The U.S. presidential campaign is set to turn more personal and bitter as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has made it clear that no topic will be out of bounds in the remaining five weeks to the election day.
Launching the most vicious attack yet on his rival Hillary Clinton over the weekend, Mr. Trump accused her of infidelity and his surrogates defended the statement later. “I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, you want to know the truth. And really, folks, really, why should she be, right?,” the candidate told a rally on Saturday.
Several Republican leaders, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, have been warning Mr. Trump against raking up the eventful marital history of the Clintons, but the candidate thinks he had his hands tied by these restraints when Ms. Clinton stumped him for his alleged remarks about a former beauty queen gaining weight, in the first presidential debate.
Ms. Clinton’s line of attack unsettled Mr. Trump in the debate and has been successful in further alienating him from the women voters subsequently. Mr. Trump is now hitting back, questioning Ms. Clinton’s claims to be a champion of women’s rights.
‘Fair game’Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is said to be egging on Mr. Trump to target Ms. Clinton on her husband’s sexual adventures, defended the statement. “After she called him a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobic — I don’t know — schizophrenic and I don’t know what else she called him,” Mr. Giuliani ranted. “I think it’s fair game.”
A New York Times report that suggested Mr. Trump may have legally avoided paying tax for two decades has added more fodder to the Clinton campaign. Another report that surfaced this week said Mr. Trump pressured his former girlfriend and later wife Marla Maples to pose nude for Playboy magazine and that she refused.
A report put together by a team of Associated Press investigative reporters said the Republican candidate continuously made inappropriate and sexually loaded comments about women participants and crew-members of his TV reality show, The Apprentice .
Targeting Ms. Clinton for her husband’s breaches will likely consolidate her women supporters, according to the prevailing common sense in the U.S. Some commentators have also recalled how she turned a question on Mr. Clinton’s infidelities to her advantage during a debate when she ran for Senate from New York in 2001.
The Clinton campaign frames the questions as an unfair attack on a woman for her husband’s deeds.
Champion of women?But that is not how Fox News anchor Chris Wallace — who will moderate the third and final debate between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton on October 19 — sees it.
“I think his point with regard to the sex scandal isn’t what Bill Clinton did, it’s more what Hillary Clinton did, and whether she really is a champion of women,” he said on Sunday.
“She has gone after a number of women about allegations that turned out to be true,” he added. Among other things, Ms. Clinton had said allegations against her husband were a Right-wing conspiracy.
