From the very beginning of his ill-fated presidency, Donald Trump has seemed to remind us everyday that he is, in fact, the one sitting in the White House (when he’s not at his golf course) instead of his former rival, Hillary Clinton.
Every chance Trump gets, he continues to criticize Clinton’s past actions and tear her down to make his tiny, microscopic achievements seem worthwhile.
To this very day, Trump is still tweeting about the “crooked Dems and Hillary” who are still apparently plaguing the White House- something that very clearly isn’t true. For the first time in eight years, Republicans are the majority in both Congress and Senate. During the 2016 election, 42 states who had previously voted for Obama flipped to Republican. Despite all of this, the question remains: Why is Trump still so scared of Hillary and the Democratic Party?
While it’s safe to say that almost any Democrat (including myself) will never miss an opportunity to remark that Clinton indeed won the popular vote, for the most part we, as a country, have come to the sad, awful conclusion that Trump will remain in office for a dangerously long time. However, I have noticed in both the media and my everyday life that Republicans continue to be the ones who bring up Hillary whenever Trump seems to do something wrong (a very frequent occurrence).
Yes, the awful events in Benghazi happened and sure, Hillary probably had some pretty confidential emails deleted. But even when Trump is facing similar issues in his own presidency, conservatives still can’t let go of the admitted political failures of a woman. The recent incident in Niger and the probable collusion with Russia are serious, damaging faults brought upon by the Trump administration, so why aren’t they a bigger deal?
Mueller’s indictments of Manafort and Gates have the potential to become a modern Watergate, but of course, Republicans will either defend Trump or remove themselves from the discourse and nothing will ever come of the Trump administration’s crimes. It happened with Charlottesville, it happened with the irrational firing of James Comey, it will be sure to happen again and again. During any given mishap of Trump, there will most definitely be a gaggle of supporters (presumably male and white) behind him who utter those same words over and over: “But, Hillary-“
Way before Trump was even president and the Access Hollywood tapes were released (you know which ones, I don't need to type his disgusting words), people chose to bring up the history of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky as some kind of twisted defense for the candidate’s words. When it came out that Trump Jr. met with Russians to “get dirt on Clinton,” people were so quick to urge others to “remember the emails!” Interestingly enough, throughout the entire crazy election campaign, people always seemed to bring up the fact that neither candidate was great. I guess to some, choosing between a candidate who actually has decades of political experience and a candidate who is only known for an exploitative reality show and a bankrupt hotel business was just too difficult of a decision.
The actually successful presidency of Obama, with Secretary of State Clinton right by his side, continues to anger Trump supporters. For some reason, it is just preposterous to them to have witnessed an educated black man and a woman intelligently run a sophisticated White House. And now that their beloved Trump is in office, and hasn't done one single thing he promised them, they still blame those who came before Trump for his own failures.
