Leslie Marshall: Why the Hillary Clinton-Tulsi Gabbard feud is a gift to Trump
Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall on why the escalating feud between Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Hillary Clinton is becoming good news for President Trump, may actually be good news for Rep. Gabbard, but is increasingly harmful to the Democratic party as a whole.
Hillary Clinton’s claim that presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is “the favorite of the Russians” in the Democratic primary and her implication that Gabbard is “a Russian asset” show that the former Democratic presidential nominee’s talk of sisterhood and solidarity with other women is hogwash.
This should be an enlightening moment for all American women – Democrats, Republicans and independents.
We have seen it before. Republican women like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, presidential primary candidates Carly Fiorina and Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Trump White House officials Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway have been targeted by other women for shocking attacks.
LESLIE MARSHALL: HILLARY CLINTON-TULSI GABBARD FEUD IS A GIFT TO TRUMP – IT NEEDS TO END NOW
But now we see the contagion has spread. If Clinton – a woman who has been a first lady, senator, secretary of state, and presidential nominee – can viciously attack a woman of the same political party who has followed her lead and is running for president, we know no one is safe.
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Get ready for the 2024 elections. Former South Carolina Gov. and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley – or any other woman brave enough to run for president – will be savaged by other women with accusations of betrayal, incompetence and malfeasance.
What has become clear is that if a woman is not in lockstep with Clinton and the establishment Democrats, they will oil her ladder to the final glass ceiling.
The accusation that Gabbard – who represents Hawaii in the U.S. House and has been decorated for her service in the Army National Guard – could be working for a hostile foreign power should not be taken seriously.
So what on Earth has Gabbard done to attract Clinton’s scorn?
Perhaps Gabbard was attacked because while she says she is pro-choice she holds a marginally more nuanced view on abortion than Clinton.
Or perhaps Gabbard was attacked because she openly declares her love for our country, which undermines the leftist narrative that America is inherently evil and should be fundamentally transformed.
I don’t support Gabbard. But her treatment by the Clinton Machine should be called out.
Of course, the leftist media wants in on the fun. They have a long history of unjustly attacking women who disagree with them on issues, while not going after women more sympathetic to their views.
For example, feminist Tina Fey was eager to portray Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” as a mindless puppet of the Republican Party. When Fey said “I can see Russia from my house” – in her role portraying Palin – the media practically treated the line as if Palin had actually said those words (she never did).
There has yet to be a similarly caustic depiction of far-left Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on “SNL.”
Instead, we have a very public transformation by Clinton into the character Regina George, the female antagonist who torments anyone who doesn’t conform to her standards, brought to life in Fey’s “Mean Girls,” a film whose purpose was to push sisterly bonds of feminism.
Hollywood loves to pile on. After Trump was elected, Madonna chimed in by saying that “it feels like women betrayed us.”
In 2016, Democrats asked women to elect Hillary Clinton as the first woman president. If Clinton supporters were met by any reluctance – including on issues of policy from both their own base or by Republicans – they quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
However, this sisterly solidarity was ignored in 2018, when feminists offered no assistance to Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn when she successfully campaigned to become the first woman senator from Tennessee.
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Rather than support Blackburn, the feminists campaigned for a 74-year-old man dusted off from the shelf of retirement because they couldn’t bring themselves to support a woman with whom they disagreed on important issues.
Voting on a candidate’s policy positions rather than gender is fair enough and makes sense. But why on Earth should Democrats be surprised when women do the exact same thing when voting for a Republican?
What should worry American women isn’t the feigned surprise when Democrats are confronted with the fact that women have a diverse range of thought. What should worry us is the accusation that those of us whose views include supporting President Trump are either disloyal to our sex or unintelligent and incapable of discerning the “truth” and victims of “internalized misogyny.”
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Truthfully, doesn’t the view by some women that other women can’t look at the facts and legitimately come to a different conclusion meet the definition of internalized misogyny? This is the natural consequence of dividing people into identity groups, certainly, but it’s also an unmasking of feminist hypocrisy.
I truly believe the first woman president will be a Republican, and she will get elected running on issues and by casting vision for the nation – not by suggesting we all fall in line and say “I’m With Her.”