Hillary Clinton has been given a free run by a partisan left media for the most part this election, but her level of scandal and personal baggage is toxic. Even Hillary apologists in the media were unable to ignore the powerful image of the father of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen sitting three rows behind her at a Florida rally in recent days.
Regardless of the ‘nothing to see here’ spin they are running, a picture speaks a thousand words to potential voters. The Clinton camp denies inviting him. But it just doesn’t add up in any way, shape, or form.
Everyone realises that every last detail of these televised rallies are taken care of. You just don’t get to sit in frame three rows behind Hillary if you’re a pleb. Everything about them is as perfectly orchestrated and symmetrical as a Kubrick film.
Conspiracists might suggest that he was planted there by a reptilian elite just to let us subtly know that they were behind Orlando and probably run everything else that matters as well. I don’t really buy into that, but potentially millions will. And conspiratorial people are more likely to turn out and vote against Hillary than her more casual supporters.
But it’s hard to dispute the deliberate placement of Mateen’s father. Perhaps Clinton staffers planned to use a horribly-vetted prominent Muslim to make a powerful speech, aka the horribly-vetted Khizr Khan, before getting cold feet at the eleventh hour. Maybe they were looking for a powerful anti-gun speech in much the same way as they might enlist the relatives of Adam Lanza or the parents of the Columbine killers, until they realised that they might not get the desired effect of a parent denouncing their child.
Seddique Mateen not only holds similar views on the right of gays to live and breathe as his son did, but he also seems to mourn his son in a similar resigned manner to a family who have lost their son at war, but find comfort in the fact that he died serving his country.
When Mateen Sr. was interviewed in the days after the Pulse massacre, I assumed that his easygoing demeanour was a manifestation of the shock that one would naturally feel if their child became a spree killer. People behave oddly when affected by shock and grief.
But nothing has changed. Still the same old jovial man, only too happy to chat to the press. The parents of the Columbine Killers took over a decade to come to terms with what their children had done and address the press. They did so with tears and obvious pain.
Seddique seems to regard the whole situation with about the same level of empathy as someone whose son just got caught setting off bungers in a park. A cheeky kid to be reprimanded while secretly admiring the rebelliousness of his youth.
I think that the Clinton people only had a good talk to Seddique when he arrived, and quickly ascertained that they weren’t going to get any tears or anything that looked like empathy out of him over what his son had done. You can see how little he is affected when Clinton speaks of it. Even she is able to feign more emotion, and that takes some doing.
Had Mateen Sr. taken the podium and gone even just a little off script in this way, we would have seen a potentially election-deciding event. Perhaps the Clinton camp only narrowly avoided disaster in an eleventh-hour moment of clarity.
If you’ll pardon the pun, the Clinton campaign dodged a massive bullet by pulling Mateen Sr. from the evening programme and then denying all prior knowledge. But anyone with half a brain who saw this footage should be able to connect the dots between the Clinton campaign and their registered member Seddique Mateen.
