Any candidate running for the office of the most powerful person on earth is heavily vetted and scrutinized beyond belief. The consequences of that vetting, however, vastly differ if you're a Democrat or a Republican. Both sides make mistakes, both sides are not forgiven equally. Not. Even. Close.
If any Democratic candidate has a disreputable or scandalous revelation during his/her rigorous primary campaigns, it would be hard to name one who moves on to become the presumptive Democratic nominee. Take John Edwards' fall from grace for the revelation he was having an affair while his wife was dying, while raising two young children: he went from being a star to a disgraced nobody in what seemed like a few hours. Perhaps you remember the Donna Rice scandal that brought down Gary Hart? What's Gary up to these days?
South Carolina's once controversial Appalachian Trail-Argentinian mistress scandal wasn't enough to railroad the career of Mark Sanford. He's a dignified gentleman in the House representing the Palmetto State. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) admitted to solicitation of prostitution and was revealed to be a bon vivant of the diapered arts. Yet, he is still the esteemed Senator from Louisiana until January 2017.
But when it comes to incredible repentance and forgiveness, Donald Trump takes it to a ho...nutha....level, Keegan Michael Key said it best (as Eugene Struthers).
Donald Trump was a popular guy in 1991 with the NY tabloids for the same reason he's popular with the 'poorly educated' today: he makes the media outlets money. Now, we call him clickbait, back then, he sold magazines and newspapers. When his divorce from wife number 1, Ivana and his apparent affair with wife numero dos, Marla Maples, was all the rage in the tabloids, Trump undeniably fabricated a publicist with the name(s) John Miller or John Barron (his youngest son, no coincidence (?), is named Barron) to defend the playboy real estate tycoon.
There's quite an unmistakable likeness to Trump, including the overuse of the superlative 'tremendous' just as he favors such words to this very day. Click here for the video and write up.
When Michael Smerconish featured surrogate and Tea Party pathological liar, Scottie Nell Hughes this morning, he asked her about this embarrassing-as-HELL revelation. Without the least bit of shame, she pretended that the evidence didn't even exist. Denial works only for Republicans, remember.
SMERCONISH: Scottie, I'm gonna beat you to the punch. I might be talking about Hillary's emails today if only Donald Trump went on The Today Show yesterday and said, OF COURSE IT WAS ME!
NELL HUGHES: ...I do have to talk about something Sue Carswell said though, a little flag, a red flag went up. I have to wonder how she knew Mr. Trump had the tape...or did this 'publicist,' whoever this man is, if he exists, maybe he was the one who released the tape.
Smerconish, taken aback by her abject denial, explains that he invited both 'very real' publicists, Barron and Miller to appear, preferably together, on set, and we all know media whore Trump would have had them out in two shakes of a lamb's tail. But since they are fictitious concoctions of Drumpf's imagination, they didn't return a single email or call. He tweeted that idea here:
I'm hereby inviting john miller and john barron to appear on @cnn with me - preferably at the same time!
— Michael Smerconish (@smerconish) May 13, 2016
Hughes proceeds to blame this controversy on an alleged vendetta of the Amazon.com brass taking exception with the chaste and virtuous Trump because he accuses THEM of shady tax evasion. Yep, taxes, you read that correctly. #WeakDonald is still playing that hand.
Will he get away with this latest faux pas without a blemish? Of course he will. He's a Republican, or at least that's what he now labels himself. That's automatic immunity for wrongdoing.
