Hillary Clinton sat down for an interview with Ellen DeGeneres last week to give her thoughts on her upcoming Hulu documentary, the state of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and whether or not she would consider a vice presidential nomination offer.
Naturally, the failed 2016 Democratic nominee for president didn’t waste the opportunity to take a few digs at President Donald Trump during the segment, using the moment as a springboard to argue there is a “double standard” in how women in politics are treated versus men when it comes to openly displaying their emotions.
“It really strikes me as quite odd because, you know, most of the criticism [of her 2016 presidential campaign] is because I didn’t show my emotions enough. You know, I wasn’t emotional enough. I should have been, I don’t know, emoting more,” she told DeGeneres.
“But I thought, you know, it is such a highly responsible awesome job being president that I needed to demonstrate that, ‘Hey, you know, I can handle this. I can do it. I’m not going to get knocked around.’
“And now, you know, we have one of the most emotionally-acting-out people ever in the history of our country in the White House. And I don’t hear anybody saying he is just too emotional. So, we still have a ways to go until women are going to be judged by the same standards instead of the old double standard,” Clinton concluded.
It’s understandable Hillary Clinton would still be holding on to a lot of bitterness about 2016. Polls had been predicting a win for her in a landslide, and she walked around for months prior to the election acting as though she’d already won, that the election would be a formality.
But she didn’t. And it wasn’t long after it was all said and done that the wheels just fell off of the Clinton machine, and she joined her fellow Democrats in making unsubstantiated allegations that Trump “colluded” with the Russians to steal the election.
While blame-shifting was and is a coping mechanism, Hillary Clinton is entitled to her own opinions — but not her own set of “facts.”
For Clinton to sit there on national television and assert without blinking an eye that no one talks about Trump’s “emotional” nature is, quite frankly, demonstrably false, as Trump likely would admit himself.
Contrary to her claims about how she was allegedly judged on her lack of emotion in 2016, it was actually Trump who took the brunt of the criticism about his emotions and temperament, with Clinton herself leading the charge.
Those criticisms have continued well into his presidency, with journalists, pundits and politicos all weighing in on any given day about what Trump says and how he says it.
I can remember arguments about men’s emotions being made back when Democrat Mike Dukakis ran against Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988. Dukakis was asked a hypothetical question during a debate about his wife Kitty being raped and murdered. His answer seemed cold and clinical, and political observers have argued that it helped to derail whatever hopes he had of becoming president.
Male candidates for higher office who have cried in public have also faced heightened scrutiny and criticism from the media, commentators and the public.
It’s pretty much an inarguable point at this stage in the game that when it comes to judging male and female candidates for being “too emotional” or “not emotional enough” that the field has been level for decades.
But playing the double standards card has become almost like breathing to female Democratic candidates. It’s played without thinking, without engaging in any introspection. It’s become a crutch to lean on.
Now is as good a time as any to put that crutch away.
Stacey Matthews is a veteran blogger who has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to Red State and Legal Insurrection.
