Donald Trump’s anti-Hillary speech Wednesday morning was, in large part, on target and powerful, exposing the corruption, self-dealing and cronyism of the Clinton political machine.
Trump effectively showed why Clinton is (a) unfit for the job, and (b) very vulnerable, theoretically, in a general election. It was enough to remind you how unfortunate it is that Republican voters chose Trump to run against her.
In appealing to Sanders voters, Trump said: “We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place. The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money.”
The second sentence of this is true and important. Trump’s specifics on how politics and the economy are rigged were, I would suggest, off base, since he doesn’t include corporate welfare and protective regulations among he rigging.
Trump later tore into Hillary’s extraordinary amount of self-dealing and selling policy. He rattled off this litany from the book Clinton Cash:
- A foreign telecom giant faced possible State Department sanctions for providing technology to Iran, and other oppressive regimes. So what did this company do? For the first time ever, they decided to pay Bill Clinton $750,000 for a single speech. The Clintons got their cash, the telecom company escaped sanctions.
- Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while 9 investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.
- Hillary Clinton appointed a top donor to a national security board with top secret access — even though he had no national security credentials.
- Hillary Clinton accepted $58,000 in jewelry from the government of Brunei when she was Secretary of State – plus millions more for her foundation. The Sultan of Brunei has pushed oppressive Sharia law, including the punishment of death by stoning for being gay. The government of Brunei also stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Hillary’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she would absolutely approve if given the chance.
- Hillary Clinton took up to $25 million from Saudi Arabia, where being gay is also punishable by death.
- Hillary took millions from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and many other countries that horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.
To cover-up her corrupt dealings, Hillary Clinton illegally stashed her State Department emails on a private server.
Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments – perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China – putting all of America in danger.
Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. This is a pretty compelling case not to elect Hillary, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Trump could have gone on for 40 minutes just on her pay-to-play activity. It’s enough to make one wish that Republicans hadn’t nominated a historically unpopular self-dealing crony-Clinton donor.
If Hillary Clinton gets 52 percent of the vote with 40 percent approval ratings in November, Republicans will realize that nominating Trump amounted to blowing a golden opportunity to win the White House, and it amounted to handing the keys to the White House to a politician uniquely short on ethics.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
