LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump is still in this race, and he can still win it.
Obviously, he has had a rough couple of weeks. Democrats and the Clinton campaign — by which I mean the media — have thrown more slime and dirt at the Republican presidential nominee than any other politician in the history of television.
Yet, Mr. Trump is still standing.
Down in the polls, perhaps. But nowhere near where a lesser candidate or a weaker man would be if he had endured all that Mr. Trump has.
The first 10 minutes of the last debate in St. Louis, where Mr. Trump stood on the stage against the entire world and stared it down and then began prosecuting the case against Hillary Clinton, was the greatest herculean effort successfully pulled off by any man in modern politics.
His resilience is a testament to his own political instincts, his own willingness to take creative risks and his own monster stamina. It is also a testament to how desperately people believe in the political message that he alone identified and has forcefully pursued against a hurricane of universal opposition among elites.
Nowhere is that opposition hotter and more strident than from fellow Republicans, who excoriated Mr. Trump early in the primary campaign when he initially balked at agreeing to support the eventual nominee.
But today, it is Mitt Romney, John McCain and the entire Bush family who have abandoned the eventual nominee. Just about every Republican nominee for the past 30 years — men whom Republicans supported despite all manner of reservations — refuse to return that decency by supporting Mr. Trump.
Each one of them has truly revealed himself.
And now the media are shocked to hear all this talk about a “rigged” election. But, of course, it is rigged.
The media overwhelmingly support Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats financially and in terms of campaign coverage.
They cover the contested accusations against Mr. Trump endlessly while almost completely ignoring the raft of incontrovertible scandals revealed by the WikiLeaks document dump.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is as dirty and dastardly as the most sinister politician Hollywood could ever come up with.
They pay dirty money to homeless people to incite violence at Trump rallies. Does it get any more slimy and cynical than that?
The Democratic primary race was clearly rigged, with the Democratic National Committee brazenly conspiring to defeat Bernie Sanders and hand Mrs. Clinton the nomination.
Mrs. Clinton’s own top campaign officials — according to the purloined emails — believe Mrs. Clinton is a liar.
And when speaking freely, Mrs. Clinton acknowledges that “they can’t possibly vet all those refugees” from Syria that she openly wants to let into the country she is supposed to care about protecting.
She is also all in favor of obliterating America’s borders.
“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere,” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech to an Italian bank that paid her $225,000.
Add to all of this her reckless and near-criminal disregard for our nation’s secrets and you have an anti-American, globalist liar who is more dangerous than the worst spies who spilled U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Now comes evidence that a high-ranking official in her State Department tried to barter a “quid pro quo” with FBI agents, asking them to alter evidence in a criminal investigation against Mrs. Clinton.
Damn straight that is more serious than a two-bit break-in at the Watergate.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.