An excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s postmortem of the 2016 presidential election, “What Happened,” has surfaced. The except reveal the candidate’s feelings toward her opponent, Donald Trump, during a debate that took place two days after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tapes in which Trump proclaimed his love of groping women. Clinton confessed that Trump made her skin crawl and that she wished she had yelled, “Get away from me, you creep!” when he used body language to try to intimidate her. By this admission, Clinton demonstrated another reason why she lost the election.
Hillary Clinton confesses to being afraid of Trump
Clinton’s account of the debate is interesting in that she describes intense fear responses to the presence of Trump. She describes biting her tongue, digging her nails into a clenched fist, and maintaining a rictus smile as a way to steady herself and conceal her fright from the debate audience. It should be noted that when Al Gore stalked George W. Bush around a debate platform, the then governor of Texas turned, faced him down, and nodded as a way of deflating him.
The point of the story is that if Hillary Clinton was intimidated by an aging libertine, how much more would she have been frightened of someone like Vladimir Putin, who has had people killed and whom Clinton blames for losing her the election?
Trump has some character flaws, including one suspects some unacknowledged insecurities, but he would never admit to being intimidated by anyone.
Hillary Clinton has dealt with far worse men than Donald Trump
Ms. Clinton, it should be noted, had been intimate with a man who is far worse than Donald Trump ever dreamed of being, the man she married.
Bill Clinton is accused with some credibility of being a serial rapist. He has indeed groped more women than Trump ever boasted of. Yet, Ms. Clinton has stayed married to him, slept with him, and has a child with him. That suggests that her stomach is somewhat stronger where “difficult men” are concerned when it suits her.
It is probably for the best that Clinton did not create an outburst on national television in response to Trump’s intimidation tactics.
The resulting firestorm would have called into question her fitness for public office. Just as Trump’s constant ruminations about his enemies can be off putting, a woman screaming at a man on national TV would not have been attractive. Too many men would have been reminded of their former wives or significant others. No one wants that sort of woman anywhere near the levers of power.
