Why Trumps Elephant Trophy Policy Is all About Hillary [View all]

But there is another possible explanation for why the Trump administration would overturn a policy that was designed to protect elephants from possible extinction. Not many people are aware of the fact that as Secretary of State as well as in subsequent years, Hillary Clinton made the preservation of elephants in Africa a major issue.

Clinton’s affinity for elephants is not widely known or reported. But during her tenure as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, she helped bring the issue of global wildlife trafficking out of obscurity.

There was also this announcement in September 2013 at the Clinton Global Initiative:

Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new global effort Thursday to protect Africa’s wild elephants from poaching, part of a long-running personal crusade for the former secretary of state…

“Unless the killing stops, African forest elephants are expected to be extinct within 10 years,” Clinton said. “I can’t even grasp what a great disaster this is ecologically, but also for anyone who shares this planet to lose a magnificent creature like the African forest elephant seems like such a rebuke to our own values.”

For Hillary, this is actually personal.

When asked by Ellen DeGeneres what her spirit animal is, Hillary Clinton had a surprising answer: the elephant.

Although the symbol of the GOP, Clinton spoke on the Ellen DeGeneres Show this May with rare passion about the need to protect real elephants from a poaching crisis that has killed at least 110,000 of them over the past decade, pushing the world’s largest land animals – especially forest elephants – closer to extinction.

“I love the way…the matriarch of the family looks out for everybody, I just have such a sense of connection to elephants and it just breaks my heart that they are being poached and murdered and babies being left to fend for themselves,” Clinton said on a portion of the show that only aired on Facebook.

If we have learned nothing else about Donald Trump, it is that he is primarily motivated by attempts to elevate himself and take revenge against people he considers to be his enemies. Even though she is simply private citizen Hillary Clinton now, he can’t let go. And while he’s at it, this action provides another opportunity for Trump to take a swipe and Barack Obama’s legacy…a twofer.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/11/17/why-trump-reversed-a-policy-that-will-contribute-to-the-extinction-of-elephants/