Donald Trump threw another social media haymaker at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday, this time in the form of a brief video posted on Instagram that features audio of Clinton commenting on women’s rights set to a series of photos depicting several newsworthy womanizers, including her husband.
“Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights, once and for all,” Clinton can be heard saying as a slideshow of photos showing husband and former President Bill Clinton with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the candidate with disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and again showing her smiling behind recently charged funnyman Bill Cosby.
A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on
The Republican presidential contender’s Thursday afternoon swipe at Hillary Clinton was his latest of his recent attacks aimed at connecting the former First Lady to the infidelities of her husband, the former commander-in-chief whose second term in the White House was nearly derailed by scandal over Lewinsky. Trump has labeled Hillary as an “enabler” of his exploits. Last month, Trump made headlines for repeatedly bringing up Bill Clinton and later took to Twitter to warn Hillary about using the former president in her campaign:
If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women’s card on me, she’s wrong! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Dec. 28, 2015
Bill Clinton recently appeared on behalf of his wife’s campaign at a rally in Nashua, New Hampshire, on the same day that Trump held a rally of his own just across the Massachusetts line in Lowell. Trump never mentioned the former president during his hour-long appearance in the packed Tsongas Center arena, but hasn’t shied away from invoking his name on television talk shows and on social media.
On Wednesday Trump told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that Clinton’s attempts to label him as a “sexist” means it is “open season” for attacks on her husband.
Trump’s brief Instagram video shows he intends to make Hillary Clinton’s relationship with her husband a significant part of his campaign, although the billionaire developer from New York remains in the midst of fighting fellow Republican candidates for the GOP presidential nomination.
Pundits say Trump’s new strategy is aimed at securing more votes from women. Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen last week suggested that Trump’s determination to link Clinton with her husband’s checkered past represents an effort to deflect attention away from his own history with women.
Trump made headlines in August when he took on Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly, who moderated the Aug. 6 GOP debate. Kelly reminded Trump of his history calling women he dislikes “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”
Trump initially brushed aside the question but later that week he ripped into Kelly, telling CNN news anchorman Don Lemon, “you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes” and “blood coming out of her…wherever.”
Trump’s comments prompted RedState.com, a popular conservative website, to withhold a previous invitation in which the website had scheduled Trump to deliver a keynote speech at an event in Atlanta.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza picked up on Trump’s Thursday video immediately and claimed that attacking the Clintons “is a conventional – and smart – strategy in a Republican primary.”
“Attacking Bill Clinton for his admitted extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky or noting that Weiner, a Clinton friend, was sending salacious pictures of his privates to women on the Internet is not only considered fair game but is also applauded by the very voters Trump wants and needs if he is going to be the Republican presidential nominee,” Cillizza added. Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, a close aide to Hillary Clinton, and resigned from Congress in 2011 after his sexting became public.
Yet before Trump released the now-viral Instagram video, USA Today interviewed a series of high-profile Republican women who are predicting that Trump’s strategy will backfire. Katie Packer, a political strategist who was deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, told the paper that going after Bill Clinton is the “quickest way to get women to come to Hillary Clinton’s defense.”
Hours after Trump published the video, which had surpassed more than 15,000 “likes” as of 5 p.m. Thursday, Clinton took to Twitter to post a video of her own. Rather than targeting Trump, it refers to bullies:
(AP file photo) 
