This past Columbus Day weekend has been the worst in Donald Trump’s whole campaign. After the release of the tapes where Trump is heard talking about sexually assaulting a woman, which he attempted to pass off as locker room talk, he was hit by a plethora of criticism including from his own party. Republicans like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and even his running mate Mike Pence called out Trump for his comments while many more including Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and John McCain unendorsed and or vowed to not vote for Trump. Even with this calamity, it wasn’t the backlash from his fellow republicans, or the tape, or even his attempt to downplay the sexual assault he took part in that proves his campaign is as good as dead. What proves his campaign is dead is when he brought up Bill Clinton’s past into the fiasco.

For those of you who don’t know, Bill Clinton has been accused of either sexually assaulting or raping multiple women. As of this time, all of Bill Clinton’s past sexual misconducts are alleged and highly disputed, with the exception of consensual relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers.

The reason that this attempted deflection to Bill Clinton’s past signifies the death of Trump’s campaign is that it was his last resort, and he failed. His campaign was in a downward spiral from which it would be hard to escape, so he had to deflect by bringing up similar accusations that could be applied to the Clinton’s, and topped it all off with a media event in which Trump was joined by three of Clinton’s accusers.

Many have been quick to call out the media event as a stunt in which Trump exploited these women’s stories in an attempt to lessen the backlash against him. In his mission to make himself look the better of the two, he made himself look much worse. In the aftermath of Columbus Day weekend and the most recent presidential debate, a poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows Clinton with a double digit lead over Trump.

Even if the media event succeeded, odds are that Hillary Clinton would have been able to deal with it. Clinton has dealt with a number of scandals in her time as a politician, and she has been dealing with the sexual scandals of her husband since at least 1998 with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Every time, she’s been able to handle them in a way that does not affect her political career too severely, and this would probably be no different. As TV host Bill Maher once said, “Hillary eats scandals for breakfast.”

Trump’s goal was to get a reaction out of people by bringing Bill Clinton into the equation, and it failed. Their reaction was not to condemn the Clinton’s and pledge support to Trump’s campaign. Their reaction was to point out Trump’s hypocrisy by pointing out that while Bill potentially has a history of sexual assault and rape, Trump is on tape confirming he has indeed sexually assaulted women.

The irony of it all is that after nearly sixteen months of Trump saying and doing things that would have killed anyone else’s presidential campaign in a second, his attempt to save his sinking ship is what will finally do the trick.

Owen Johnson is a staff writer for The Connector.