Russian collusion has gone from being Hillary Clinton’s excuse for losing to Donald Trump and a misfired plan to remove him from office to being the failed candidate’s all-purpose explanation for everything. Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard charges that the Democratic National Committee is “trying to hijack the entire election process,” and Hillary fires back by claiming, without, of course, a shred of evidence, that Gabbard is “a favorite of the Russians” and was being groomed by them to run as a third-party candidate to ensure Trump’s reelection. All these ludicrous charges raise the question: why is Hillary now talking like a paranoid old Cold Warrior?

During the actual Cold War, Hillary never spoke the way she does routinely now. She never made any public statement to indicate that she held any view of the ongoing conflict with the Soviet Union other than the standard leftist claim that it was all overblown, an exaggeration of right-wingers in order to justify military adventurism worldwide. She never expressed any alarm over the fact that Bill Clinton visited the Soviet Union in January 1970, while the Cold War was raging as a hot war in Vietnam and high tension everywhere else. (Bill was at the time a dedicated, public antiwar activist.)

On Larry King Live in October 1992, Bill tried to downplay the significance of his Soviet trip, saying: “It was the first week of 1970, and actually relationships were thawing between our two countries.” That’s a bit of a stretch. It was in fact quite early in that thaw, as Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) had begun just two months before and nothing had yet been concluded, and détente wouldn’t be in full swing until 1972. Clinton told King that he had “an interesting week” in the Soviet Union, and “I paid for my own trip. Nobody paid for it.” He couldn’t remember, he said, whom he had met there.

Bill Clinton’s opponent in the 1992 presidential election, George H. W. Bush, found this implausible, telling King several days later that “to go to Moscow one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, and not remember who you saw — I think the answer is, level with the American people.”

Bill never did. And Hillary never showed any public curiosity or misgivings about her husband’s trip, although it is safe to say that if Tulsi Gabbard had visited Russia, Hillary would be letting us know, and if Gabbard said she couldn’t remember who she met there, Hillary would be loudly demanding full disclosure and insinuating all manner of misconduct.

Hillary’s Cold Warrior bona fides, however, are newly minted: in 2010, as Secretary of State, Hillary didn’t hesitate to sign off on the infamous Uranium One deal with the Russians, and during the 2016 campaign, she had no problem accepting donations from Russians.

If Tulsi Gabbard had agreed on the sale of a substantial amount of uranium to the Russians, and had taken money from well-heeled and influential Russian donors, would Hillary be telling us about it today? Without any doubt.

So what is actually going on here? It seems clear from all this that Hillary Clinton is a hollowed-out soul, a human being who is so unprincipled, so corrupt, and so filled with rage and hate that she doesn’t hesitate to descend to the most flagrant hypocrisy. In doing so, of course, she knows that the establishment media will cover for her, and do its level best to make sure that as few Americans as possible come to realize just how opportunistic, insincere, and devious she is.

If Democrats wish to maintain that none of this is the case, and that Hillary Clinton is as honest as the day is long and has all the integrity of Abraham Lincoln, they create other problems for themselves. If Hillary is really worried that Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset with the mission of reelecting Donald Trump, what is she, with her Soviet-traveling husband, Uranium One deal, and Russian donors? Could it be that all of this is the result of a split in the Russian asset ranks? Could it be that Hillary Clinton is herself a Russian asset, perhaps even a Soviet one, who despises the Putin regime for abandoning the socialism that she and other Democrats are working so assiduously to bring to the United States?

Absurd. Why, the very idea is inconceivable. It would take someone completely blinded by hatred and fear of Russia, seeing Russians lurking everywhere, carrying out their nefarious schemes with help from unwitting Americans, to imagine such a thing, right? In other words, it would take someone like Hillary Clinton.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.