Bill Clinton’s many sordid sex scandals are old news, and it’s dirty pool for GOP front-runner Donald Trump to bring them up as a weapon against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the New York Times’ editorial board argued this week.
“Donald Trump seems to view his role as the person who dredges up what nobody else wants to talk about. And so he has dragged out Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity,” the board declared Friday. “Mr. Trump is way out of line bringing up Mr. Clinton’s philandering.”
The newspaper conceded that Clinton’s long record of infidelity, especially his sex scandal with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, is a “blot” on his career. The Times also conceded that Clinton’s long history of sexual indiscretions doesn’t exactly reflect well on Hillary Clinton.
“For decades Mrs. Clinton has helped protect her husband’s political career, and hers, from the taint of his sexual misbehavior, as evidenced by the Clinton team’s attacks on the character of women linked to Mr. Clinton,” the board said.
“When Mr. Clinton ran for president in 1992, Mrs. Clinton appeared on television beside him to assert that allegations involving Gennifer Flowers were false. In 1998, he admitted to that affair under oath. After the Monica Lewinsky affair emerged, some White House aides attempted to portray Ms. Lewinsky as the seducer,” they added.
However, they continued, Trump is still out of line, because Bill Clinton’s sex scandals are “a tired subject that few Americans want to hear more about.”
“If Mr. Trump has not read enough, he can curl up with a copy of the Starr report,” the Times said, referring to Ken Starr, the man charged with the investigation of Clinton perjuring himself over the Lewinsky scandal.
Trump has brought up Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, which include allegations of rape and sexual assault, with increasing frequency on the campaign trail. The move comes after Hillary Clinton knocked Trump’s supposed “penchant for sexism.”
For the Times, however, Bill Clinton’s sexual history is old news, Hillary Clinton is not responsible for her husband, and Trump should be ashamed of himself for bringing it up in the first place.
“Trump, of course, is not drawing distinctions between Bill Clinton’s behavior and Hillary Clinton’s attacks on her husband’s accusers,” the board wrote.
“His aim is to dredge up an ancient scandal and tar Mrs. Clinton with it in a clearly sexist fashion. There should be no place for that kind of politics in this country,” they added.
However, when it comes to dredging up candidates’ ancient history, the Times hasn’t always been so squeamish.
In April 2015, the Times was fascinated by a 25-year-old anecdote involving Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his role as a competitive debater at Princeton University.
Earlier, during the 2012 presidential election, the 165-year-old newspaper dedicated an impressive amount of energy to investigating claims that Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the 1980s once hunted at a ranch that had a rock bearing a racial slur.
Times columnist Gail Collins also spent most of 2012 “obsessing” over a story about former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney taking a road trip in 1983 with his dog, Seamus, loaded in a carrier tied to the top of the family’s station wagon.
