I haven’t listened to Rush Limbaugh’s show in years and have grown sufficiently accustomed to him saying outrageous things that I seldom comment when he makes news. This one intrigues me, however.
On yesterday’s show, he played a clip from an March 2012 interview with Donald Trump saying the following:
Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman. I mean, I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. And I’ve known her and her husband for years and I really like ’em both a lot and I think she really works hard and I think she, again, she’s given an agenda that’s not all of her, but I think she really works hard, and I think she does a good job. And I like her.
[…]
I just like her. I like her, and I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, and it was very well received. And he’s a — he’s a really good guy, and she’s a really good person and woman.
Limbaugh introduced the clip rightly noting that we’ll likely see it in an advertisement, given that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee and Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee and he’s been saying some rather unflattering thing about both Clintons in recent months. Limbaugh’s explanation is fascinating:
Will we finally now admit how brilliant Trump is? Can we all finally admit that he’s been setting these people up for years? He’s been out there praising the Clintons. He’s been fooling them. He’s been making the Clintons think he loves them, he supports them, he’s in their camp, he’s got them tamed, they’re not even thinking about Trump, even looking about Trump, and Trump is just icing them.
Trump is gonna come out of the blue one day and just squash these people. What a brilliant, brilliant move to keep them off guard and set them up.
So that will be the official response to this. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. Okay. That’s an interesting spin. Of course Trump was gonna — he knew four years ago he was gonna run. He knew she’s gonna be running the opposition. He knew, he’s setting ’em up. This is brilliant. This shows how far ahead of the game Trump is. He’s so far out in front of everybody we can’t even keep up. What a brilliant bit of trickery here.
That strikes me as delusional. There are all manner of reasons that a New York real estate magnate and reality TV mogul would want to be on the good side of the Clintons, who are extremely powerful and connected. But, if his intent were to run against her using character attacks four years later, how exactly is this “brilliant”?
After a break, Limbaugh came back with this, ostensibly based on caller emails:
One reaction is, “You know, this would make a great ad debunking how Trump is attacking Hillary because she’s a woman. This can just get rid of all of these attacks that Trump’s out there hitting her ’cause she’s a woman, that Trump hates her or whatever.
Uh huh.
Later in the spiel, Limbaugh observes that the #NeverTrump folks have never understood Trump or his bond with his supporters. And that much is true. This is hardly the most damaging-to-any-other-candidate-ever thing Trump has said. But it’s a weird world, indeed, if this helps him.
