Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter caused a stir in 1976 when he gave a controversial interview to Robert Sheer for Playboy magazine. After admitting that he had “committed adultery in my heart many times,” the Georgia Governor encountered serious political fallout that threatened to derail his underdog campaign.
A lot of men agreed with Carter, but it was an embarrassing political moment and looked like an unnecessary admission. Nothing like the truth to make you look silly.
But now Donald Trump, Rudy Guiliani, and the Clintons are now in the mix.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor and an ally of Donald J. Trump’s, suggested on Sunday that “everybody” commits infidelity, setting off a backlash on Twitter.
The remark came during an exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” after Chuck Todd, the show’s host, asked Mr. Giuliani whether he was “the right person” to bring up former President Bill Clinton’s infidelities in this heated campaign.
“You have your own infidelities, sir,” Mr. Todd said.
“Everybody does,” Mr. Giuliani responded. “You know, I’m a Roman Catholic and I confess those things to my priest.”
“Just bizarre,” Glenn Greenwald, a journalist, lawyer and founder of The Intercept, a news media site he began in 2013, wrote on Twitter. “Trump & Giuliani have 6 wives between them & are sermonizing about marriage to the Clintons, who have been married 41 years.”
Others highlighted the illogic of Mr. Giuliani’s assertion that “everybody” cheats. If everybody cheats, then why attack Mr. Clinton for it?
Note: I hope and pray that we are not setting a new campaign standard for the future. This election’s fiasco is setting a low point for political discourse – far below elections in recent memory; we must rise above this to survive as a civil nation.