Trump Zeroes In on Hillary

With the plain-spoken, tell-it-like-it-is Donald Trump — for whom nothing is off-limits — Hillary Clinton is in for a much tougher election battle than she faces from her current opponent, a 74-year-old Socialist senator.

While Bernie Sanders famously said “Enough!” when asked about Clinton’s email scandal, Trump on Monday offered a glimpse of what one can expect once his campaign sets its sights on taking down Hillary. “Crooked Hillary Clinton said she is used to ‘dealing with men who get off the reservation.’ Actually, she has done poorly with such men!” Trump tweeted, apparently in reference to Bill Clinton’s famed infidelity.

It wasn’t the first time Trump referenced Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual escapades. In January, Trump lashed out after Hillary accused him of having a “penchant for sexism.” “She used the word ‘sexist,'” Trump said. “How the hell can she do that when she has one of the great woman abusers of all time waiting for her at the house for dinner?”

In addition to the ample Bill Clinton-caliber ammunition Trump already has to use against Hillary, he’s also taking some battle plans from Bernie Sanders. “I’m going to be taking a lot of the things that Bernie said and using them. I can re-read some of his speeches and I can get some very good material,” Trump said last Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“He said some things about her that are actually surprising, you know, that essentially she has no right to even be running and she’s got bad judgment,” he continued. “When he said ‘bad judgement,’ I said ‘Sound bite!'”

It is unlikely Clinton ever imagined she would find herself in a such a long, drawn-out race for the nomination. Sanders has ensured that her path to the nomination was not the de facto coronation for which she surely hoped, and now it seems her fight against Bernie is also helping Trump.

Sanders has made criticism of Hillary’s Wall Street ties central to his campaign message, a point which echoes Trump’s consistent critiques of the lobbying industry and the power of money in politics — and one he will surely exploit against Clinton.

But even Sanders recognizes that, in a general election fight against Trump, Clinton will experience sustained attacks the likes of which even she hasn’t seen in her decades-long career in politics.

The Republican party “will go after Hillary Clinton, by the way, in ways that I have never, ever gone after Hillary Clinton. I mean things like the Clinton Foundation, or things like the email situation,” he said in an interview with MSNBC.

In addition to Hillary’s Wall Street ties, the email scandal, and the evidence of possible corruption on her part while Secretary of State, there is also the Benghazi scandal, Clinton’s disastrous handling of Libya in general, and her husband’s political and personal record.

“I don’t talk about that,” said Sanders. “I have never talked about it one word in this campaign. I suspect very much that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will go after her in many, many ways that we have not.”

Trump certainly has many, many ways with which to do so.