It seems when you are Hillary Clinton, you cannot speak let alone have a moment of humor without your character assassinated and your words dragged by a runaway train all across social media. Hillary was in Chicago Monday night, promoting her memoir about the 2016 campaign, What Happened. There she took a book tour stop at the Auditorium Theater, where author Cheryl Strayed interviewed her in front of an audience.
During the interview, Strayed asked Hillary what costume she was planning to wear this year for Halloween. Though momentarily without an answer, she quickly came back with what seemed nothing more than an improvised, yet bittersweet joke.
"I'll tel you, I have to start thinking about it, don't I? Tomorrow is Halloween... I think I will maybe come as the president," said Hillary.
The audience applauded.
Unfortunately, Twitter did not. Ronnie from "an ordinary midwestern suburb" (otherwise known as Des Moines, Iowa) thought the idea of Hillary as president, even for pretend for one night, was too frightening to bear.
Ronnie was not alone in expressing this childish sentiment.
"That would be the scariest costume of them all"
"Well she succeeded in frightening me with that prospect today."
Then the twitter conversation took a dark turn when people began to suggest that Hillary had meant she would dress up as current president Donald Trump for Halloween.
The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., seized the opportunity to capitalize on the social media spotlight: "That’s cute. She can borrow my @realDonaldTrump mask."
What follows Junior's tweet are thousands of comments and many more retweets of his snarky jest. Most of them espouse vitriol and unwavering, borderline-religious-fanatic belief that Hillary is corrupt, deserving of a life sentence in jail. Or worse. And then too soon the thread devolves into yet another heated back-and-forth of nasty and intentionally antagonistic comments.
Dan Bongino's opinion is pale in comparison; "That's the only time she'll be President."
Finally, someone more level-headed pointed out, perhaps far too late, that Hillary had never specified which President she would dress up as, if any of them all. In the interview she merely said she would go "as the president."
While on the book tour, Hillary has kept one foot wet in the political arena. She has criticized the Trump administration and commented on news events such as the Last Vegas shooting. When asked about special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Hillary would tap her memoir and say, “I have a great chapter about Russia in here.”
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
H/T: People, Huffington Post,