Free Republic

Donald Trump was right. Germs are scary. For three decades, I talked to Trump about his fear of germs. When I interviewed him at the Trump Tower restaurant during the 2016 race, the famous germophobe had a big hospital-strength bottle of hand sanitizer on the table, next to my salad, ready to squirt. He told me about the nightmarish feeling he had when a man emerged from the bathroom in a restaurant with wet hands and shook his hand. He couldn’t eat afterward. Today, in a stunning twist of fate, germs are infecting his presidency and threatening a bad prognosis...

The year of the woman and the midterm gains that followed electrified Democrats, who have eagerly promoted themselves as the party of diversity. That success has inspired some of the most powerful women in politics to consider running for president. And it has boosted expectations that the political calculus for women has changed in the last two years, and that gender could become an asset, even in a presidential contest. Mrs. Clinton, after all, won the popular vote by almost three million. Yet at a time of ascendancy for women in the party, there’s a lingering doubt in some quarters...