From wacko to mental, US Presidential campaign goes unstable

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump is a Russian stooge. Hillary Clinton is a North Korean patsy. He’s wacko. She’s mental. And so on, the US Presidential election continued to plumb uncharted lows, some eight weeks before Election Day.

Where it will all end no one knows, but this much is certain: this election campaign is sundering America more than 9/11 -- whose sombre 15th anniversary the country will mark on Sunday.

Hillary Clinton offered a stark reminder of that with a withering critique of Trump supporters, half of who, she told a fundraising event in New York City, belonged in a ''basket of deplorables.'' They are ''racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic -- you name it.''

The Trump campaign went ballistic at the gibe, with his chief aide Kellyanne Conway asking ''Why does she have such disdain for people?'' and his spokesman Jason Miller saying it ''revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans.''

''Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people. I think it will cost her at the Polls!'' Tweetmaster Trump tweeted.

But Clinton aides pointed out that she only deplored Trump for giving voice to the ''offensive, hateful mean-spirited rhetoric'' of the toxic half who were irredeemable. There was the other basket of supporters desperate for change and ''we have to empathize and understand them,'' and tell them Trump does not have solutions to their problems

Meanwhile, from the Trump camp came growing clamor about Clinton’s health -- from charges of lack of physical stamina to mental impairment, none of it based on any substance or proof. It was ugly, and Clinton supporters suggested it was thinly-veiled sexism and misogyny aimed at undermining a female candidate’s bid for office.

Trump, who once boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters, tried to turn the tables for that flub on Hillary Clinton, telling a raucous rally in Pensacola, Florida, that she could ''shoot someone through the heart in front of 20,000 people and not be prosecuted,'' because she is part of the elitist establishment and the system is rigged in her favor.

He then questioned her mental health, saying, ''Personally, I think she’s an unstable person'' – an increasingly recurring theme in the Trump campaign that was picked up by Texas lawmaker Louie Gohmert who kept repeating that she was ''mentally impaired'' even while saying one should not be making fun of the handicapped.

The sheer ugliness of the campaign rhetoric was relieved only by spurts of gibberish and machismo from the syntactically handicapped Trump spigot.

Even as he was being panned for having a man-crush on Putin, Trump accused Clinton of selling out to Russia, saying she gave up 20 per cent of U.S uranium to Russia, and ''You know what that means, right? Uranium is big, big stuff because it means the ultimate. The ultimate is called nuclear. Not global warming. It’s called nuclear warming, okay.'' It was worthy of a Homer Simpson lecture to sixth-graders.

''Lock her up! Lock her up,'' chanted his supporters.

Trump also blamed Hillary Clinton for North Korea’s nuclear advances, and his campaign dredged up efforts going back to the Bill Clinton administration to temper Pyongyang with incentives.

In an indication of what a Trump foreign policy will look like, he spoke of what his response would be to the kind of skirmish Iran and U.S naval ships have been having in the Gulf recently.

''When Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn’t be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water,'' Trump said. His supporters roared in approval.