The narrative of this presidential race has been set in stone for several years: Hillary Clinton WILL be the next President of the United States.

This has been the widely held, inherently-understood belief amongst all the ‘smart’ political, media and celebrity elite in Washington, New York and Hollywood.

Oh sure, there will still have to be a contest of some sort.

But Hillary’s victory in this election is, to them, the biggest nailed down in-the-bag certainty since the Warriors went 3-1 up in the recent NBA Finals and Stephen Curry’s name was being slowly engraved on the MVP trophy.

Oh.

Wait a moment.

Hold those horses.

Or, as Goldfinger used to say to 007: ‘Not so fast, Mr Bond…’

The widely held, inherently-understood belief amongst all the ‘smart’ political, media and celebrity elite in Washington, New York and Hollywood was that Hillary would be the next president

We all remember what happened at the NBA Finals; LeBron James suddenly morphed into Superman to wrestle back a 4-3 win for the Cavs and snatch the MVP title for himself from a distraught Curry.

Proof, not that any was really needed, that there really is no such thing as a certainty in either sport or politics.

Particularly when you have an opponent bursting with self-confidence who defies the conventional rules of engagement and simply refuses to bow down even in the face of apparently inevitable defeat.

Like LeBron James, and in his own way, Donald Trump.

As Trump moves ahead of Hillary in the polls for the first time, enjoying the traditional post-convention bounce, I am smelling a similar dramatic upset at the general election in November and if my nostrils are correct, then Hillary will have only herself to blame.

The shocking sense of entitlement that pervades from every pore of this Democrat nominee and her supporters is almost overwhelming.

Nowhere has this been more lamentably confirmed than in the sudden avalanche of 20,000 emails revealed by Wikileaks late last week, which laid bare a distinctly unpleasant Clinton-ite underbelly to the Democrats.

But Hillary’s Democratic National Committee wild attack dogs, led by chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, pictured here being jeered Monday morning went after her rival like they were hunting down an elderly buffalo

Hillary’s Democratic National Committee wild attack dogs, led by chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, went after her rival Bernie Sanders like they were hunting down an elderly buffalo in the prairies of South Africa.

Nothing was off limits, not even his personal religious faith.

‘Does he believe in a god,’ wrote one staffer, the DNC’s chief financial officer Brad Marshall. ‘He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. ‘I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.’

The chief executive of the DNC, Amy Dacey, replied with one word: ‘Amen.’

Another staffer, national communications director Luis Miranda, regularly exchanged emails with reporters directly briefing against Sanders.

Isn’t this just utterly disgraceful?

These DNC staffers are supposed to be candidate neutral.

But such was their obsession with the presumed ‘Hillary Will Be President’ premise, they couldn’t stop themselves chewing up and smearing a brave, decent, inspiring 75-year-old man who at the very least surely deserved a fair fight within his own party.

I interviewed Debbie Wasserman Schultz many times during my tenure at CNN. She was always a good guest, forcefully presenting her opinion and arguing strongly with other pundits of a different political persuasion.

Schultz and the DNC couldn’t stop themselves smearing a brave, decent, inspiring man who at the very least deserved a fair fight within his own party. ‘Does he believe in a god,’ wrote one staffer in a leaked email

But there was a certain zealotry to her work, particularly when it came to defending Hillary Clinton.

I got the firm impression she would do literally anything to ensure a Clinton win in 2016.

And indeed, it turns out she did, even if by doing so she has now wrecked her career and dragged both the DNC and Clinton herself by association into serious disrepute.

Even worse, it will almost certainly cost Hillary much-needed votes from Bernie supporters who made their fury felt today by loudly booing when he called for them to back the nominee.

This latest email scandal couldn’t come at a worse time for Hillary, as the Democratic National Convention starts in Philadelphia.

The problem is that she’s still desperately trying to run on a ‘Trust’ platform.

Trump’s a very bad guy who can’t be trusted, she keeps reminding us.

Only she can be trusted with serious stuff like the nuclear button, she insists.

Only she has the experience required to occupy the White House.

Etc.

But for this stance to be effective, Hillary herself has to be viewed as more trustworthy than Trump and the latest CNN poll published today shows she isn’t.

It revealed that only 3 out of 10 Americans find her ‘honest and trustworthy’, a staggeringly low number for a woman who wants us to believe she’s the Trust candidate.

If Hillary’s dastardly DNC disciples will do this to one of their own, what the hell will they do to everyone else? This election will come down to who Americans trust most between the two least popular nominees in history

I wrote a year ago that I didn’t think Hillary Clinton would survive the private email server scandal which engulfed her campaign.

It all looked too dodgy, and her wide-eyed protestations of technological innocence too absurdly implausible for a woman whose husband was President for eight years.

It also confirmed to many Americans what they’ve long suspected: that Hillary’s a political Pinocchio.

In the end, she did survive it, by the skin of her teeth.

But FBI director James Comey condemned her as ‘extremely careless’ in an extraordinarily detailed tongue-lashing; a withering verdict which Donald Trump will surely use again and again during the ‘trust’ debate which will rage until November.

Now, thanks to devious Debbie and her blindly cynical and diabolically partisan Clinton-ite wastrels, he has yet more ammunition to hurl her way.

‘The system’s rigged,’ has been Trump’s argument for a while now.

After this latest shocking email trove, does anyone really doubt he’s right?

And if Hillary’s dastardly DNC disciples will do this to one of their own like Bernie Sanders, what the hell will they do to everyone else?

This election will come down, as all U.S. elections do, to who Americans trust most between the two least popular nominees in history.

Right now, Hillary Clinton faces a make-or-break week in which she will either repair or irreparably destroy her bond of trust with the American people.