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It was the Al Smith dinner, a white-tie affair, and a ritual that Presidential candidates, very late in the game, have usually taken part in. This year was no different, with both Hillary and Trump sporting their white-tie best.
But this is not your usual sort of passe’ thing. No, it’s a benefit, and as are many benefits in New York it was stuffed with priestly types and an extraordinary price tag — but, as is frequently the case when there are so many with a priestly bent headlining the event the money actually goes to a decent cause — in this case Catholic Charities. And, I might add, rumors are that they raised a record amount. Bravo.
This dinner is in fact a roast, and The Donald went first. He served up a menu that began with some self-deprecating humor, as is the usual fare. But then, after getting the crowd nice and warm, with chuckles and even roars of approval, he dropped the hammer:
“Hillary is so corrupt — She got kicked off the Watergate Commission. How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate Commission?”
It didn’t end there, and there were boos. Of course there were boos: Trump was in a hard-left, hard-Democrat audience.
But Trump didn’t use last night to level charges, he dropped truth bombs. That Hillary was fired from the Watergate commission isn’t an accusation, it’s a fact. That she and her campaign traded slurs against Catholics (and I remind you, this was a Catholic Charities event) in their emails isn’t a charge either — it is also a fact. Yet there she sat, in a room full of Catholic bishops and priests, raising money for Catholic Charities — people who, by her own admission, she believes hold anachronistic beliefs that require an “Arab spring” sort of cleansing, and that’s just what she thinks Government ought to actively promote — under her administration, of course.
Donald didn’t roast Hillary, he BBQed her. That Hillary had the audacity to show up for such an event after what she and her campaign have traded in emails about Catholics was the height of hypocrisy bar none, and Donald gave her no quarter. The audience was squirming, but that’s what you have to do from time to time — take that sacred cow up on stage, praise it, lay down a few laughs, and then show the world by giving a good yank on the cord that the reason it won “largest cow” at the fair is that someone stuck a 4″ drain stopper up it’s butt.
It’s funny how, when nobody can cheat, nobody can get the questions beforehand because there aren’t any and you get the lectern to yourself for a few minutes you really get to find out who always seems to find a way to use marked cards at the poker table (begging the obvious question as to who their confederates are) and who plays chess — a game where it’s damn hard to cheat and being able to think ahead of the other guy is crucial to success.
Trump has, through this campaign, showed that he’s a grandmaster at laying traps and getting people to step in them. This makes thrice that he’s managed to punk the news media, getting them to cover what they didn’t want to not by lying to them but rather by leading them to believe through context that they were going to see something other than what showed up.
Last night may have garnered Trump some boos in the room, but they were boos driven by discomfort of the truth being shoved in the face of so many who claim to wear a robe and stand for universal truth, given by God — yet who have backed a candidate, publicly and otherwise, that has woven her entire professional and political life from a lie.