Hillary Clinton’s new book tour is a gift to the Trump presidential campaign | Opinion

With President Joe Biden in the middle of a post-debate popularity meltdown and Donald Trump riding high on new immunity delivered by his hand-picked Supreme Court, more bad news is coming for Biden or whoever ends up as the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Clinton is back and she’ll be going on a book tour to put herself all over the media this fall just as Americans start to really pay attention to the presidential campaign.

If you’re Trump, you have to laugh as the failed and flailing 2016 presidential candidate tries desperately to make herself relevant as she flogs her 10th book “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty.”

After so many hardbound pages of self-adulation, perhaps Clinton will make some money as she tours the left-wing strongholds of Boston, San Francisco, Boston, D.C. and Seattle while gracing the sets of big TV shows with her presence. But she has picked the worst time to remind the nation why she lost in 2016, perhaps adding to the headwinds Democrats will face this November.

When Democrats are tying Trump to his cheating, p****-grabbing, sexual assaulting, teen ogling past, Hillary will be there to remind us of the time when the Democrats didn’t much mind a president who was a serial cheater, enjoyed the favors of a thong-bedecked White House intern and was credibly accused of rape. Nothing undermines Democrats’ newfound reverence for morality like the memory of what Bill Clinton did with his cigars.

When Democrats are raising the specter of the Saudis and others buying favors with Trump by lavishing unearned business deals on his family business and his son-in-law, Republicans will laugh about the time Hillary Clinton was secretary of state while her family foundation raised millions from the very foreign governments and businesses she was negotiating with. Nothing undermines Democrats’ newfound reverence for ethics than the memory of Hillary meeting with a Lebanese billionaire at Foggy Bottom after he lavished millions on the Clinton Foundation.

When Democrats gasp in horror at the unethical retinue of grifters and sleazeballs who will fill the corridors of power when Trump is president, Republicans can remind them that Hillary Clinton was fine with her chief of staff working for the State Department, the Clinton Foundation and an affiliated for-profit consulting firm all at the same time. Nothing undermines Democrats’ newfound reverence for probity in personnel as tales of Clinton’s triple-dipping minions flying thither and yon to fill their own pocketbooks at the expense of the taxpayer.

When Democrats argue that Trump’s lickspittle worship of ghastly foreign potentates puts his personal feelings above our national interest, we can all remember the time that Hillary Clinton put her own “convenience” ahead of national security and freedom of information laws. When Hillary was told her emails were being hacked by foreign adversaries, she doubled down on a secret private email server she kept in her closet. Nothing undermines Democrats’ newfound reverence for national security and our sacred alliances as a reminder that the secretary of State under Obama fired staffers for the very reckless approach to security she took herself.

There’s nothing Hillary Clinton could do that would be worse for the Democrats’ chances of defeating Trump than raising her scandal-smeared profile just as the election looms. That Clinton puts her need to sweep up one last pile of cash ahead of our nation’s need to protect our sacred democracy shouldn’t come as a surprise. That’s what the Clintons have done all along.

David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio or email him at dmastio1@yahoo.com