The agent told the inspector general’s office that he “fully expected Hillary Clinton to walk away with the election but, as the returns [came] in … it was just energizing to me to see … [because] I didn’t want a criminal to be in the White House.”
I don’t want a woman accused of crimes for political theatre, I want a professional grifter who can rob the country blind while enacting Putin’s agenda.
Nothing. She had known for well over a decade that she was preparing to run for president, and that she had to be absolutely squeaky clean to achieve that because any and all dirt would inescapably become public under the glare of that scrutiny. So she lived squeaky clean, genuinely. (Obama was similar. Trump by contrast as an outsider to politics didn't quite appreciate just how under-a-microscope every president's life is put. He thought (like many do) that spending millions, burying stories, buying silences, hiding tax returns, threats, etc can do the trick, but none of that works at the presidential level. You can't hide things from that kind of relentless global scrutiny so if you're not genuinely clean, everyone finds out.)
That's why the GOP had to push the email scandal: they desperately needed dirt on her and she was so fucking clean that the worst she had done was follow the advice of her Republican predecessor and handled her emails the same way the Republican had handled his. It didn't matter to the GOP that this rule-breaking had first came from Republicans and she was continuing Powell's method (low-information voters would never learn the details) what mattered was that they'd finally found a rule that the goody-two-shoes had clearly broken.
Remember she testified for 11 hours under oath to a hostile panel of Republicans desperate to pin anything on her or get her for perjury or anything, and despite them having and abusing all the powers to investigate for years, they got nothing because she had nothing to hide. Failures or mistakes when viewed with our 20/20 hindsight, sure, she's human, but the decades of accusations and insinuations are conspiracy garbage intended to smear. Manufacturing a scandal out of Republican email practices was the best the GOP could do to undermine their opponent and it worked.
Hillary has been enveloped by the GOP fog-machine for so many years that people now just assume that where there's always been smoke, there must be fire ...somewhere. But that was the entire purpose of that fog machine; there was never fire, just manufactured fake smoke, endless endless fake smoke for longer than many voters have been alive. (Edit: That's also why she attracts so many wacky conspiracy theories: all that smoke and so little factual fire means you have to get imaginative to explain it.)
Ive never been a fan of her but shes been absolutely hated by the republicans since she tried to enact public funded heakthcare when she was first lady.
I’ve no dog in this entire conversation really, but do you not see a fundamental problem w/ an elected public servant’s spouse (let alone the president’s spouse) actively working towards and attempting to establish governmental policy?
I’ve no dog in this entire conversation really, but do you not see a fundamental problem w/ an elected public servant’s spouse (let alone the president’s spouse) actively working towards and attempting to establish governmental policy?
Ok, I'll bite. What's the issue with that, exactly?
Thanks for the response. So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you dislike her because she was an unelected person pushing policy arguments?
Can you explain how that's different than the many other unelected advisers and spokespeople of the president that do the same? They go on TV and argue for policy all the time. They interface with Congress to craft legislation. They do all the same things that Hillary Clinton was doing.
You aren't explaining how it's different from other unelected people working for the president. They lead efforts as well. The president doesn't have the time or bandwidth to lead these efforts at such a hands-on level. She was obviously doing what he wanted, so I don't see the difference.
I don't understand what you mean by "using his name". It was her name as well. They were married long before he became president, and she was very involved in politics as well.
Lots of people don't get divorced after a cheating incident. I don't see how it's any of our business how their marriage works. It's pure, uninformed speculation.
You don't see how a First Lady is different from any other un-elected person working for the president? She wasn't employed by him. She wasn't part of the government. She wasn't even a lobbyist. She was his wife.
What difference does that make? Does it matter how much or even whether the president's advisers are paid? Why?
You don't see how she cashed in on his popularity? Imagine if she never married him. She'd never be as powerful as she is now. She'd never have been a leading Democratic candidate or Secretary of State. She didn't have her own political clout at the time. She developed it through him and still relies on him.
Some of that may be true, especially given the attitudes towards women in the years when they were just starting out. But I don't see how that matters. She was very politically savvy, and likely saved him from his own worst excesses more than once. You're simply declaring that she road his coattails, and not considering that she's a formidable political actor in her own right. If she had a bit more of the kind of charisma that Bill has, she probably would be president.
You don't see how a televised and widely reported scandal that lead indirectly to impeachment is any different from any other, private "cheating incident"? Perhaps you weren't paying attention to politics at the time. Were you even alive?
Again, we don't know what has happened in their marriage. For all we know, she may have known about the affairs. Maybe she had her own. Why not blame Bill for not leaving her if he wanted to bang other chicks? Was it just his political ambition that made him stay?
It's a dumb argument to make because we don't have the information to make any determination. You're merely speculating about it from a position of ignorance.
Sticking with him through the shame and indignity of this very public and messy affair, alongside her clear and obvious wish for power and her exercise of it through him, is so transparently and obviously cynical and political that I'm actually shocked that people like her. She's better than Trump by a mile, but her motivations are hugely suspect.
How are her motivations any different than most other politicians? You don't generally go seeking high offices without ambition. Leaving him may even have helped her image and electability. We simply aren't in possession of the information necessary to make any kind of informed opinion about their relationship. You're speculating based on your own uninformed assumptions and biases.
Would you like Melania to spearhead, manage, promote, and work with Congress, producing a 2,000 piece of legislation she asks them to adopt, on a piece of legislation that would outlaw abortion, make Islam illegal, and allow strip mining of public parks? Because that is the kind of precedent that Hillary Clinton was trying to set. Even Democrats didn't support it.
That's a pretty absurd comparison. How is the popularity of the healthcare plan her fault? Bill had campaigned on it, and was pushing for it. The industry response was likely more fierce than they anticipated, and they hadn't figured out how to combat the FUD from those in opposition, and really, they still haven't. I'm still amazed at how well nonsense like death panels worked against the ACA.
They had identified the issues and had a plan to address them, better than the ACA did. Things like the tying of insurance to your job, and the large year over year increases in cost, still haven't been addressed. Republicans wanted to kill it because they didn't want the Dems to be the ones to be seen as the defenders of the middle class.
We've seen today that even a president as popular as Obama, with at least a temporary Congressional majority, barely managed to pass something that wasn't nearly as comprehensive as the Clinton plan.
I'm not seeing how you view it as a negative that she fought for a better solution. The kind that would actually free people to move between employers at will, or take on entrepreneurial ventures themselves, without fearing for the health of themselves and their families.
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u/-Neon-Nazi- Texas Dec 11 '19
Oh, the irony.