2016 July 1^st

We shall see who can “out stupid” whom. The new venom supplied to the Republicans by the Democrats, was the tarmac visit by President Bill Clinton to the plane of Attorney General Loretta Lynch. This, apparently, happenstance meeting in Phoenix in 108 degrees of temperature, resulted in a thirty-minute visit between the two in the cabin of the Attorney General’s plane. Critics of the visit would suggest they chew the fat out in the hot sun? Certainly not, but a simple “Hello, nice to see you” would have been a lot more intelligent than a private meeting in an airplane cabin. The Attorney General heads a justice department, which is in the process of investigating the possible wrongdoing by Secretary Clinton. This means that the right wing conspiracy theorists have been given several day’s supply of red meat. They already had more than enough of that. Fox News at this moment is having a delightful time laughing about this gaffe.

Attorney General Lynch has said that she will not interfere in whatever charges, if any, the FBI chooses to bring in the current investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails.  She had said this earlier but now it has the appearance of an attempt to undo any private meeting agreement that might have occurred on that airplane. No prize for smarts for this bunch.

Donald J. Trump doesn’t get a smarts prize either; are we surprised? Trump has been reading remarks on a teleprompter prepared for him by his staff and managing to read them very well. The man now gets credit for reading what someone else has written. Unfortunately, he doesn’t stop with reading his script. He keeps talking and that is unfortunate for him.

A few nights ago on the O’Reilly program Trump was asked to respond to Hillary Clinton’s comment about his “Islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny and homophobia.” Trumps response was to ask what Clinton meant by all those “phobias” and to say that she should just say what she meant, and besides those comments weren’t very Presidential. It is possible to conclude that Trump had no idea what Clinton was talking about. Indeed, it isn’t possible to conclude much of anything else.

O’Reilly then asked Trump how he would manage to get a higher percentage of the women’s vote given that he is 19 points behind with them. Trump immediately disputed that he was behind with women. He pointed out that there were about equal numbers of men and women at his various rallies. Poor Donald Trump does not realize that the demographics of a Trump rally are very different from the national demographics. This remarkable knowledge lapse is what loses Donald J. Trump today’s smart prize.