Donald Trump Is Picking A Fight With Hillary Clinton That He Will Lose

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:16 pm

The Democratic primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders certainly had its heated moments over the course of the past year. Overall, though, it was largely a civil, issues-oriented debate between two candidates who share many of the same goals.

Around the edges, there were some disagreements, but Clinton and Sanders never doubted that either of them would be an infinitely better president than Donald Trump.

Ignoring all of that, Trump posted a video on social media today looping together a few out-of-context Bernie Sanders quotes about Hillary Clinton.

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Video:

Is this really the direction in which Trump wants to take his campaign? Because in the debate about which candidate has received the most damning and irreversible attacks from his or her opponents, there is no contest here.

Since he began his campaign, Donald Trump has received criticism from Republican leaders that they wouldn’t even lay upon their Democratic opponents in a typical election year, much less their own nominee.

The Clinton campaign has done a masterful job stringing these unprecedented intraparty attacks in this video:

A race-bating, xenophobic, religious bigot. A con artist. A phony. A know-nothing. Vulgar. Utterly amoral. Unfit to be commander-in-chief.

These are words, directed at Trump, that have come out of the mouths of top figures in the GOP. And unlike the heat-of-the-moment Sanders criticism of Clinton, these are attacks that many Republicans still stand by today. It’s why so many people steered clear of the hatefest in Cleveland. It’s why GOP runner-up Ted Cruz didn’t just refuse to endorse Trump at his own convention, but he gave permission to his own supporters to abandon their own nominee.

This is not a fight that Donald Trump should be waging.

Because if he wants each candidate to be judged based on what their primary opponents have said about them (and still say about him), then all Democrats have to do is roll the tape.

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.