Conservative media figure Ann Coulter likened potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to a children’s birthday party entertainer in a speech on Wednesday night.
“I think Trump is a clown,” Coulter said during an appearance sponsored by Young America’s Foundation at George Washington University. “I expect the enthusiasm for him is based on two things: that the rest of at least the declared candidates aren’t exciting anybody, and there’s name recognition. And he has come out like gangbusters against the Obama administration like an establishment politician probably wouldn’t.”
Coulter went on to rip Trump for his donations to Democratic political campaigns. “It’s all just a big act for the moment,” she said. “History for liberals always begins today. It’s very easy to say the right thing that’s only appealing at a certain time.”
Coulter also dismissed Trump’s claims that President Obama may have been born in Kenya. The “birther conspiracy,” she said, was “started by the Hillary Clinton campaign,” and subsequently disproved by conservatives who looked into it. If anything, she said, it’s distrust of the news media that keeps birtherism alive. “I think there are some people who’ve been lied to so many times by the media about whether John Edwards was having an affair, whether the kid was John Edwards’. Was Clinton having an affair with Gennifer Flowers? How about the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss? We’ve been lied to so often by the mainstream media that I think a lot of people who don’t pay a lot of attention to politics think, ‘Oh yeah, he probably was born in Kenya.’ I run into such people, but never people who are involved in politics.”
When one student asked Coulter what five things she would cut from government, she began with the Department of Health and Human Services, because it “costs more than the Pentagon,” and went on to name the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the CIA (“because Walmart has better intelligence”) and the “entire office of [New York Democratic Sen.] Chuck Schumer.”
To a young gay man who asked her why she opposes gay marriage, Coulter replied that he has “no fewer rights than heterosexuals have.” You can get married, Coulter said, “it just has to be to a girl.” As for inheritance rights, Coulter recommended that he write a will, since “you’re constantly reading about old ladies leaving their entire estates to their cats.”
Opposition to gay marriage, Coulter continued, “has nothing to do with being anti-gay. The family has been under relentless attack for 30 years in this country. The gays didn’t start it, but I understand you’re coming late to the sexual revolution. You’re late to the sexual revolution. But, oh well, life is unfair. I’m not married, life is unfair, and I’m 120 years old. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”