Field guide to defending Hillary Clinton against every fake scandal: email, Benghazi and more
The hard part in getting through to those death deserving tRumroids who are convinced that the lies about Hillary Clinton are facts, is that they have a boatload of phony “facts” and right-wing web sites to draw from, but their main source of information is Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and/or their duped listeners. When you go into detailed evidence against their claims, the response is longer than they’re willing to read or hear. So, its either a shorter version which may not get the point across, or the long version which won’t be read. My recommendation is to answer one attack at a time in as much detail as you can to prove your case. These are short paragraphs along with a few links for support. Speak softly and don’t yell at them for being duped. Your goal should be to disarm them and get them to hear you, which can’t be done if they raise their shield.
Whitewater was the beginning of the Hillary Clinton witch hunt. Hardly anybody understands Whitewater. The claims of honesty and trustworthiness began here. The Clintons lost their investment in the Whitewater Development Company. Their business partner, Jim and Susan McDougal, had a separate investment in another company which also failed. The McDougals retained the law firm that Hillary worked for, Rose Law Firm to handle their legal dealings. The claim is that the McDougals hired Clinton to offset the Clintons’ losses on Whitewater, which they considered to be a conflict of interest. Ken Starr, the pioneer of the Hillary witch hunts hurled accusation after accusation at the Clintons over this. After wasting 8 years and millions of taxpayer dollars and several independent investigations, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated that there was no evidence that the Clintons had engaged in any criminal wrongdoing. It was BS from the start, but dishonest Republicans keep the story alive today.
Wal-Mart: In 1986, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart was under pressure, from his wife and his shareholders, to appoint a woman to his Board of Directors. Based in Arkansas, they hired Hillary Clinton, then 40 year old Hillary Clinton. According to fellow board members and company executives, Hillary used her position to champion more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program. Being the least experienced in business at the time, her voice was silenced on Wal-Mart’s anti-unionism stance, and minimum wage was not considered a huge national crisis at the time. Her years on the Wal-Mart board, from 1986 to 1992, gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business a credential that could serve as an antidote to Republican efforts to portray her as an enemy of free markets and an advocate for big government. To say that Hillary doesn’t understand business is dead wrong. While she had huge success in creating management opportunities for women at Wal Mart, the main attack line is that she “supported low wages”, which is not at all true. Looking at her track record in the Senate and as Secretary of State, she has always pushed for equal pay, and is fighting hard for a 40% increase in minimum wage, and for all improvements to middle class life in America.
Monsanto: Rumors have claimed that Hillary Clinton once sat (or currently sits) on the board of directors of agribusiness giant Monsanto as well, despite the lack of any evidence documenting such a connection. The repetition of those false rumors increased as the primary elections of the 2016 presidential campaign drew nearer. They are rumors. They are lies. Hillary has one of the strongest records on environmental protection of anybody in politics today. In fact, her support of the EPA and environmental regulations is the GOP’s biggest gripe, which flies in the face of the Monsanto rumors.
Vince Foster death: Foster was messed up. He made some bad decisions and killed himself. Before he committed suicide, he wrote several suicide notes and wrapped up personal affairs as best he could. In the 1990’s, over 20,000 people per year committed suicide. In 2014, that number was over 40,000, with an increase in suicides by Veterans. Almost everybody knows someone who killed themselves for one reason or another. Ken Starr, the GOP’s official witch hunter along with right wing extremist Jerry Falwell, fueled the rumors that the Clintons were involved in a murder conspiracy. The allegations were as ridiculous then as they are now, but even after the FBI and independent investigations cleared the Clintons, books and articles continue to be written by Republicans accusing the Clintons of wrongdoing. The GOP is hell bent on assassinating the character of a future President, and continue to twist whatever they can to put doubt in the public mind. Another couple million dollars of taxpayer money wasted by Republicans.
Wall Street and bank donations: It is important to note that most middle class working Americans rely on Wal Street through their 401k and IRA’s, etc to fund their retirement. Wall Street is, in a large part, responsible for the economic growth in the United States in the 20th century, and continues to provide financial security for many millions of Americans. As a result of Republican thirst for dark money in order to win elections, line their pockets and the pockets of the oil industry and weapons manufacturers, passed Citizens United. Thanks to Citizens United, it will take over one billion dollars to win the White House in 2016. Any candidate who actually wishes to overturn Citizens United must obtain the money to win first. This is a horrible rule that allows large corporations to donate huge sums of money to campaigns without transparency, and the influence of the top 1% of earners on politicians has never been bigger.
Citizens United: She has a strong track record of trying to reign in wall street and banking speculation. Here is a link to Hillary Clinton’s entire Senate voting record while serving as US Senator in New York. It is very extensive, 10 pages long in all, but you can search records by issue and read up on just the issues that you want to learn about. You can also show just the bills that Hillary sponsored or co-sponsored during her time in the Senate. What you’ll find is a progressive set of bills written, and a voting record that supports the average American and not skewed toward Wall Street and big banks. What you’ll find throughout her time in the Senate, that she was very active in improving the lives of middle class people, worked hard on income equality, fairness, environmental issues, childrens issues, foreign affairs policy, and a lot of other things. Too much to go over. But, since you’re judging someone to be the leader of the free world, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to read up on some of this. It’s very interesting. She was a hard working Senator, clearly putting the welfare of the people, not the corporations, at the front of the line. If you see a vote that you don’t agree with, do a web search on why she voted the way she did. Many of these bills have misleading titles, with hidden tricks slipped in.
Benghazi: Too many Republicans have now admitted to the Benghazi hearing as being a witch hunt, designed to obstruct Hillary Clinton’s chances to run for President. There were four people who died at the US Embassy that night in Benghazi. Under President George W. Bush, there were a total of 13 attacks on U.S. embassys resulting in over 60 deaths. As far as the first days after the attack, the initial information as things were unfolding, is that a religious caracature caused protests at the Embassy. This was true, but what was initially not known is that members of a terrorist group may have started the protests, and subsequently took advantage of the riot and killed our men. Early reporting is never entirely accurate, and while this was called an “act of terror”, the main GOP beef here is that it was not called a “terrorist attack”. That’s right, act of terror versus terrorist attack. Real good reason to waste millions of taxpayer dollars, right? Susan Rice said that the attack started as a protest, which it did. Nothing illegal here, no derelection of duty. Move on. GOP witch hunters blew another $7 million or so of your hard earned tax dollars on this one so far.
Email server: Contrary to Republican claims of dishonesty or corruption, there was NEVER a law against using a personal server. No laws were broken. Secretary Clinton, as well as all other Secretaries of State that came before her, including Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, used personal emails for their correspondence. The server was never hacked, and a record of all emails sent to government are stored on government servers. Republican witch hunters are blowing $13,000 per day of your hard earned tax dollars in order to paint Hillary as untrustworthy or incompetent, all for political purposes. As of 1999, Republicans had spent over $80 million of your dollars on Clinton investigations. The number today is more than likely over $200,000,000. Fiscal conservatism? I don’t think so. And now the major news outlets are finally admitting there was never anything to it.
Billions of dollars to Iran: Wrong. The money in question was Iran’s money that was frozen in previous sanctions. It was their money, frozen in order to bring them to the table and come to an agreement on nuclear proliferation. No other conditions were placed on the release of the money other than coming to an agreement for destroying enriched uranium and agreeing not to pursue a nuclear weapon. They came to the table, agreed to terms with inspections to verify compliance, and what was remaining of their money withheld after paying money owed to other countries, was returned to Iran. It is very dishonest and misleading to say that Obama and Clinton GAVE Iran billions of dollars. You don’t give someone money that is theirs already. By the way, the nuclear deal is an international agreement, not just the USA, and even if Trump were to walk away from the deal, he’d have international backlash from our allies, and the agreement would remain.
I hope this helps when the attacks come. As I’ve said before, when misinformation and lies flow at such a regular rate, and with preceived conviction from the Republican party over the last 25 years, it causes a false plausability in the minds of many. Only facts can counter these things. As you hear the term “Crooked Hillary” come out of “Trump the Terrible”‘s mouth, and echoed by many GOP leaders and pundits over the next 6 months, counter it with fact. It’s a nasty curveball, but you’ve got a really good eye and good bat speed, so just smash it over the wall, don’t get into knock-down-drag-outs over it. Return to the dugout and wait for your next at-bat. You won’t convince all of them, but for some, you will have exposed the GOP witch hunters as the frauds that they are. Are you ready to fight? If you enjoy Daily News Bin, consider making a contribution:
Fat Bastardo's Op Ed:
We should not have to constantly debunk the lies of liars. When we come across a chronic liar we should shut that liar up. Lying should be a criminal offence and liars should face a wide range of penalties from fines to prison and ins some cases execution if their lies are deemed treason.
When it comes to lying liars there is also a time for do it yourself justice. If you are a moral person and you come across a liar do what you think is appropriate when it comes to you meting out justice but don't do anything stupid that could get you in trouble.
