Columnist Charles Krauthammer says he doesn’t think Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s attacks against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are about her, rather the attacks are “about [Trump] rising above the other candidates on the Republican side.”
Appearing Monday on Fox News’s “Special Report,” Krauthammer said, “I think this is not about Hillary. Trump is not firing off the first shot in the general election. This is all aimed at the Republican nominating process. By taking her on as the foil he plays the presumptive Republican nominee — he elevates himself above all the others.”
On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that the former secretary of state is “playing the woman’s card.” Trump added that he believes it’s “fair game” to criticize Bill Clinton, who will help his wife campaign. (RELATED: Trump: Hillary Is ‘Playing The Woman’s Card’ [VIDEO])
Trump continued his barbs at the couple on Monday, tweeting:
If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2015
Krauthammer further explained that by attacking Clinton, it makes his Republican primary opponents “look small.”
In a way its sort of to get the country prepared for him to be the standard bearer. This is bold and risky proposition… way to do this, but I think that it works for him in the sense that it makes everyone else look small, no one else is talking about anybody else and in one sense it says to the Republican electorate that — you know we’ve talked about this, you’ve talked about this quietly — Rand Paul raised it at the beginning of his campaign and then he backed off. ‘I’m the only guy who will do this and who has sort of the moxie to go ahead and to do it and not be afraid.’ And I think that’s, this is all about him rising above the other candidates on the Republican side. It’s not an engagement in a real general election campaign yet. He’s using her as a foil, and I must say effectively.
Later in the program, Krauthammer described Trump’s strategy if he becomes the nominee:
The next step for Trump is to not be attacking Bill necessarily — either by implication, or with him it’ll be direct — to attack her. Right now she says the new feminist dispensation is that if there’s an accusation of rape you have to believe the accuser, you don’t want to victimize the victimized. Thats what she says now, she’s said it openly many times. The same time if you’re Trump and you want to attack her what you say is ‘yes, but affected you and your husband, you were the one who went and either enabled or directly attacked the women involved.’ And thats where the attack lies — everybody knows that…
“It’s risky, yes,” he admitted. “I don’t think it’s going to help him with independents and the unaffiliated but could work either way. I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy involved here, but that’s the essence of the attack.”
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