This week’s WikiLeaks dump provided further sordid details about the Clintons’ breathtaking corruption—something nobody reasonable has doubted for quite some time. As expected, the Clinton camp’s response is to dismiss, distort, diminish, dodge, and divert. They do so in easy reliance on the active support of a sycophantic press corps. When faced with the most corrupt Presidential candidate in living memory, the craven media have instead attempted to portray Donald Trump’s personal or business behavior as somehow worse than the Clintons’ decades of abuse of America’s highest public offices.
Hillary Clinton, as her supporters endlessly remind us, has spent her entire adult life in or near government. Donald Trump has not. As a result, Clinton has owed the public certain duties over the past several decades that never applied to a business leader like Trump—or to any other private citizen. Yet somehow, from the debate moderators to the editorial pages to the “journalists” whose charge it is to act as our democracy’s watchdogs, the media have worked overtime to invert the proper standard for judging the two candidates. Comments from private citizen Trump that are under perpetual attack have overshadowed not only far more troubling speech but also actual behavior from public representative Clinton that qualifies as sexist, racist, criminal and corrupt—or that has cost Americans their lives.
It begins with their respective resumes. Clinton supporters like to insist that Trump, who has built what is likely America’s most successful and valuable personal brand and leveraged his way from real estate to television to fashion, is a less successful businessman than he claims to be. They then tout the many impressive positions that Clinton has filled—while ignoring the extent to which she has failed at all of them. By any measure, Trump Tower, Mar-A-Lago, and The Apprentice are far more impressive than the failure to push Hillarycare through a Democratic Congress, the failure to protect American diplomats from terrorist attacks in Benghazi, and a longstanding disregard of national security when communicating via e-mail.
Nevertheless, the case against Trump’s character persists among those who disregard Clinton’s manifest character flaws. In the third debate, Trump finally turned the tables, hammering on substantive policy differences and pointing out the obvious: for virtually every challenge lobbed against his words and actions as a private citizen, Clinton has done far worse from her position as a government official.
For example, the media amplifies Clinton’s attacks on Trump for insulting statements about women, while ignoring the Clintons’ use of government to malign, degrade and destroy the reputations of Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Juanita Broaddrick, Katherine Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and who knows how many others. Similarly, with the help of the press, Clinton accuses Trump of rampant insensitivity and racism. The charges might sting—were they not from a former US Senator Clinton who called African American kids “super-predators”; a former Arkansas First Lady Clinton who reportedly referred to disabled children as “[expletive] retards,” and former US First Lady and Secretary of State known to have indulged in vile racist and anti-Semitic epithets throughout her career. In fact, according to numerous reports (though almost impossible to find in mainstream American media), senior US government official Clinton uses “Jew” itself as though it were a curse, regularly calling even gentiles “dirty [expletive] Jew” and “Jew bastard.” Nothing private citizen Trump is accused of ever having said comes close. In discussing this with a senior Clinton-administration friend who spent time working closely with Hillary and witnessed numerous savage anti-Semitic outbursts first-hand, his defense was “Well, at least she does it in private.” It’s doubtful America would find that reassuring. But America is unlikely to find out. These stories are buried or dismissed, while every fantastical unsupported rumor about her opponent is kept alive above the fold and at the top of the hour.
Clinton and her press lackeys also like to portray Trump’s business activities as bad for America. But, as Trump pointed out in their final debate, the true problem lies not with for-profit businesses operating under a regime of perverse government policies, or real estate investors who profited from the housing market crash, but rather with government bureaucrats who create punishing disincentives for companies to stay in America or who incentivize people to buy houses they can’t afford – exactly the kinds of policies Clinton keeps pushing and that Trump is running to reform. Similarly, accusations by Clinton that Trump curried favor with public officials are absurd. Clinton’s shameless unprecedented excesses in trading government favors for hundreds of millions of dollars from personal, business, and foreign interests were widely known well before this week- as was her family’s fabulous enrichment derived entirely from exploiting their positions as public officials.
Clinton and her supporters vilify Trump for comments that fall flat, offend, or violate the dogma of political correctness that has replaced actual morality. “Words matter when you run for president,” Clinton sanctimoniously intoned at the first debate. This, from a Secretary of State stubbornly unwilling to call radical Islam by its name, and who with equal dudgeon demanded “what difference does it make” why brave Americans under her direct command died needlessly in Benghazi. Of course in pondering just how much words matter, any journalists doing their jobs should be laser focused on the words which matter most: the millions of words in Hillary Clinton’s compromised State Department e-mails, mishandled and deleted either negligently or criminally.
As far as Clinton’s campaign and its media allies are concerned, the importance of words – and actions – hinges on who dared bring them to light. Foreign meddling, if that’s what the WikiLeaks dumps involved, is indeed troubling, but does nothing to diminish the magnitude of the horrifying revelations about Clinton and her agents and allies. That Clinton attempts to divert attention is understandable; that the media follow suit is a betrayal that amounts to de facto conspiracy and cover-up of one of the greatest scandals in American history.
Donald Trump has spent decades in the public eye, nearly all of it thriving in venues that operate under standards far different from those we typically set for politicians and public officials. There is little shame in conceding that he has played by the standards of those environments rather than the standards of the political realm. Hillary Clinton, who has spent
most of her adult life as a politician enriching herself while on the public’s payroll has abused the public trust for decades and done far more harm to far more people.
It’s time someone made her answer for it. Perhaps on November 8 the public will; because the media certainly will not.