OPINION:
On a rare occasion, we Fox News contributors will visit programming off-campus. I did just that last Sunday as a guest on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” Any time Donald Trump’s candidacy is going to be discussed, you now have to presume it will be less about the issues, and more about the shiny distraction of “accusers” from Mr. Trump’s past.
Sunday was no exception, but host John Dickerson was very fair, and he opened the panel discussion about the direction of the GOP and what to make of the infighting between the party and Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. The answer to that is obvious: His candidacy is the result of both party machines abandoning and ignoring the American people. Starting with the tea party in 2009 to Mr. Trump today, the bureaucracy continues to condemn and deny.
They think Mr. Trump is the problem. They’re wrong. We the people are their problem.
Eventually, the “Face the Nation” panel was brought around to discussing the issue of character and the question of Mr. Trump’s was on the table. All of us, Mr. Trump himself or those of us discussing the campaign on television and radio, can answer questions in a way that brings up what Americans truly care about: the economy, jobs, national security and terrorism. Poll after poll tell us Americans know this election is about those issues and understand they’re tied to whether or not there’s a future for you, your family and this nation as whole.
So when asked about the issue of whether or not Mr. Trump being occasionally offensive should disqualify him from the White House, it’s important to reflect on the fact that we’re not electing a husband or a boyfriend. We are choosing the leader of the free world during a time of crisis; an existential crisis brought about by the policies, attitudes and feckless incompetence of the other candidate.
In responding to Mr. Dickerson about my support for Mr. Trump, I brought up the fact that women’s lives should be taken into account when considering the presidency.
I, as an example, am voting in part for Mr. Trump in the name of Kate Steinle and for the thousands of women who deserve to not be murdered by one of the 1.2 million illegal alien criminals at large in the United States.
And then there are the 3.7 million women who have been pushed into poverty during Mr. Obama’s presidency due to policies championed by him and Mrs. Clinton. That’s economic violence destroying lives of women and girls everywhere, every day.
The best comparison of the Republican candidate in our nationally unfolding economic disaster is to that of a trauma surgeon. If we’re in an ambulance heading to the emergency room, we aren’t concerned about whether or not the ER doctor might offend us by his comments at a dinner party. No, we want to be saved from the immediacy of the crisis we face and to survive another day so we can work to overcome the threat at hand.
But the Democrats want you to think everything is fine. They don’t want you to think about the economy, jobs or whether it’s safe to go to the mall with your daughter lest you face being shot by an Islamic State-supporting terrorist. They want to distract you as they know they’re responsible for every horrible thing unfolding in our lives.
Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, in September revealed just how dire our economic situation really is and how the middle class in America is disappearing.
In “The Invisible American,” Mr. Clifton noted, “The percentage of Americans who say they are in the middle or upper-middle class has fallen 10 percentage points, from a 61 percent average between 2000 and 2008 to 51 percent today. Ten percent of 250 million adults in the U.S. is 25 million people whose economic lives have crashed. What the media is missing is that these 25 million people are invisible in the widely reported 4.9 percent official U.S. unemployment rate.”
He further reminded us that the system still declares you as fully employed even if you lost your $65,000-a-year job and are now working a $28,000-a-year job. That person has fallen out of the middle class, and as Mr. Clifton explained, “More disastrous is the emotional toll on the person — the sudden loss of household income can cause a crash of self-esteem and dignity, leading to an environment of desperation that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression.”
These are the people Mrs. Clinton and her enablers consider “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” She and her crowd are contemptuous and corrupt. They are the snake-oil salespeople at the side of the road, insisting you don’t need the emergency room — they have every potion you need (and it’s free), curing itchy skin, being offended, broken bones, depression, internal bleeding, eczema and cancer. And as they pitch you their deadly nonsense, they decline to mention they caused the car wreck that’s sending you to the ER in the first place.
It’s your decision — stop at the cart on the side of the road with the woman who looks and sounds pleasant enough and assures you everything is fine, or get to that emergency room where you will actually survive.
• Tammy Bruce, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.
