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In 2016, Hillary Clinton made a series of predictions about a Trump White House. Four years later, some of these have been “strikingly” spot on.‘PEOPLE GET HURT’
One of those insights came in a June 2016 speech on the economy, delivered in Ohio. It was five months to election day.
“ (Mr Trump) makes over-the-top promises that if people stick with him, trust him, listen to him, put their faith in him, he’ll deliver for them, and he’ll make them wildly successful.
“Then everything falls apart and then people get hurt,” she said.
Mr Trump spent much of 2020 making an over-the-top promise, with no scientific basis, that coronavirus would vanish.
In February, he said the virus would be gone by April, “as the heat comes in”.
“Just stay calm. It will go away,” he said in March. “It is dying out,” he said in June.
“I think that, at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear,” he said in July.
There have now been 22 million COVID-19 cases and 350,000 deaths in the US involving the virus.
‘IMAGINE TRUMP IN A CRISIS’
In the same 2016 speech, Ms Clinton also pondered how Mr Trump might deal with a crisis. From the pandemic to Black Lives Matter demonstrations, the devastating Puerto Rico hurricane to the deadly Charlottesville car attack, the US has faced a number of those since he came to office
“Now, just imagine if you can: Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office, the next time America faces a crisis. Imagine him being in charge when your jobs and savings are at stake.
“Is this who you want to lead us in an emergency? Someone thin-skinned and quick to anger who’d likely be on Twitter attacking reporters or bringing the whole regulatory system down on his critics when he should be focused on fixing what’s wrong? Would he even know what to do?”
In October 2016, Ms Clinton said in a presidential debate that a Trump president would be a puppet for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and that he had “failed to admit that Russia has engaged with cyber attacks against the US”. He was a “puppet” she said, to which Mr Trump replied “you’re the puppet”.
The Mueller Report, handed down in 2019, found that Russia had indeed influenced the election in Mr Trump’s favour spreading “disinformation” and “violated US criminal law”. Although the report could not establish a link between the Trump campaign to the Russian interference.
‘EVERY TIME, ‘IT’S RIGGED’’
Perhaps the most prescient of the failed presidential candidate’s predictions, however, was around the character of the eventual winner. Particularly, his apparent inability to understand that he can, sometimes, lose.
“Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him,” she said in a debate, also in October 2016.
“The FBI conducted a year-long investigation into my emails; they concluded there was no case – he said the FBI was rigged.
“He lost the Iowa caucus and the Wisconsin primary; he said the Republican primary was rigged against him.
“The Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering; he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him.
“There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row, and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged.”
“I should have got that,” Mr Trump interjected to laughter.
But Ms Clinton continued.
“This is a mindset. This is how Donald thinks. And it’s funny, but it’s also really troubling. That is not the way our democracy works.”
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton’s eerily accurate predictions about the President (news.com.au)
