during the GOP presidential debate. Kelly reignited the narrative with the following question posed to Donald Trump:
Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women.
You’ve called women you don’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” . . .
Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?
Afterwards, Trump amped up the rhetoric and made matters worse when he told a CNN host,”You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
It was utterly predictable that Clinton would eventually capitalize on this #waronwomen opening, and today she did so, according to the Daily Caller:
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday Hillary Clinton slammed Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Fox News host Megyn Kelly as “outrageous” but said that other Republican men running for president have made equally “offensive” remarks. . . .
“But I think if we focus on that we are making a mistake,” Clinton said of Trump’s remarks. “What a lot of the men on that stage and that debate said was offensive.”
“When one of their major candidates, a much younger man, a senator from Florida, says there should be no exceptions for rape and incest, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency.”
So Clinton is equating Trump’s crude comment directed at a woman with Rubio’s substantive position on abortion? Nice move. Because, you know, those Republican men “offend” women by supporting human life. And while a recent Gallup poll shows that a slim majority of women presently self-identify as “pro-choice,” longitudinal polling has shown that women’s views shift, with pro-choice versus pro-life majorities altering from year to year. Presumably, according to Clinton, women who hold a pro-life position are “offending” women?
I’m no fan of Trump’s post-debate comments about Kelly. It wasn’t “presidential,” and it was unnecessary. But his initial response to Kelly’s debate query was fundamentally correct, that he (and the country) doesn’t “have time for total political correctness.” And Kelly is a professional woman in a high profile position, and she can certainly handle some insults. She has appropriately said that she is a “big girl” and can “take it.”
The thing that bothers me most about the Kelly-Trump exchange is that Hillary Clinton is now going to accept the invitation–issued by Kelly–to reopen and amplify the “Republicans hate women” narrative. In an overt attempt to bring down Trump a notch or two, Kelly’s query has reignited Hillary Clinton’s key campaign issue.