Attorney General Leslie Rutledge is at it again this morning, attempting on CNN and MSNBC to defend Donald Trump against the indefensible.
Trump won’t let go of his skewering by Hillary Clinton at the debate on the treatment of Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe, who he fat-shamed at the time and this week has attempted to slut shame with a Twitter barrage this morning urging people to look at Machado’s “sex tape.” (She appeared, not nude like a certain potential FLOTUS, in a reality TV show in which she posed in bed with a man.)
Rutledge was trotted out with Trump campaign talking points and in an interview by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle explained the whole Machado thing is not Trump’s fault, it’s Clinton’s. “She jumped in the ditch,” by bringing it up in the Monday debate.
Oh, OK, but what about Donald Trump continuing to talk about Machado throughout the week and again this morning. Again and again, Rutledge said Trump was just defending himself. And she repeated again and again the Trump campaign talking point that it’s Hillary Clinton is the enemy of women for supposedly acting to “destroy” women who’d alleged affairs with Bill Clinton. Rutledge has yet to offer a specific piece of evidence of this, beyond a quote attributed to her by her good friend Diane Blair about Monica Lewinsky that became public 18 years after the affair.
Hillary Clinton didn’t commit adultery, Ruhle noted, but Donald Trump and several of his key advisers have. Rutledge asserted that anything Donald Trump had done “pales” to what Hillary Clinton has done to women.
It’s all about jobs, said Rutledge, and these unfortunate discussions about women are diverting attention from that subject. Again, she was asked, so why does Trump keep bringing it up. Again and again, it’s because “Hillary took us down this road.”
The capper of the interview: Rutledge said Hillary Clinton had never created a job, living a life mostly on the government payroll. This from a woman with a checkered resume of short-term, low-level legal jobs including a state job for which her supervisor said she wasn’t qualified to be rehired. Clinton did spend 16 years or so as a corporate lawyer, as well as time as a law professor, U.S. senator and secretary of state. Hillary, she said, is “insulting, sad, disgusting.” She’s certainly no Leslie Rutledge. Whew. (“Disgusting” was a word Trump employed against the beauty queen in his rant today.)
The national attention has begun. Here’s how Raw Story headlined its account:
Visibly uncomfortable Arkansas AG offers cringe-inducing defense of Trump’s ‘sex tape’ tweet
UPDATE: Hillary Clinton says Trump’s blast early this morning was “unhinged,” even by Trump standards.