Juan Williams: The election that saw us jump the shark

[DonViejo]

By Juan Williams - 11/07/16 06:00 AM EST

We jumped the shark on this campaign a long time ago.

First, there was the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by a candidate with no qualifications to be president, given to shaming women about their looks, insulting Mexicans, and even demeaning a former prisoner of war, himself a former GOP presidential nominee, for getting captured.

Then the American press played stupid.

They equated one candidate’s reckless use of a private email server with the other candidate’s litany of disrepute — his reported failure to pay taxes; his insults of a Gold Star family; charges that he regularly groped women; as well as federal charges of racial bias against black people trying to rent apartments. Oh, and don’t forget charges of fraud at Trump University and the stories — never convincingly rebutted — of his corrupt use of money intended for charity.

Along this twisted road to elect a president, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia is trying to influence the election by attacking one candidate. And when — days before the election — the FBI director took a shot at the same candidate, the 2016 campaign totally went off the rails.

By that, I mean it went past all bounds of my prior experience with hardball political campaigns over the last 40 years.

-snip-

http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/304608-juan-williams-the-election-that-saw-us-jump-the-shark

[unblock]

1. ... and the traditional, short-lived, self-absorbed media navel gazing begins....

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

2. Says the guy who happily takes a paycheck for the worst fake news organization in

the history of the country.