Trump "Reviewed" Hillary Clinton's New Book & She Was Not Here For It

You may have thought that the 2016 election ended on Nov. 8, 2016, or even that the year 2016 ended on Dec. 31. But that would be wrong. The 2016 election distorted all time and it will never be over. There are still people staunchly insisting that Bernie Would Have Won, and Fox News is still questioning why Hillary Clinton hasn't been sent to the gulag. Hillary Clinton just published a book, and, of course, this is a great opportunity for Clinton and Donald Trump to tweet insults at each other.

Clinton's book goes out of its way to denigrate the president, calling him a "creep" for his behavior in the presidential debates, and saying that his presidency "could cause lasting damage." Of course, this president would never take that kind of criticism lying down, especially from someone he spent months saying should be in prison, and he responded by firing back on the day that her book came out, using Twitter to say of her, "Crooked Hillary Clinton blames everybody (and every thing) but herself for her election loss. She lost the debates and lost her direction!" Honestly, it's hard not to feel a hint of nostalgia, recalling the days when he'd insult the former secretary of state on Twitter almost daily.

And, in true 2016 election fashion, because apparently nothing has changed, Hillary Clinton responded with her own tweet, plugging another one of her books.

Clinton's tweet referenced her 1996 book It Takes A Village, which she published while she was first lady. The book discussed her experience raising children, and her view that society and politics must chip in to help raise a child well, with input coming not just from parents but from the whole community. It's something she has focused on for much of her career, including her work for the Children's Defense Fund in the 1970s, her work to pass the Children's Health Insurance Program in the 1990s, and her proposal for an expanded Child Tax Credit as a presidential candidate.

Oddly enough, considering that Clinton is seemingly telling Trump he doesn't know how to raise children, she actually praised the then-candidate on his kids at a presidential debate in October 2016, saying, "I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald." But then again, she's more focused on how much of a solitary figure Trump has often been as president, feuding with his own party, business leaders, so the title worked as a pretty good dig.

This wasn't the only tweet the president used to attack his former rival, because apparently beating her in an election wasn't enough to prove his dominance and he needs to fire off 140 character insults. Seriously, more than 120 million people already weighed in — you'd think retweets wouldn't matter any more. But anyway:

One of the things I've found kind of cool about Hillary Clinton's recent book tour has been the candor she's brought to the discussion — she's been seemingly unafraid to burn bridges with her former allies in the Democratic Party, bash her former opponents Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and lay into the media over how she thinks they got the election wrong. For a woman who has been in the public eye for literally my entire adult life, she has often seemed guarded in interviews and writings, perhaps worried about how her remarks might be misinterpreted. She has spent the past three decades accompanied by political advisers, who have helped her try to fashion a more conciliatory image than the prickliness that sometimes annoyed voters. There has been something amazing about Clinton speaking in a way that is, as far as anyone can tell, the way she really thinks.

That is why I can't help but be snarky about Hillary Clinton tweeting responses to Donald Trump like this, just the same as she might have if she had a team of staffers drafting a tweet for maximum impact. I had hoped we'd moved on from the endless awfulness of the 2016 election, but here we are, nearly a year later, and the same thing is happening all over again.