By: Conner Williams
Editor in Chief 

It is very frustrating when our presidential candidates dance their way around questions during debates.

It is even more frustrating when they use a national tragedy as a way to invoke empathy from viewers in order to avoid a question.

During the second Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders called out Hillary Clinton by asking her to justify her campaign donations from large corporations.

Her response?

“I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country,” said Clinton.

So not only did she avoid the question completely, but she also claimed that her donations from Wall Street corporations were because she had helped them “rebuild” 14 years previously, in addition to claiming she helped rebuke terrorism. Give me a break.

But Clinton isn’t alone. During the most recent Republican debate, Ted Cruz began to speak of “New York values,” which he refers to as “socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, focused around money and the media.” Cruz began to criticize Trump for flip-flopping his beliefs from years before, and in response, Trump pulled out the get out of jail free card: 9/11 empathy bait.

“When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York,” said Trump as Cruz was forced to awkwardly clap alongside the audience.

I, for one, am sick of this emotional pandering. It takes a pretty low person to use a national tragedy to wiggle one’s way out of a logical fallacy in their argument, but, then again, these are our country’s political leaders.