This past January, Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters.” A rough counterpart to that remark came Wednesday from New York magazine’s Eric Levitz, who wrote that a Trump presidency would be so dreadful that “it would be reasonable for the average voter to prefer Hillary Clinton, even if she really did order the murder of Vince Foster.”
Levitz cited Trump’s “conspicuous racism, total disinterest in public policy, contempt for civil liberties, fondness for authoritarianism, and constant lying” and argued, given those horrors, that no “rational voter” would abandon Hillary even if the “darkest possible interpretation” of the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play story turned out to be true.
To Levitz, it’s an easy choice between possibly shady and obviously depraved:
Who, precisely, would look at such a scandal and think, “I was going to vote for Clinton, but now I will cast my ballot for the transparently corrupt, imbecilic racist instead?” Which is to say, even if a voter’s No. 1 issue is reducing government corruption, proof positive that Clinton sold access to the State Department wouldn’t give him or her a good reason to vote for Donald Trump.
Unlike Clinton, the Republican nominee refuses to make his finances transparent. And while Bill and Chelsea have (reluctantly) announced detailed plans for how they will dissolve most of their family foundation should Hillary win, Trump has declined to provide any blueprint for how he plans to eliminate the conflicts of interest his complex web of businesses would produce…At various points in his campaign, Trump has actually promised to abuse his public power for personal gain.
