Trump was in Bedford, N.H., last week, congratulating himself yet again for not saying “something extremely rough” during Monday night’s debate. He was talking, of course, about resisting the urge to raise Bill Clinton’s history of infidelity.

Are we really going there? Is Donald Trump so base that he’d try to hang the infidelities of Hillary Clinton’s husband on her? Could Trump possibly be that stupid?

“I would have had the right to have done it,” Trump told NECN’s Alison King. “But I didn’t want to do [it] in front of Chelsea, who I think is a very nice young woman.”


Of course, it’s perfectly fine to leap into the sewer the second that very nice young woman leaves the room. Since Monday, he and his surrogates have been at it in earnest. Friday brought a direct attack, as Trump told The New York Times, “I can be nastier than [Clinton] can ever be.”

How, King gamely pressed, would the former president’s infidelities reflect on Hillary Clinton? “I think it’s pretty simple to figure that out,” Trump said.

It is simple — if you’re a victim-blaming boor with a self-destructive bent.

Trump’s well-documented mistreatment of women seems to be hurting him right now. To counter, the third-grade bullies who set his strategy have hit upon what they think is a winning variation on the schoolyard taunt: I know your husband is, but what am I?

Why not goad the woman subjected to years of humiliation with her husband’s awful behavior? Why not act as if his failings affect her qualifications? Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to bring a former mistress to the debate to throw the candidate off? Just kidding!

And why not go all the way and say Hillary Clinton enabled the messed-up behavior that threatened to destroy their marriage: The woman scorned was unable to muster sufficient public fury, or just walk out.


You think Donald Trump hates women just because he calls his Miss Universe Miss Piggy and has a slut-shaming tweet-fit in the wee hours? Well, Trump says, Hillary Clinton may dispute this, but the former first lady helped discredit women who made those allegations against her husband. Now that’s misogyny!

If that last one is true, it is troubling, but it pales in comparison to the things Trump has done to women. The Republican nominee has spent a lifetime exploiting and demeaning them, the record replete with examples of his boorishness.

Just on Friday, it emerged that he had watched a sex tape made by Paris Hilton, whom he’s known since she was a child. “The first time I saw her she walked into a room and I said, ‘Who the hell is that?’ ” Trump told Howard Stern, creepily. Hilton was 12 years old at the time.

Never mind all that. Rudy Giuliani, the well-known paragon of moral rectitude, has declared that only Hillary Clinton should be disqualified on the issue of marital infidelity. Trump is the true feminist in this race, he said, apparently with a straight face.

Hillary’s feminism is “phony” and she is “too stupid to be president,” because she didn’t believe right away that the president had cheated on her with Monica Lewinsky.


When it comes to infidelity, Giuliani knows whereof he speaks, as do so many Trump bigs, including the candidate himself. Giuliani’s second marriage ended after two affairs. He informed his wife it was over via press conference. Such a sweetheart!

Trump’s infidelity is a matter of public record. After a humiliating and public affair, he left first wife Ivana for Marla Maples, but he told author Tim O’Brien he was already “bored” as Maples walked down the aisle for their wedding. Melania is wife number three.

Somehow, these guys, with six marriages between them, are wagging fingers at Hillary Clinton. They are utterly unconcerned that the gambit throws their own gross histories into unflattering relief and insults the women whose votes are vital to victory.

Maybe they think you won’t notice. But only a third-grader would fall for it.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbraham.

Correction: Because of a reporting error, Ivana Trump was incorrectly identified in an earlier version of this column.