The Patriot Post® · Whom Do You Trust?

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/44905-whom-do-you-trust-2016-09-17

Desperate to figure out which way the political winds are blowing, pollsters are peppering voters with lots of questions. Here are a few from the latest Quinnipiac poll that jumped out at me.

Asked whether they thought Hillary Clinton was honest, 65% of voters said “No.” Only 32% said “Yes.” That’s a whopping 33-point honesty deficit.

In a follow-up question, 55% of voters said that Clinton “was not honest enough to be president."

(This would seem to be a disqualifying issue. I don’t understand how anyone could vote for a candidate they believe is lying to them.)

Asked which candidate they thought was more transparent, 37% of voters said Hillary, while 54% said Trump. That’s a 17-point transparency gap.


The results of these questions had left-wing talking heads setting their hair on fire this morning, which is proof that these folks are living in an alternate universe.


I don’t have the time or space here to recount all the Clinton scandals. But just think about her mishandling of classified information. How many times did she lie about that?


Just a few days ago, she tried to mislead us about her health. [Thursday] she blamed the deception on her campaign staff. When asked by reporters about the lack of answers after her sudden exit from the 9/11 memorial service Sunday, Clinton said, "You know, my campaign has said they could have been faster and I agree with that.” But Hillary IS the campaign. Does she expect us to believe that her campaign was withholding information about her health that she wanted out?


So exactly who on the campaign knew she had pneumonia? Who was supposed to tell the press? Clinton didn’t want anyone to know given that her health was already an issue.


Even her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, appears not to have known. Clinton was asked twice [Thursday] whether he knew she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, and twice Clinton refused to answer the question. At one point she responded, “We communicated, but I’m not going to go into our personal conversations.”


Of course, she’s not … because that conversation most likely never happened.


And the left wonders why voters question her honesty and commitment to transparency.



Media Bias


During a radio interview this week, Donald Trump, Jr. was talking about the media’s bias and how the Democrat primaries were rigged against Bernie Sanders. Here’s what he said: “They’ve let her slide on every discrepancy, on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of this thing. If Republicans were doing that, they’d be warming up the gas chamber right now."



Immediately, Trump Jr. was branded an anti-Semite.



What, you don’t see it?


Well, neither did most people. But the left and media will smear the Trumps and any conservative every chance they get.



His alleged offense was that he had referenced the Holocaust by using the words "gas chamber.” But that doesn’t make any sense at all because the conversation had nothing to do with Jews or Israel. Trump was making a reference to capital punishment.



The gas chamber was widely used as a form of capital punishment in this country starting in 1922. Three states still use it today.



Now, here’s the real Holocaust issue. The media are ignoring the nuclear deal that Obama and Clinton made with the Holocaust-denying regime in Iran. They gave that radical regime billions of dollars in cash and the deal guarantees that Iran will be able to get nuclear weapons and do in eight minutes what it took Hitler years to do.


Iran’s announced goal is a second Holocaust, to “wipe Israel off the map,” to “annihilate the Zionist entity,” to destroy the state of Israel. Not one reporter that I am aware of has ever asked Hillary Clinton to explain her support for giving a Jew-hating regime billions of dollars in aid.



Trump’s Revenge


As frustrating as the media’s bias can be, Donald Trump got his revenge [Friday]!



It was widely reported [Thursday] that Donald Trump had refused to answer a question about where Barack Obama was born. “I’ll answer that question at the right time,” he said to a Washington Post reporter. “I just don’t want to answer it yet."



The media went nuts. "Donald Trump Again Won’t Acknowledge Obama Was Born in U.S.,” blared the New York Times. Dozens of other media outlets ran similar headlines. Hillary Clinton piled on, too, saying that Trump owed Obama and America an apology.



It looked like Donald Trump had once again stepped on his success, just as his poll numbers were rising. The pressure was on and growing. So Trump announced that he would hold a press conference [Friday] in Washington, D.C., to make a major announcement about the controversy.


The media could barely restrain themselves as the time for Trump’s press conference neared. The anticipation of his “major announcement” was, well, HUGE. When the press conference began, the news networks broke away from their usual programming to cover it live.



Lt. General Michael Flynn walked out to the podium and said, “Before we get started, most people probably don’t know, but it is MIA/POW Recognition Day."



Flanked by veterans, Gen. Flynn proceeded to rip Hillary Clinton for suggesting that the veterans supporting Donald Trump were "deplorable people.”


At this point the media were starting to get nervous. This wasn’t following big media’s script.


Flynn then announced that more than 160 flag officers and 17 Medal of Honor recipients were endorsing Donald Trump for president.



Then Trump came out. He introduced a Gold Star Mother in the audience and then asked two Medal of Honor recipients to address the crowd. They delivered ringing endorsements of Donald Trump!



Then one retired general after another stood at the podium and publicly endorsed Donald Trump for president. The media were covering a Veterans for Trump rally live!


Finally, Trump stepped up to wrap up the event. At last — the moment the media had been waiting for! What was Donald Trump going to say about Obama’s birth certificate?


“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”


Brilliant! And the media were fuming.



CNN’s John King said, “We just got played. We just got played."



"It’s hard to imagine this as anything other than a political Rick Roll,” added a seething Jake Tapper.


"Donald Trump Games The Media,“ tweeted Politico’s Dylan Byers.


Well played, Mr. Trump. Well played.