In May 2015, Clinton campaign vice chairwoman Huma Abedin asked Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign advisers whether Hillary could “survive not answering questions from press” at major policy-unveiling events during the first leg of the campaign, according to emails contained in the latest WikiLeaks batch:
“Can we survive not answering questions from press at message events[?] Her dinkins speech and immigration message broke through because we didn’t take questions. Her community banks message got lost because she answered questions about the foundation and emails.”
Abedin also proposed a strategy for how Clinton could deal with the press after her policy proposals had been announced:
“In the fall, starting to do avails at message events, interviews, and q and a with press but having had a series of policy proposals already announced and reported on that she could point to.”
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta disagreed with Abedin’s suggestion:
“If she thinks we can get to Labor Day without taking press questions, I think that’s suicidal. We have to find some mechanism to let the stream out of the pressure cooker.”
Abedin responded that she wasn’t suggesting that Clinton avoid the press entirely, but that maybe she could take questions while she’s “out getting ice cream or doing house parties.”
The idea of avoiding the press seemed to take hold as more questions about Clinton’s private email server, the Clinton Foundation and Benghazi arose, leading to a 278 day stretch in which she didn’t hold a press conference.
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On Tuesday, a panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe blasted the media for its overt anti-Trump bias on Twitter, with co-host Joe Scarborough calling their “end zone dancing” irresponsible.
Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei said that while he has always been a defender of the media and thought that accusations of media bias were overdone, that’s out the door in this campaign.
“I think reporters have become so biased, so partisan, particularly on Twitter,” VandeHei said. “Go look at the Twitter feeds of the reporters from your major newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, others and tell me if those are things that they would say on TV or that would ever have been acceptable in previous campaigns.”
Scarborough turned to Willie Geist and said that when he readsThe New York Times he doesn’t want to have opinions in the lede or see reporters doing an “end zone dance.”
Geist replied that at some point during the presidential race, a decision was made by many members of the media that Trump had to be stopped no matter what.
VandeHei chimed back in saying that the reporters aren’t saying things in their tweets that we didn’t already know, and that “They are not helping it by doing not just an end-zone dance but their little shimmy, and they all slap each other on the back [saying], ‘Ha ha, you’re even wittier than I was.’”
Mike Barnicle—a card carrying member of the liberal media—said that he was surprised that in age where maybe 99% of the people in this country think the media tilts left and is biased, that more editors, and publishers, don’t tell reporters to stay off Twitter because “all you do on Twitter is get yourself in trouble and raise these questions.”
Geist added that he thought the media should be “tough as hell” on both Clinton and Trump, but be fair about it.
“I think objectivity is a totally false premise–people are humans; they come with their biases but your job is to just cover the race fairly,” Geist said. “I don’t want to hear what you think about it on Twitter, if you’re a reporter. [if you’re in the] Opinion business, go for it.”
Scarborough said that when reporters “overshoot the runway,” they feed into Trump and his supporters, who believe that the media are biased and are never going to give him a fair shake.
As shocking as it is to hear liberals criticize the liberal media for going overboard on their anti-Trump bias on Twitter, it won’t have any material effect as most members of the media know that in the current environment there are few, if any, repercussions for their behavior.
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MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinksi—who has declared that she will be voting for Hillary Clinton despite her concerns over the email scandal—said Tuesday that Hillary was “amazing” during the debate Monday night. She added that Donald Trump will still probably “do quite well” because he has struck a nerve with people who are sick and tired of the current system.
Fellow co-host Joe Scarborough asked Brzezinski if Trump’s interruptions of Clinton help him:
Brzezinski: Yes. I think it’s a different ballgame (from previous elections). I don’t really know where I’m getting this, just my overall gut feeling from watching the entire debate. She was amazing, she was really good. I just think that he’s going to do quite well out of this.
Scarborough: You don’t know where you get it from? You get it from like the 87 Republican debates.
Brzezinksi: I watched him, I listened. I know what is appealing about him to the American people that follow him. Not just his movement but others who are perhaps sick of what has happened the past few decades. He got in some things in there that make you go, ‘yeah, exactly.’
Clinton generally held her own during the debate—thanks in part to help from moderator Lester Holt—but Brzezinski is right to be a little worried by Trump as he has touched a nerve among disaffected Americans that could lead to a very unpleasant result for Democrats on November 8.
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Al Jazeera America, which was shut down in April after losing millions of dollars and failing to find an audience in the U.S., is back, but this time as a digital news channel.
The news channel—called Al Jazeera English—is offering a free live stream through its website and other platforms.
Besides the website, the channel can be accessed by IOS and Android mobile apps; Amazon Fire TV; Android TV; Apple TV; and Roku, as well as podcasts on iTunes.
“In a world seemingly beset by rising bigotry and extremism, Al Jazeera English provides a wider scope of information, insight and understanding. We are delighted to bring this independent and thought-provoking content to the U.S. market,” Giles Trendle, acting Managing Director of Al Jazeera English, said in a statement this week.
That’s pretty rich coming from a channel owned by the Qatari government, which is known for its Muslim Brotherhood ties and general disdain for the U.S. and Israel.
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During a discussion of the presidential race in Florida, MSNBC reporter Hallie Jackson allowed former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) to lie about Al Gore winning the state in the 2000 presidential election.
Jackson pointed out that Clinton has struggled to win over working-class voters despite the efforts of Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic Party, an assertion that Wasserman Schultz disputed:
Wasserman Schultz: In the average of polls, Hillary Clinton is ahead here in Florida. The reason that Florida will be blue, just like it was in 2012 and in 2008, and in every election since—
Jackson: Not in 2000 or 2004.
Wasserman Schultz: In 2000, it absolutely was blue.
Jackson: Of course, 2004, 2004.
Wasserman Schultz: The Supreme Court elected the president. Al Gore won the state of Florida in 2000, although not the presidency.
Wasserman Schultz and her fellow Democrats still can’t get over the fact that Gore lost the election, and they believe that the only reason Bush won in 2000 was because of a conservative Supreme Court. Yet she ignores the fact that Gore requested a limited recount and that a media consortium that analyzed the votes concluded that Bush would have won in all cases except where over-votes were counted.
Jackson should have stuck to her guns rather than give in to Wasserman Schultz’s lie to support her narrative that Florida has been and will be a blue state this year when it comes to presidential elections.
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A new poll by Gallup released on Wednesday shows that the American public’s trust and confidence in the media has fallen to the lowest point in the poll’s 44-year history.
Thirty-two percent of respondents in the Gallup poll said they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the mass media, a drop of eight percentage points from 2015.
Trust in the media has been steadily dropping over the last decade, and last reached 50% in 2005.
Trust in the media among Democrats slipped slightly from 55% to 51%, and among Libertarians 33% to 30%. But it plummeted among Republicans from 32% to 14%, and is “easily the lowest confidence” they have had in 20 years according to Gallup.
That drop can probably be attributed to the media’s coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, which has been typically anti-Republican.
Older Americans are more trusting of the media than younger Americans, but the level of trust has declined among both age groups. In the 18 to 49 age group, 26% (down from 36%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, and in the 50-plus age group 38% (down from 45%) feel the same. It’s the first time in 15 years that confidence in the media among older Americans has dropped below 40%.
Gallup attributes the drop in trust and confidence in the media to “the divisive presidential election” in which both Clinton and Trump have criticized the media for being biased, though there has been steady erosion in confidence taking place for more than a decade:
“Before 2004, it was common for a majority of Americans to profess at least some trust in the mass media, but since then, less than half of Americans feel that way. Now, only about a third of the U.S. has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public.”
That was before the explosion of blogs, alternative websites and social media, which have exposed the mainstream media’s liberal agenda and made the public more aware of their bias.
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Acknowledging that there is no requirement to submit health records when running for the presidency, The New York Times is calling for full disclosure of both Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s health records:
“What brings the health issue to mind, of course, is the video of a stumbling Mrs. Clinton being hustled away from the 9/11 memorial service in New York on Sunday. She reappeared some two hours later to say she felt great. Hours later, her doctor issued a statement saying Mrs. Clinton had been suffering from pneumonia — a diagnosis Mrs. Clinton had received two days earlier and which came as a surprise even to some members of her campaign team.
Mrs. Clinton had coughed her way through multiple appearances last week, insisting it was nothing more than ‘allergies,’ while her campaign pushed back on reporters who noted her coughing, telling one to ‘get a life.’
Mrs. Clinton has released more information about her health than Mr. Trump has about his. Mr. Trump’s evaluation consists largely of a terse and bizarre report written by Dr. Harold Bornstein, his gastroenterologist, who, after a brief examination, said that if electedMr. Trump, a self-professed fast-food addict, ‘will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.’ Mrs. Clinton’s record, consisting mainly of a letter written by her personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, on July 28, 2015, is more than a year old and, while acknowledging her problem with blood clots, could use some updating.”
Clinton’s latest health episode has been criticized by Democrats who are concerned that her her desire for privacy only reinforces the narrative that she is hiding something, and thereby making matters worse by not being as transparent as she claims to be.
Being the president is a demanding job, both mentally and physically. Given the ages of the candidates—Clinton (68) and Trump (70)—it is only fair that they both release their medical records to prove that they are indeed fit to serve.
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Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald—who is no fan of Donald Trump—came down hard on liberal pundits who he believes are trying to delegitimize negative coverage of Hillary Clinton, in a lengthy piece for The Intercept.
What got Greenwald riled up was a recent column by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who criticized the media for their coverage of Hillary Clinton and said that neither Clinton nor her husband Bill did anything improper.
Krugman said that Trump was being graded on a curve while the coverage of the Clinton Foundation was bizarre:
“Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate ‘her possible ethics challenges if elected president.’ Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.
But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.”
What Krugman didn’t say was that 85 of the 154 visitors from the portion of the records released by the State Department were Clinton Foundation donors who gave at least $156 million to the foundation, raising the specter of pay-for-play during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
Greenwald criticized Krugman and other liberal pundits for their blind loyalty to Clinton, and for being so dismissive of any negative coverage of the Democratic nominee:
“[A]ggressive investigative journalism against Trump is not enough for Democratic partisans whose voice is dominant in U.S. media discourse. They also want a cessation of any news coverage that reflects negatively on Hillary Clinton. Most, of course, won’t say this explicitly (though some do), but — as the wildly adored Krugman column from yesterday reflects — they will just reflexively dismiss any such coverage as illegitimate and invalid.
The absolute last metric journalists should use for determining what to cover is the reaction of pundits who, like Krugman and plenty of others, are singularly devoted to the election of one of the candidates. Of course Hillary Clinton’s die-hard loyalists in the media will dislike, and find invalid, any suggestion that she engaged in any sort of questionable conduct. Their self-assigned role is to defend her from all criticisms. They view themselves more as campaign operatives than journalists: Their principal, overriding goal is to ensure that Clinton wins the election. They will obviously hate anything — particularly negative reporting about her — that conflicts with that goal. They will jettison even their core stated beliefs — such as the view that big-money donations corrupt politicians — in order to fulfill that goal.
But it would be journalistic malpractice of the highest order if the billions of dollars received by the Clintons — both personally and though their various entities — were not rigorously scrutinized and exposed in detail by reporters. That’s exactly what they ought to be doing. The fact that quid pro quoscannot be definitively proven does not remotely negate the urgency of this journalism….Beyond quid quo pros, the Clintons’ constant, pioneering merger of massive private wealth and political power and influence is itself highly problematic. Nobody forced them to take millions of dollars from the Saudis and Goldman Sachs tycoons and corporations with vested interests in the State Department; having chosen to do so with great personal benefit, they are now confronting the consequences in how the public views such behavior.”
This article was published before the media went ballistic over fellow liberal Matt Lauer’s grilling of Clinton about her emails on Wednesday night, which only bolsters Greenwald’s argument on just how far they are willing to go to delegitimize anything that portrays Hillary in a negative light.
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The New York Times editorial board called on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to cut ties with the Clinton Foundation in light of the recently released emails that show that the foundation sought favors for its donors from the State Department while Clinton served as secretary of state:
“When Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state, the Obama administration tried to draw a line between the foundation, particularly its foreign-government sponsors, and her role. The new emails underscore that this effort was at best partly successful. ‘Pay-to-play’ charges by Donald Trump have not been proved. But the emails and previous reporting suggest Mr. Trump has reason to say that while Mrs. Clinton was secretary, it was hard to tell where the foundation ended and the State Department began.
Mrs. Clinton became involved in State Department deals and negotiations that also involved foundation donors or board members. She prompted multiple investigations with an arrangement that allowed Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff at the State Department and now vice chairwoman of her campaign, to be paid simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm run by Doug Band, the former adviser to Mr. Clinton who helped create the foundation — and who sent emails to Ms. Abedin seeking favors for foundation donors.
The newly disclosed emails show that some foundation donors and friends, like Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin al-Khalifa of Bahrain, used foundation channels to seek access to Mrs. Clinton.”
The Times said that even though the foundation has promised to stop accepting foreign donations if Clinton becomes president, it would be better if both she and Bill cut their ties to the foundation immediately:
“Mrs. Clinton has said she intends to give Mr. Clinton a role in her administration. Cutting his foundation ties would demonstrate that he is giving any role he would have in the administration the priority it deserves. It would also send a signal that Mrs. Clinton and her family have heard the concerns of critics and supporters and will end any further possibility for the foundation to become a conduit to the White House for powerful influence seekers.
The Clinton Foundation has become a symbol of the Clintons’ laudable ambitions, but also of their tangled alliances and operational opacity. If Mrs. Clinton wins, it could prove a target for her political adversaries. Achieving true distance from the foundation is not only necessary to ensure its effectiveness, it is an ethical imperative for Mrs. Clinton.”
That is easier said than done for the Clintons, who have used the foundation to boost their image, wealth and power over the years, and are loath to cede complete control despite the ethical issue
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MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki’s Most Important Number of the Day on Monday was 268. That’s the number of days since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has held a press conference.
Clinton’s last press conference was on December 4, 2015 in Ft. Dodge, IA.
Kornacki said that there isn’t a requirement to hold a press conference, but there is a tradition of doing so:
“There’s no law that says a presidential candidate has to hold a press conference if they don’t want to. They don’t have to if they can get away with it. Maybe that’s the political calculation. But there is a tradition there of candidates coming forward, taking questions from anyone in the press who wants to ask them, being hit with whatever question happens to come to them, and having to deal with it on the spot.
That is the tradition of the press conference. It’s one that Hillary Clinton has not had much enthusiasm for though.”
Kornacki pointed out that by comparison, Donald Trump has held 17 news conferences this year to Clinton’s zero.
The Clinton campaign has said that she has held well over 300 interviews with the press, as evidence that she isn’t avoiding the media, but Kornacki said that of the 350 interviews that NPR has calculated that Clinton has held in 2016, 65 were with non-journalists, and most were just 3 to 8 minutes long.
The liberal media may vote for Clinton in November, but they are frustrated that she hasn’t held a press conference since last year. It only adds to the feeling that she isn’t very honest or trustworthy.
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First, the security guard at the gas station did point a gun at the U.S. swimmers (including Ryan Lochte) to extort money, and then, second, the police have been focusing so much on this and not dealing with their own domestic issues such as violence in Brazil. As Nancy Armour of USA Today said, all of the developments and reporting have amounted to the “character assassination” of Lochte.
What a waste of money, time and resources by the Brazilian police.
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Univision and Fusion anchor Jorge Ramos is apparently still smarting from being escorted out of a Trump press event last year. He called on journalists to ignore ethical standards and take a stand against the GOP presidential nominee in a column for Time on Tuesday:
“Trump has forced journalists to revisit rules of objectivity and fairness. Just providing both points of view is not enough in the current presidential campaign. If a candidate is making racist and sexist remarks, we cannot hide in the principle of neutrality. That’s a false equivalence.
Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite were right; sometimes you have to take a stand. They did it against the dangerous persecutions of Senator Joe McCarthy and in denouncing the pernicious official spin during the worst years of the Vietnam War.”
Objectivity, fairness, neutrality? The media were in the tank for Obama in 2008 and 2012, and while there is evidence that they are less than thrilled with Clinton’s candidacy, they are firmly in her camp this year.
Ramos sums up his anti-Trump case thusly:
“Judgment day is coming. Will you have peace of mind come November 9th?”
And by the way, Ramos’ daughter Paolo has a “working position” within the Clinton campaign, so we know how objective he is.
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Former Democratic presidential candidate and Hillary Clinton supporter Howard Dean said on Wednesday that the press is not “legitimate,” and therefore their questions aren’t either.
Dean appeared on MSNBC Live with Chris Jansing to defend Clinton for not having held a press conference since December 5, 2015—a period of 263 days.
Jansing asked Dean what he thought of the Clinton strategy:
Dean: I think she’s doing just the right thing. She has no reason to trust the press corps, and the so-called email scandal is one of the reasons. Look what AP did today. They completely screwed up their story. They had 100 appointments, or 85 or whatever it was that she made, out of 1,800 appointments and tried to make a big deal out of it. That is what the press is going to do. Having a press conference, in my view, is not the solution to this. You just get more of the same.
Jansing: Answering legitimate questions from legitimate press is more of the same?
Dean: The trouble is the questions aren’t legitimate, and the press isn’t legitimate.
Look at what AP did today. It was a disaster. They were called out by Vox, which is another [left-wing] press organ. So, I mean, that’s the problem. The press is gotten to be where it’s all about the lowest common denominator. Donald Trump wouldn’t be the nominee of the Republican Party if the press corps actually did their job. But they focus on sensationalism, they don’t treat people in an even-handed way, and that is why, in my view, Hillary Clinton should not do press conferences. Perfectly fine to talk to reporters, and she has talked to reporters a lot and she will some more. But the press conference becomes a feeding frenzy, it becomes a one-upmanship and who can get the best story.
The Clinton campaign has fought back heavily against the AP story, saying that their analysis only covered a small portion of her meetings—while conveniently neglecting to mention that the story said that 85 of the 154 people from private interests who met or had private phone conversations scheduled with then-Secretary of State Clinton during her first two years in office had donated $156 million to the Clinton Foundation.
The AP defended its analysis on Wednesday evening:
AP has sought for years a complete set of Clinton’s detailed schedules covering her time in office, which she could have voluntarily released but did not. The AP sued the State Department in federal court to obtain the schedules it has received so far.
In other words, they would gladly review more of Clinton’s meetings if the State Department would supply the requested schedules.
Dean knows that the reason for Clinton not holding a press conference for nearly nine months has nothing to do with the press corps’ legitimacy. It is that Hillary is incapable of answering tough questions in an uncontrolled situation, and it would seriously damage her chances of winning the election if she tried.
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The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza thinks that the lack of a true press conference—it’s been 263 days—and the chance that there may not be one before the election, won’t cost Hillary Clinton the White House. But, he said, it “sets a dangerous precedent for how accountable and transparent she might be as president.”
The subject came up on Morning Joe on Wednesday morning when former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace quizzed Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook about the issue:
Wallace: I used to work on campaigns and — and I would look at this as your candidate’s number one vulnerability, is the fact that, again, someone as flawed as Donald Trump, she has a double-digit deficit on the question of honesty and trustworthiness.
Isn’t the antidote to this to sit her down today in front of your traveling press corps people like Andrea Mitchell, who certainly can appreciate the contributions of people like Melinda Gates and — and others, and let her take questions until there are no more questions to be answered?
Mook: Well, first of all, Hillary’s done over 300 interviews this year alone.
Wallace: I’m not — I didn’t talk about — and I know the difference between a three minute ground-ruled interview and a press conference because I — I’ve put on a couple of each. But why wouldn’t you have her do a press conference today just to — you — you have a perception problem on the question of honesty and trustworthiness, why wouldn’t you put her out there to your traveling press corps who knows all the intricacies of sort of the defense you laid out, which is — which is legitimate? But this is about the perception.
Why wouldn’t you put her out there to answer questions that she could certainly handle if — if your defense is true?
Mook: Well, we are — she is out there answering questions.
Wallace: She’s going to do a press conference today?
Mook: As I said, she — she’s done over 300 interviews this year — and she — she takes questions in a variety of formats and we’re going to — we’re going to keep looking at that.
Cillizza agrees with Wallace that a sit-down interview, with its ground rules and strict time limits, is not the same as a free-wheeling press conference. He says that Clinton doesn’t like them because she isn’t very good at thinking on her feet, referencing her U.N. presser where she fumbled the answers to her private email server.
Another problem, Cillizza said, is that Clinton suffers from a trustworthiness problem and that the lack of press conferences “plays into that distrust—and may even magnify it.”
Even so, Cillizza thinks Clinton will win the election in November. As a result, he says, she “owes it to the public to demonstrate how she thinks on her feet and how she responds to unwanted or tough questions.”
For most candidates press conferences can be a plus, but in Hillary’s case, as Robby Mook is painfully aware, they are a huge liability and something to be avoided at all costs.
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Here’s what a 2008 USA Today column said about George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina:
President Bush has shown that he can be empathetic, sensitive and decisive. But those qualities eluded him for days after Hurricane Katrina, and the lapse could become a defining moment of his White House tenure.
The most stirring image of Bush’s presidency came when he spontaneously grabbed a bullhorn at Ground Zero and vowed retribution against 9/11 terrorists. Tears filled his eyes when he took the oath of office in 2001, and he has wept publicly when talking about U.S. troops slain in battle and his respect for his father. He has hugged countless victims of fires, hurricanes and other tragedies. During his 2000 campaign, he told recovering teen addicts, “I used to drink too much. … I want you to know that your life’s walk is shared by a lot of other people.”
Baton Rouge’s The Advocate newspaper unloaded on Obama with an editorial published Thursday night, drawing a historical comparison to George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
“Sometimes, presidential visits can get in the way of emergency response, doing more harm than good,” the editorial said. “But we don’t see that as a factor now that flood waters are subsiding, even if at an agonizing pace. It’s past time for the president to pay a personal visit, showing his solidarity with suffering Americans.”
The Advocate called the “optics of Obama golfing while Louisiana residents languished in flood waters was striking” and evocative of “the precedent of the passive federal response to the state’s agony in 2005, a chapter of history no one should ever repeat.”
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MSNBC’s Morning Joe panel, liberally tilted as usual, slammed Hillary Clinton Monday for repeatedly trying to justify her use of a private email server by comparing it to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s occasional use of a private email account.
The segment opened with clips of Clinton mentioning Powell’s use of a private email account, and summed it up in one clip as, “Colin Powell and I are exactly on the same page.”
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said that there was no comparison between what Clinton did and what Powell did, and by injecting him into the conversation she is forcing him to answer back—which he did to People magazine—where he accused Clinton of trying to “pin the blame” for her email scandal on him:
“Her people have been trying to pin it on me. The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”
After some further discussion, Scarborough ran down a list of the differences between how Powell used email, as compared to Clinton, during their tenures as secretary of state:
He never used a private server
At the time he became secretary in 2001, the State Department didn’t have a comparable unclassified system
He used personal emails only for unclassified information
He used an office desktop for all classified communications
Even liberal columnist Mike Barnicle agreed with Scarborough’s assessment of the differences:
“The biggest distinction, the only distinction, the most important distinction is that … Powell never had his own personal server,” he said. “That is the biggest difference. I mean if you had sent Colin Powell an email on his personal email account when he was secretary of state, you’d get a personal email back, having nothing to do with classification, nothing. But, there was no personal email server.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski, who plans to vote for Clinton despite her concerns about the email scandal, said that Powell took great care in his handling of his emails compared to Clinton.
Maybe Clinton thought that since Powell voted for Obama twice, he wouldn’t mind being her email scandal scapegoat, but she guessed wrong. Powell showed that he doesn’t want his reputation sullied by a secretary of state who willfully subverted the system for her own personal gain.
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Episode 21. On this broadcast I am joined by special guest host Jerry Cave as we discuss the latest Trump campaign shakeup and will it make a difference, the media’s pro-Hillary stance, the Baton Rouge flooding and absence of Obama, Aetna deals Obamacare a blow by pulling out of most exchanges and more!
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Even CNN reported on the gaffe by New Hampshire Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan, who is running to beat incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, because she struggled to answer the simple question of whether Hillary Clinton can be trusted:
Earlier this week, Hassan spoke to CNN’s Manu Raju,who asked Hassan whether she considered Clinton honest and trustworthy — an issue that has plagued the Democratic presidential nominee. Hassan declined to answer the question three times, dodging and instead praising Clinton’s other qualities.
Speaking to WMUR in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Hassan was more direct in her response when asked if she thought Clinton was trustworthy. “Yes, as do military and national security experts from both political parties,” Hassan answered.
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Our NEWEST Special Investigative Report exposes the increasingly radical and totalitarian demands of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender lobby (known by the liberal media as LGBT or LGBTQ) and their push to indoctrinate extreme “gender identities” on America’s youth. Some of the noteworthy findings in the report (which you can read below the bullet points) are as follows:
The “10 percent” myth that claimed for decades that an absurd “10 percent” of the population is homosexual — and how due to media propaganda the average American today believes the homosexual population is far more than 10 percent;
The myth that people are “born gay” and the reality that the media ignore: that many men and women have walked away from homosexuality;
How some researchers are returning to the realization that childhood traumas such as same-sex incest help cause homosexual identities;
How transsexual “sex reassignment surgeries” often do not produce happiness. Despite all the hype, many post-operative transsexuals consider suicide;
How LGBT activists are pushing radical “transgender” ideology on children — even to the point of encouraging underage kids to get body-destroying surgeries;
The myth of “gay” equality in the areas of homosexual parenting outcomes, mental illness and massive homosexual health risks;
The shocking health risks associated with transgenderism and children pursuing “gender” change, and the silent suffering of children raised in homosexual and transsexual households.
The Boston Globe has called for the Clinton Foundation to stop accepting donations, and if Hillary Clinton is elected, to shut it down.
While the Globe praised the foundation’s work, it argues that it has been a distraction and a conflict of interest while Clinton has been in public office:
“ALTHOUGH THE CHARITY founded by former President Bill Clinton has done admirable work over the last 15 years, the Clinton Foundation is also clearly a liability for Hillary Clinton as she seeks the presidency. The once-and-maybe-future first family will have plenty to keep them busy next year if Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in November. The foundation should remove a political — and actual — distraction and stop accepting funding. If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down.
Since its founding, the foundation has supported relief in Haiti, global health, and other good causes. It also provided posts or paychecks for some members of the Clinton political team, like Cheryl Mills, Douglas Band, and Huma Abedin, and afforded the former president a platform and travel budget. Many of the foundation’s donations come from overseas, including from foreign governments with troubling human rights records.
The inherent conflict of interest was obvious when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009. She promised to maintain a separation between her official work and the foundation, but recently released emails written by staffers during her State Department tenure make clear that the supposed partition was far from impregnable. That was bad enough at State; if the Clinton Foundation continues to cash checks from foreign governments and other individuals seeking to ingratiate themselves with a President Hillary Clinton, it would be unacceptable.
Winding down the foundation, and transferring its assets to some other established charity, doesn’t have to hurt charitable efforts. If the foundation’s donors are truly motivated by altruism, and not by the lure of access to the Clintons, then surely they can find other ways to support the foundation’s goals. And in four or eight years, the Clinton family could always form a new foundation and reestablish their charitable efforts.
But as long as either of the Clintons is in public office, or actively seeking it, they should not operate a charity, too. The Clintons themselves seem to realize that. ‘There’ll clearly be some changes in what the Clinton Foundation does and how we do it,’ Bill Clinton said in June. ‘We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.’ Why wait? The Clintons should move now to end donations to the foundation, and make plans to shut it down in November. Even if they’ve done nothing illegal, the foundation will always look too much like a conflict of interest for comfort.”
The Globe isn’t the only liberal paper to criticize Clinton for failing to sufficiently separate her official work from that of the foundation’s while she was secretary of state. The Washington Post said that a “porous ethical wall” existed during her tenure, and that such sloppiness would not be acceptable in the White House.
Add to that comments from former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, who told the New York Daily News that if Hillary wins the election, the Clintons will have to disband the foundation. “It’d be impossible to keep the foundation open without at least the appearance of a problem.”
That should seal the deal, but then again we’re talking about the Clintons.
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