With an emphasis on “man.”
Its newest ad is so over the top it seems like a parody. It has a gravel-voiced narrator, insane bed music that belongs in a Tom Clancy video game or The Weakest Link, a barrage of proper nouns (North Korea, Iran, ISIS, Libya, etc.), and clips of Hillary Clinton coughing and collapsing. In case you didn’t get the message, the man narrating the ad makes sure that you ask yourself, “Does Hillary Clinton have the STAMINA and the FORTITUDE to be president???” The ad comes to this inevitably authoritarian and sexist conclusion:
In other words, Donald Trump, is a big strong 70-year-old man and Hillary Clinton is a woman who would probably cough on the nuclear codes, which would embolden our enemies. (Never mind that Trump has never worked out, eats 11 Big Macs a day, and is literally terrified of touching anything for fear of getting sick.) Also, the way Donald Trump’s hair sticks out of his hat is deeply funny.
Is this ad vile? Yes. Is it some new low in the history of American democracy? Eh. But it certainly will end up in the pantheon alongside the Willie Horton ad and Thomas Jefferson paying a journalist who called John Adams a hermaphrodite.