Hillary Clinton finally locked up the Democratic nomination this week, and immediately trained her sights on Donald Trump. Team Hillary started flinging barbs at The Donald via Twitter.
The Lincoln-Douglass debates, this is not. It’s an attempt to connect to The Youths — and judging by the complete loss of chill that took over the internet, it worked.
Delete your account. https://t.co/Oa92sncRQY
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2016
Crooked Hillary finally shot straight from the hip, and the web commentariat reacted as if it were the comeback of the century. Mic called it “glorious,” in a post that has since been deleted. (Jezebel used the same descriptor.) A sunset is glorious. Nutella-based desserts are glorious. An internet meme is funny at best.
Anyway. The hot takes poured in, and most people acted like the somewhat witty response somehow made Hillary a winner. I guess we’re choosing the leader of the free world the same way Nick Cannon chooses the winner of “Wild’n Out.” Just as the Founding Fathers intended.
Hilldawg has figured out two crucial things:
1. This race will not be won or lost based on who is the most presidential. The GOP field had plenty of buttoned-up candidates giving measured responses, and they all lost to a guy who talked about his, um, manhood on the debate stage. (Ever wonder if maybe the Mayans were off by, say, four years?)
2. Poke at Trump, and he will take the bait. He’ll react brashly and maybe — probably — embarrass himself.
Sure enough, Trump fired back almost two hours later (in the internet clapback age, that’s an eternity):
How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up–and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted? https://t.co/gECLNtQizQ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
A little clunky, and not his best. Though I do give him points for writing it himself. Hillary has a curated public persona. On the other hand, Trump’s PR strategy is also the Hooters slogan: Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined. The Donald has a solid point here — It’s just that Reince Priebus said it better:
.@HillaryClinton If anyone knows how to use a delete key, it’s you.
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) June 9, 2016
It takes a lot of chutzpah to talk about someone else deleting things, when you’re under FBI investigation for deleting things. But then again, neither Hillary nor Trump won their party’s nomination by being self-conscious.
And then Anthony Weiner chimed in, because, why not?
Too late for some of us. https://t.co/NgyzWsP9tN
— (((Anthony Weiner))) (@anthonyweiner) June 9, 2016
Weiner didn’t need to delete his account, so much as he needed to not send photos of his naughty bits to his mistress over a public platform. But that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
We’ve got five more months of this to go, and no indication that it will get any better. We’re in for a fabulously awful debate season. By the time November rolls around, voters will be asking, “Can we delete the nominees?”
