But Gennifer Flowers will vote for Hillary

Hillary is bringing former Trump supporter Mark Cuban to sit on the front row in the debate hall tonight. Cuban is now a dedicated anti-Trump "troll," in ABC News' characterization.

Austin Bay says, probably correctly, that bringing him to the debate is a play to the media:

Cuban hasn’t said he intends to disrupt Trump but the touts are meant to suggest he might. Team Hillary has calculated Cuban serves a propaganda purpose even if he behaves and remains silent, Giving Cuban a ticket and having him sit in a seat tv camera’s can’t miss give media commentators ready-made anti-Trump story lines. For example, at one time Cuban supported Trump, now he doesn’t. Talk that one up, Anderson Cooper. Cuban thinks Trump is a weak candidate, etc. Now repeat Cuban’s assessment of Trump 30 times, CBS News. Yup, Team Hillary’s Cuban Gambit — how clever.

So in response, Trump tweeted this:

If you read the follow-up tweet-responses from others you will see that they pretty much made mockery of this idea. (Today the Trump campaign said that Trump's tweet was made to mock Hillary's invitation of Cuban.)

Both vice presidential candidate Mike Pence and Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on separate shows Sunday morning that Trump had not seriously extended an invitation to Flowers.

“Gennifer Flowers will not be attending the debate tomorrow night,” Pence told Fox News Sunday. ...

Flowers, via Twitter and a spokeswoman, responded that she’d be happy to attend.

Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!...💋
— Gennifer Flowers (@gennflowers) September 24, 2016

Which is interesting because Flowers has already told UK reporters that she will vote for Hillary this November. (She has gotten more press attention in Britain than here.)

Flowers is a woman who came forward during Bill Clinton's first campaign in 1992 to claim that she and Bill had a 12-year sexual affair. The controversy therefrom caused Bill and Hillary to appear on CBS' 60 Minutes news show in which Hillary offered her famous "stand by your man" commentary.

Hillary Clinton: You know, I'm not sitting here – some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.

Video here. Throughout this interview, both Clintons denied any hint of an inappropriate relationship of Bill with Flowers. In 1998, though, Bill Clinton stated under oath that he and Flowers did have a sexual affair after all.

Flowers, however, was not and remains no towering figure of virtue and admiration. After her claim of the affair, she "posed nude for Penthouse magazine" and later was a failed TV actress and cabaret singer in New Orleans until Hurricane Katrina ended that gig. In the last few years she has claimed to be a sex-advice columnist.

Flowers in 1992:

Flowers present day:

So while I understand the optics, bringing up Flowers as joke or not, did not strike me as a very smart counter-move to Cuban's appearance.

• First, the media will ignore her, doubly so now that she's been officially uninvited. 
• Second, if they do not ignore her, it will be only to point out that Flowers is already on record as telling interviewers that she will vote for Hillary in November. 
• Third, Flowers remains a devoted Clintonista to this day and has never spoken harshly against either Bill or Hillary.
• Fourth, Cuban is 58 but looks younger and fitter, while Flowers is 66. One could argue she looks great to be 66, I suppose, but most people watching would know who Cuban is and not who Flowers is, nor will they care. Cuban would have a much greater "stage presence" than Flowers, and he is in the prime of his career while Flowers never had a career to begin with. Her only claim to fame is that she was once was well known. Who cares? Not voters. 

So what was the point of Trump's tweet? It can only have been directed against Hillary with the hope of unnerving her significantly. I don't think it did, though, because Hillary is so beyond caring about Bill's infamous and numerous "bimbo eruptions" that dragging one up from 24 years ago is trivial. Altogether, this is not a winning gambit to Trump, IMO.

All this said, however, "Trump could win the debate simply by bluffing," although this headline does not really explain what the writer is saying.