Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Jay Inslee are ‘all the same’
Jul 19, 2016, 8:12 AM
The thing that fascinates KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross most about Donald Trump’s run for the White House is that he can say almost anything — truthful, lie, hateful or otherwise — without repercussions.
“For the last year, he has been saying things that would have knocked an ordinary candidate out of the race but he has stayed in and thrived based on how outrageous his promises are,” he said.
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But Dori Monson doesn’t understand how Trump’s “truthiness” is different than anything said by Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton or Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
Dave, Dori, and Jason Rantz discussed the differences of all three while at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Dori Monson: Well, when you say Trump says things that would get any other candidate disqualified, isn’t Hillary exactly in the same position? The FBI documented the litany of lies that she told. So how is Trump unique from Hillary from saying things that would get any other candidate disqualified?
Dave Ross: In terms of her personal possible violation of the law, I concede that point.
Dori: There’s no possible about it.
Ross: Well, usually there are juries before we decide that. But leaving that detail out, in terms of policy matters, the wrap on Hillary is that she has been just too moderate. She hasn’t made any dramatic policy suggestions, she’s boring, she weighs her words, she uses a teleprompter. She’s just too repressed. Is the problem she hasn’t committed enough gaffes?
Dori: What?
Jason Rantz: I don’t know that she hasn’t committed enough gaffes. If Donald Trump was not running against Hillary Clinton, she would probably not be the nominee, and if she was, she would be severely injured politically. It’s because she’s running up against someone equally unlikable, equally abhorrent in all the things he says to how she acts that it kind of evens itself out.
Ross: But I’m talking about a whole different level. I’m talking about what happens after someone gets into the presidency. The stuff Hillary says she will do — these incremental policies — they could probably get done. You may agree with them or disagree with them, but they are within the realm of possibility. Trump promises stuff that’s never going to get done. And the thing is that his supporters know that and they don’t care. That’s the part that fascinates me.
Dori: But wait, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee promised not to raise taxes and we knew that was an impossibility, a lie. He promised things that everybody knew was not going to get done. I’m trying to figure out how and why Trump is worse than Jay Inslee who does the same thing.
Ross: Jay Inslee is the governor, Donald Trump will be the leader of the free world. Jay Inslee can’t start a war any place, can’t round up immigrants, can’t stop a treaty. Donald Trump could do all those things.
Dori: Inslee can bring immigrants into our state. It seems to me that political lies happen from everybody and it just happens to be if we are OK with the lie if it agrees with our individual politics. I think they all lie. I’m not sure Trump is any worse than Hillary, Inslee, or people who take billions from us with transportation projects.
Rantz: But don’t you think the way he goes about it is slightly different than the way … how you perceive Jay Inslee or Hillary Clinton go about it? Jay Inslee is an incredibly boring speaker. He’s not doing the things Donald Trump says. That’s one major difference.
Dori: I think they’re all the same. I really do. I think Donald Trump is entertaining in spinning his yarns and the other ones have this fake gravitas and commitment to theirs. I just don’t see much difference between any of them, quite frankly.
Ross: You just spelled out the difference: Trump is entertaining and I think that’s half the reason he does these things. He keeps people’s attention. It doesn’t matter to him that he’s going to have to renege on these things; it got him where he needs to go. And I absolutely understand. In my own campaign for U.S. House of Representative, I would push back against it to say, ‘You might have all these noble ideals, but if you don’t do the things required to get elected, all your nobles are not worth a warm bucket of spit. Trump understands that having been in media for a long time and he’s done whatever it takes to get attention. Fortunately for him, he’s done it in front of a very forgiving electorate who I don’t think will punish him when these things happen. If the economy did indeed tank, as some people say, and things got really bad, there might be some fallout. But I think he’d have a honeymoon period where a lot would be sort of overlooked.”
