PIERS MORGAN: If Trump is a raging King Don then Clinton is that scary, cold-blooded monster, Hill-Zilla. And right now my money's on the hairy beast

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[h=1]PIERS MORGAN: If Trump is a raging King Don then Clinton is that scary, cold-blooded monster, Hill-Zilla. And right now my money's on the hairy beast[/h]


By PIERS MORGAN FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 17:35, 20 April 2016 | UPDATED: 19:06, 20 April 2016




There’s a new movie currently in the works at Warner Brothers which will pitch two legendary monsters against each other: King Kong and Godzilla.
King Kong, of course, was a gigantic, snorting, chest-beating gorilla which never felt a single shred of empathy for anyone in its life and was viewed, depending on who you ask, as either a rampaging monster or an anti-hero.
Godzilla was a pre-historic, roaring, very strategic, fire-breathing lizard-like cross between a gorilla and a whale which saw itself as a driving force to restore balance to nature wherever that balance is disrupted – saving the world from other monsters in the process.
A perfect analogy, you may think, for the current state of the U.S. presidential race.
It now seems almost certain, after their thumping wins in the New York primary, that Donald Trump will battle Hillary Clinton to be leader of the free world.



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New York royalty: Donald Trump, who carried out a fierce campaign in his home state, obliterated his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich on Tuesday, securing 60 per cent of the vote





The former was depicted on the front page of today’s New York Post as King Kong. The latter has for years been dubbed ‘Hillzilla’ by her enemies.
Now, these two hugely contentious New York beasts are likely to be pitted against each other to scrap it out for the greatest prize of them all.
It’s hard to imagine a more deliciously exciting clash.
Nor one that is harder to call, given the revitalised natures of both candidates and their campaigns.


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Hillzilla’s had to fight off an email scandal which has constantly threatened to derail if not her jail her, a pumped-up Bernie Sanders, and constant conjecture about her ailing health. But she looks more focused and energised now than I’ve seen her for months.
King Don, whose success so far has been built mainly on bombastic inflammatory rhetoric, seems to have finally learned the steely self-discipline necessary to move from candidate to nominee to president.
His New York campaigning was far more measured, calm and strategic than we’ve seen from him before. As I’ve always thought, he’s considerably more politically moderate than his mouth sometimes suggests.
Two controversial, much maligned people, then, who are peaking just when it really matters.
Everyone seems to assume that in a straight fight, Hillzilla would comfortably vanquish King Don.
She, after all, has all the political experience, the ground game, and the adored ex president husband.
He, by contrast, has little experience in the political arena and is thus prone to dropping endless clangers – witness his incredibly awkward ‘7/11’ gaffe the other day.
But runaway favourites in presidential races have an unnerving habit of crashing and burning. Just ask Thomas E Dewey, Michael Dukakis or John Kerry. Or even Hillzilla herself, who was already measuring up her old White House curtains when a young upstart named Barack Obama crashed the party.
And I think America could be in for another massive shock come November.


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All hail the king: The New York Post's front cover depicted Trump as the gigantic, snorting, chest-beating gorilla seen either as a rampaging monster or an anti-hero, depending on who you ask


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The day King Don entered this race back in June last summer, he was widely mocked by almost everyone in Washington and the U.S. media.
He was branded a pathetic joke who wouldn’t last until Christmas as a candidate, and that’s if he was lucky.
I took a different view – based on a decade of knowing him on a personal and professional level - and wrote a DailyMail.com column at the time warning it would be very dangerous to underestimate him.
Today, the very same mocking cynics in Washington and the U.S. media have emerged from the wreckage of their collective predictive humiliation to state with equal confidence that King Don hasn’t got a hope in hell of beating Hillary in a general election.
Hmmm.
Once again, I urge extreme caution in this gleeful stomping on his supposed impending political grave.


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Family affair: Hillary Clinton was joined on stage by her daughter Chelsea, husband Bill and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky after beating Bernie Sanders in New York; she is almost certain to be the Democratic nominee

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Hill-Zilla Resurgence! Now, these two hugely contentious New York beasts are likely to be pitted against each other to scrap it out for the greatest prize of them all

King Don’s proven himself to be a brilliant anti-politician, someone who to date has resolutely refused to play by any of the normal rules of engagement in such races.
He’s said and done things which would have killed any other campaign stone dead. But he’s got away with them because of the way he’s said and done them.
Trump, for better or worse, is his own man and many millions of Americans like that.
Whether it’s short-term Muslim bans, Mexican walls or John McCain’s prisoner-of-war record, he says what he thinks, even if others find it offensive, and he hardly ever backs down or apologises.
He’s also very astutely tapped into the genuine fears and concerns of the average American: immigration, terrorism, Wall Street abusing its power at the expense of the little guy.
It’s not been pretty, and occasionally he’s gone way over the top. But it’s been undeniably effective.
His inspired slogan ‘Making America Great Again’ has resonated powerfully from New York to Texas.
At his heart, and this is key to understanding him, King Don’s a businessman who’s trying to close two deals – one for the Republican nomination, the other for the presidency.
They’re the two biggest deals he’ll ever do in his life, but they’re still just deals.
And if there’s one thing King Don is good at, it’s closing a deal.
His book ‘Art of the Deal’ is one of the biggest selling business tomes in American publishing history.
Hillzilla, by contrast, has proven herself to be very bad at closing deals.
As King Don will doubtless spend the next few months reminding her, she lost a nominee battle to Obama – someone who he will categorise as the worst president in history. He’ll also remind us all that her tenure as Secretary of State was irrevocably tarnished by the Benghazi scandal. And that she remains shamelessly in the pocket of bankers like Goldman Sachs.


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In King Don’s eyes, therefore, Hillzilla’s a ‘loser’ and he’s a ‘winner’.
That could be as difficult a negative tag to dismiss as his crushing taunts that Jeb Bush was as dull as ditchwater and Marco Rubio was too small.
The showdown between King Don and Hillzilla will be brutal, bloody, vicious and utterly compelling.
The TV debates alone will smash all ratings records, and I for one can’t wait to watch them.
I’d never rule out a Clinton’s ability to find a way to beat an opponent. But Hillzilla’s no Bill.



And come inauguration day, I’ve got a sneaking feeling it will be King Don whose burly arms are wrapped around the White House.


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