Ed Klein, author of the new book Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily to offer his assessment of Sunday night’s presidential debate.
Klein said he was amazed by the disparity between “the coverage, even on Fox News, on CNN of course, and on MSNBC naturally, but everywhere, about this eleven-year-old tape, and the reality of the debate last night – in which, after ten minutes, maybe? Twelve minutes? Whatever it was, of discussion of this ridiculous tape. Then it was clear as a bell that Donald Trump finally took control of the debate and the future of America and absolutely, in my view, wiped the floor with Hillary Clinton last night.”
“I’m a little bit of an outlier on this issue, of this tape and what he said,” Klein conceded. “Yeah, it was crude. Yeah, it was vulgar. But you know, in my many, many years on this planet, I’ve heard from many men in public office a lot worse than what he said on that tape. And men do speak that way. He is right. It is locker talk.”
“What’s happened in this country, however, is that this kind of talk that’s gone on for centuries, I would go so far as to say, is no longer politically correct because of the feminization of our culture,” Klein contended. “And the fact that men who talk this way are somehow completely discredited, even though it is a centuries-old kind of banter, and boisterousness, and, quite frankly, boasting of prowess that quite frankly isn’t true.”
“Did it make Donald Trump look kind of bad? Yes, of course it did. But the very people, including many, many Republicans, who got on their high horse, their self-righteous high horses about this, are the same guys who turn on pornography when they are traveling in Marriott hotels, and who often sleep with their secretaries on Capitol Hill, and do many more, worse things than Donald Trump has done in his life,” he said.
“I’m not saying that Donald is pure as the driven snow. Donald himself would admit that he’s far from pure as the driven snow … and quite frankly, even you and I right now are spending too much time on it,” Klein told Marlow. “What we saw last night was a huge, in my view, huge comeback by Donald Trump. Now, we’ll see whether it’s reflected in the polls. I don’t know, and I don’t think you and I can predict this. But certainly, he gave a masterful, masterful performance, and she was on her heels all night long.”
Klein thought Clinton’s low-key performance during the second debate was interesting, given that she’s spent “hundreds, if not thousands, of hours preparing for these debates, and is good at this kind of stuff – good at preparing, good at memorizing. She does her homework.”
“But, for whatever reasons, she was not ready for Donald last night,” he judged. “There was this other thing that the New York Post captured on the front page of its paper today, which is his looming presence onstage while she was talking. He never sat down, as far as I can remember. He was pacing like a caged lion most of the time and while she was talking he was standing behind her, powerfully bigger and stronger than she, visually. I think that had an impact, too. It wasn’t bullying. It wasn’t like a man bullying a woman, quote-unquote. It was a simple visual of who has, as Pence would say, the broad shoulders, the power, the strength to lead this country, at a time when we need to shake things up, from the bottom up.”
Klein, having chronicled Bill Clinton’s ongoing objectionable behavior in Guilty as Sin, was impressed by the sight of the women who accused him of harassment and assault sitting in the audience for the debate.
“I have a whole chapter on Bill Clinton’s current – not back in the 1990s when he raped and harassed and intimidated women, not 20 or 30 years ago – we’re talking about right now, Bill Clinton is continuing his exploitation of 20-year-old interns at his library in Little Rock,” said Klein. “I did not see one mainstream media outlet pick this up – or, for that matter, even check to see if I was accurate. Of course, I think I’m accurate because I interviewed the girls who did the foot rubs, and I interviewed the man who was at his party when he hosed down the women in this wet T-shirt contest. But nobody in the media has bothered to check and find out what I did, by simply going down to Little Rock and asking questions.”
“So you can see this disgusting double standard that we are living with in this country, at a time when we can no longer afford to avoid truth,” he declared, “the truth of the Islamicization of the Western world, our economy going down the tubes, our position in the world – look at what happened just yesterday. The Philippines, of all places, the president of the Philippines says he wants to get out of the American orbit and into the Chinese orbit. I mean, that is breathtaking when you stop to think about it.”
Klein described a difference of opinion between himself and Trump on the issue of jailing Hillary Clinton: “Yes, she’s guilty as sin. Yes, she deserved to be indicted. Yes, a grand jury should have been empaneled, and I thought she would have been found guilty and fined and maybe jailed, or at least fined at the very, very, very least, for jeopardizing national security – for going to Moscow and Beijing with her little Blackberry that was unsecure.”
However, he said he thought that if Trump were elected President, “he’s got a lot of important things to do, very important things to do, and he needs to get them done with the Congress,” so appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton would “be a diversion from what is needed right now, which is to get the economy going again, lowering taxes, vetting immigration, as he says, building that wall, and bringing back America’s leadership to the rest of the world.”
“If he gets sidetracked on Hillary Clinton’s past, as egregious and terrible and dangerous as it was, I think that would be a mistake,” Klein opined.
When Marlow suggested that Trump might not really be looking to prosecute Clinton, but raised the possibility as a “negotiating tactic” and an effort to “reset the conversation,” Klein agreed that such an approach would be “very Trump-like” – an example of “getting the best deal possible.”
“Getting the best deal possible means having to work with your opponents, as well as your friends,” Klein noted.
He said Republicans who swiftly abandoned Trump after the tape of his 11-year-old vulgar comments surfaced “should be ashamed of themselves.”
“I mean, they jumped off the bandwagon like a bunch of rats jumping off a sinking ship,” said Klein. “And now they look back over their shoulder and see that Donald not only won the debate last night, but in my view, at least to a certain degree – I don’t know to what degree, we’ll find out in the polls – reset the election. And here they are, all of them, you know, in opposition to their candidate. I think they look ridiculous. And there’s nothing much they can do about it, at this point, I suppose. Donald has made them all look very foolish, and that’s putting it mildly.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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