On Monday morning, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump published an attack ad against Hillary Clinton, titled "Is Hillary really protecting women?" The short video presages what will likely be a Trump-Clinton rivalry in the general election. A black-and-white image of Bill Clinton with a cigar in his mouth is superimposed upon an image of the White House. As the former fades in and the latter fades out, the video features the voices of two women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by the former president. It ends with Hillary's laugh and a still image of her and her husband with the caption "Here we go again?" The inclusion of an eerie tune in the background suggests that Trump is comparing another Clinton presidency to a horror movie.
The video follows a series of others that have been used to insult Hillary. Two months prior, Trump posted a video which inserted a dog's bark in place of her voice, telling voters "We don't need to be a punchline." The latest video, which likely cost little to produce, focuses on his claim that Hillary is bad for women.
The first words in the video are spoken by former White House volunteer aid Kathleen Willey, who claimed that Bill groped her in passing. The former president denied the allegations, and a prosecutor ruled that there was not enough evidence against him:
There is insufficient evidence to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that President Clinton’s testimony regarding Kathleen Willey was false.
As of February, Willey took a position with the Rape Accountability Project for Education PAC as its national spokeswoman and plans to campaign against Clinton. She has also thanked Trump for highlighting Clinton's infidelities in the past.
The second soundbite in the video is taken from Juanita Broaddrick's 1999 interview with NBC Dateline's Lisa Myers. She said that Clinton bit her lip, forced her unto the bed, and raped her in an Arkansas hotel room in 1978, when he was the state's Attorney General. She had met Clinton at a nursing home, and had allegedly been taken up to his hotel room for what she thought would be a "professional" meeting. Clinton, who was president at the time of the interview, released a statement via his attorney, David Kendall:
Any allegation that the president assaulted Mrs. Broaddrick more than 20 years ago is absolutely false. Beyond that, we're not going to comment.
On January 6, Broaddrick took to Twitter and resurfaced her case against the Clintons, claiming that Hillary had threatened her to stay silent. In an interview with The Hill, Broaddrick said that she is supporting Trump because "he says the things I like to hear.”
Neither women have commented on Trump's allegations against Bill, nor on how he's using the former president's past to attack Hillary.
Image: Dawn Foster/Bustle
