by digby
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is reviving some of the ugliest political chapters of the 1990s with escalating personal attacks on Bill Clinton’s character — centered on past accusations of sexual assault — amid a concerted effort to smother Hillary Clinton’s campaign message with the weight of decades of controversy.
Trump’s latest shot came Monday when he released an incendiary Instagram video that includes the voices of two women who accused the former president of sexual assault, underscoring the presumptive Republican nominee’s willingness to go far beyond political norms in his critique of his likely Democratic rival.
The real estate mogul has said in recent interviews that a range of Clinton-related controversies will be at the center of his case against Hillary Clinton.
“They said things about me which were very nasty. And I don’t want to play that game at all. I don’t want to play it — at all. But they said things about me that were very nasty,” Trump told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “And, you know, as long as they do that, you know, I will play at whatever level I have to play at. I think I’ve proven that.”
Clinton’s campaign has largely refused to engage the recent attacks directly, instead focusing — as Clinton did Monday during an appearance in Detroit — on Trump’s demeanor and job qualifications.
But you understand that “very nasty” is questioning anything he has said or done or wants to do.
Think about his quote there. “I will play at whatever level I have to play at. I think I’ve proved that.”
In other words, there is nothing he won’t do to win. And as he’s made clear in the past, he believes that once you have won something, you are given license to bully and dominate:
The coalition building for me will be when I win. Vince Lombardi, I saw this. He was not a big man. And I was sitting in a place with some very, very tough football players. Big, strong football players. He came in — these are tough cookies — he came in, years ago — and I’ll never forget it, I was a young man. He came in, screaming, into this place. And screaming at one of these guys who was three times bigger than him, literally. And very physical, grabbing him by the shirt.
Now, this guy could’ve whisked him away and thrown him out the window in two seconds. This guy — the player — was shaking. A friend of mine. There were four players, and Vince Lombardi walked in. He was angry. And he grabbed — I was a young guy — he grabbed him by the shirt, screaming at him, and the guy was literally. . . . And I said, wow. And I realized the only way Vince Lombardi got away with that was because he won.”
When are we going to start thinking about this is psychological terms? That’s not a normal way of thinking for a well-balanced, mature adult.
Neither is this thoroughly ridiculous comment:
When asked in an interview last week about the Foster case, Trump dealt with it as he has with many edgy topics — raising doubts about the official version of events even as he says he does not plan to talk about it on the campaign trail.
He called theories of possible foul play “very serious” and the circumstances of Foster’s death “very fishy.”
“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said, speaking of Foster’s relationship with the Clintons at the time. “He knew everything that was going on and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.”
He added, “I don’t bring [Foster] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”
That nasty piece of work is the GOP nominee for president of the United States.