# Evidence that Hillary Clinton mistreated women involved in Bill's sex scandals

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [September 30, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293 "2016-09-30T17:21:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293/21 "2016-09-30T20:49:46Z")

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Woman is mean to the women who sleep with her husband. Must be a day that ends in y.  
I still don’t know what advantage Trump thinks he can get from this. When it’s all said and done, all they need is to bring up his ex-wife, who says he assaulted and raped her, and then cheated on her before divorcing her to marry his mistress. There’s no upside from Trump in this at all, from my perspective. Am I missing something, or is this just another example of Trump shooting himself in the foot?

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**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293/22 "2016-09-30T20:56:24Z")

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> [@Fiveyearlurker](#):
>
> I actually think bringing up Lewinsky into an issue could be good for Clinton:
> 
> “Everyone who is, or ever has been married, knows that it’s a very difficult road at times. Bill and I hit a very well publicized rough patch due to his marital infidelities. As a couple, and in private, we worked through it and decided that we both were better together than apart. Publicly, while under understandable emotional strain, I lashed out at Ms. Lewinsky and called her “looney tunes” for which I’m very sorry. Marital infidelity is a terrible thing to do to another person, and my husband has apologized to me profusely for what he’s done. But make no mistake, there is only one person in this election for whom marital infidelity has been a personal, and repeated, moral failing.”
> 
> Poof, she’s a human being.

Dan Savage said the same thing in his podcast this week and this sounds like the perfect thing for Hillary Clinton to say. Trump would be foolish to go after her with this angle and anyone with common sense should be able to see this. I kind of hope this happens but unfortunately I think many of the people who are voting for Trump don’t have that common sense.

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**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293/23 "2016-09-30T20:56:49Z")

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My only purpose was to distill a clear argument from the statement.

I agree that the flaw in that clear argument is it conflates the response of Mrs. Clinton, the wife, with whatever the institutional response should be. This is a subtle trick, because now that Mrs. Clinton seeks the presidency, she invites us to consider her as the head of government – the personalization of the executive branch. But of course that doesn’t transform her actions twenty years ago into institutional ones. She, the wife, defended her husband… factually incorrectly, as it happens, but entirely understandably.

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**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-that-hillary-clinton-mistreated-women-involved-in-bills-sex-scandals/767293/24 "2016-09-30T21:20:02Z")

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> [@Bricker](#):
>
> She, the wife, defended her husband… factually incorrectly, as it happens, but entirely understandably.

It is factually incorrect to say that Hillary, the wife, was factually incorrect in defending her husband against charges of sexual harassment and rape, because Bill, the husband has never been found guilty of sexual crimes, whatever his sins, and because there was strong reasons for disbelieving the people who accused him of sexual crimes.

Disbelieving that someone is having an affair with your husband is entirely different. Those who argue that we should be accepting of people who claim to have been the victims of sexual harassment are silent on the subject of believing those who merely claim to be having a consensual relationship between grown adults. If Hillary wanted to cast doubt on the stories of garden-variety adulterers, it has no relation to her belief that victims of sexual crimes deserve support.

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