By the last few weeks of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton was demonized in every possible way (without actual basis in reality). The private server email issue was conflated with the hacked email issue and became a giant, amorphous, sinister “Emails!” The Clinton Foundation might as well have been a Bond villain organization, guilty of sins ranging from giving all US Uranium to Russia to paying for Chelsea’s wedding.
But Trump harped in particular on one Foundation matter by relentless attacks on her for daring to accept Clinton Foundation funds from Saudi Arabia. This was from a debate, but it was also part of Trump’s closing stump speech:
“You talk about women and women's rights. These are people that push gays off business — off buildings. These are people that kill women and treat women horribly, and yet you take their money,” Trump said during a presidential debate last October in Las Vegas. “So I'd like to ask you right now. Why don't you give back the money that you've taken from certain countries that treat certain groups of people so horribly? Why don't you give back the money. I think it would be a great gesture. …”
Of course at the time, he was registering eight Saudi companies.
A couple of months later, Trump was bonding with the same building tossers over a mystical globe/crystal ball and watching sword dancers as Jets saluted the Kingdom with flyovers.
And this week, Trump sees
no reason to stop investments in Saudi Arabia, or really do anything, even after the Saudis lured a journalist to their Instanbul consulate, then tortured, murdered and dismembered him.
The ease with which the right, including Trump, can “pivot” from using the Saudis as monsters to successfully demonize Hillary, then befriend them and wave off their atrocities should not surprise me, but still does.