Newly released emails from Wikileaks show that aides became alarmed when President Barack Obama assured the public that he had learned about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.” Cheryl D. Mills, a top aide who featured prominently in the email scandal and insisted on immunity before turning over a laptop with classified information, flagged the issue to say that Obama sent emails to Clinton’s private email. There is also an exchange of campaign officials complaining that close Clinton aides withheld the information of the email scandal because “they wanted to get away with it.” As I discussed in a recent column, these Wikileaks memos have confirmed the worst assumptions of voters about the dishonesty and evasion of their government. It has turned this into America’s Game of Thrones election.
The White House quickly corrected the President’s comments and said that, while he used the private email, he really did not realize it was not a .gov email. I am willing to accept that account for a man who is incredibly busy. However, I remain amazed that security staff did not raise any alarm over the president corresponding with the Secretary of State over a private email system.
The more interesting exchange came between Neera Tanden, another adviser, and campaign manager John Podesta on March 2, 2015. Tanden complained about the impact of the undisclosed problem and blamed Ms. Mills for another “Cheryl special.” The complaint is a familiar one: that close Clinton aides reflect the same self-defeating secrecy and evasion as their candidate, a subject of a prior column. Tanden asked “Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” Podesta responded simply with “Unbelievable.” Tanden then responded “i guess I know the answer. they wanted to get away with it.”
In a direct slam of Clinton’s judgment (a major campaign theme), Podesta says “We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat. Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.” Tanden responds “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Podesta also shows the coordination between the Administration and the campaign in withholding embarrassing emails. Obviously, emails with the president would be treated as presumptively classified. Podesta tells Mills “Think we should hold emails to and from POTUS. We could get them to ask for that.”
Mind identifying this iperfect candidate one hopes you are speaking of Klein and not Comrade Clinton.
Non of us is perfect. least she is better than her opponent who will end up putting our lives at great risks.
Many of us are not voting Republican. We are voting for Trump and against the left wing socialist fascists of which the RINOs are part and parcel.
And for a little payback….
The so-called “comedians” who are pro-Clinton and anti-Trump are total flops at comedy when they attempt to put their false spin on events. The better comedians, and the smart ones, will skewer candidates in a nonpartisan way. The late, great George Carlin is an example.
For example, I recently saw a performance of the Second City Troupe (from Chicago) doing their take on the presidential election. Now, Second City normally has a great and longstanding reputation for producing great future comics, going back to Mike Nichols in the early 1960s. And the Second City groups that I’ve previously seen did not convey political favoritism, even if individual members had their own predilections. As a result, those earlier Second City groups were funny and witty.
But this last incarnation of Second City doing their road show was obviously 100% pro-Clinton and anti-Trump. The result was the audience laughed only sporadically, and even then, the laughs were on non-political subjects. In short, this particular politically biased Second City troupe did close to bombing. And I would rate them as flops. And please understand that I am not against lampooning Trump, even though I favor him over Clinton. But to lampoon Trump on some purported past sexual history, while praising the Clintons, ignoring their history of DOCUMENTED RAPE AND ABUSE, and Hillary’s enablement of those crimes, simply makes their entire presentation unfunny.