(h/t Digby) Conservatives have found so many ways to attack Democratic politicians that it's a cottage industry for AM hate talk radio, The Blaze and Fox News, but attacking a women for going to the bathroom? That's a new low even for Breitbart news and Redstate. And I didn't even mention Donald Trump, who thinks this was a funny to tell his followers:
So, so Hillary’s gonna get beaten but I haven’t started with Hillary yet. What happened to her? I’m watching the debate and she disappeared! Where did she go? Where did she go? I thought she quit, I thought she gave up. Where did she go, where did Hillary go? They had to start the debate without her.
Phase 2. Why [laughs]. I know where she went. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to talk about it.
[cheers]
Nah, it’s too disgusting, don’t say it, it’s disgusting, let’s not talk… we want to be very very straight up, OK?
But I thought that was… wasn’t that a weird deal? We’re ready to start, they were looking… they gave her every benefit of the doubt. Because you know, it’s ABC and she practically owns ABC.
To Trump it's disgusting for a woman to go to the bathroom? Hillary Clinton easily explained what happened, but if you had even a pea size brain, you would have figured she was late to the debate stage because of the bathroom break.
Anyway, Breitbart breathlessly reported:
As Breitbart News immediately reported during the debate, the ABC telecast came back from a commercial break with an empty Clinton podium. Clinton went back out onstage, said “Sorry,” and did not explain her absence. The mystery grew: Where was Hillary?
Where, indeed. Conservatives activists were horrified!!!
Redstate took the whole thing a step farther into the bowels of Satan's lair.
Does this really matter? I’d say it … Depends®.
Did Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 94% taking a sip of water matter? It sure did to Democrats. We still hear about it all the time, nearly three years later. So I guess that matters.
Did John McCain’s age matter? You know it did. They brought it up more frequently than Rudy Giuliani brought up 9/11. They never stopped talking about his age. They still, in fact, have the temerity to talk about the age of current GOP candidates. So it seems that matters.
Imagine if McCain had been late to return to the debate because he was in the bathroom. Seriously, they would not only bring up his age but they’d make jokes about his time as POW and whether he was permanently damaged or afraid to leave the toilet.
Imagine if Donald Trump came on stage late and the audience cheered. We’d be treated to think pieces about how it is impossible for him to do wrong in the eyes of the Republican electorate, who wet themselves every time he burps. But Hillary comes traipsing on stage with toilet paper metaphorically stuck to her orthopedic shoes and you’re a jerk if you bring it up.
Sure , there might have been a few jokes about Trump if he was late, (was it something he ate?) but it would have had no bearing on the debate or the campaign itself. but not to conservative mouthpieces.
Senator Marco Rubio getting cotton mouth and sweating like a stuck pig on national television while giving his Republican SOTU response is real news.
She could have whined like the Republicans did about their green rooms and the temperature but she just soldiered on instead. Not that any of that matters. You get the gist of what the right is saying about Clinton's age with that post. Trump's actually being the subtle one. So far ...
By the way, it's not true that ABC was locked into starting the debate and could do nothing else. They handle live TV all the time, which is often unpredictable, obviously. In fact, they had a bunch of analysts vamping for half an hour after the announced time. They just weren't nimble enough to deal with it.
And after Digby wrote her post, Trump did act like a jackass.
