It’s a little reminiscent of the way Republicans have treated President Obama. They have shown more disrespect and outright hatred for Obama than any President in history. And it’s just as hard to imagine that racism doesn’t play a part.
But of the many attacks constantly thrown at Hillary, there seem to be three that consistently come up….dishonesty, scandals, and her ties to big money and Wall Street. But are those attacks….many times border-lining on slander….warranted?
Well let’s break these attacks down and shine a little reality into the situation.
Hillary Clinton is a liar! I don’t trust her!
First of all, let me state the obvious right up front. Hillary is human. And yes, she has made mistakes. Please show me a politician who’s never told a lie or exaggerated or embellished….you can’t….because there are none. But in most cases where she is accused of lying, people are just repeating something they’ve heard countless times. Whether or not she has actually lied about whatever issue doesn’t matter to Hillary-haters. They’ve successfully stoked the narrative that she’s not honest.
It doesn’t matter to the haters that many of the things she’s been accused of lying about are simply her evolving her positions over the years. Obama and any politician who’s been around more than 5 minutes has done the same. But it’s only Hillary that gets bombarded with the liar label. Because, well….Hillary.
But is Hillary a bigger liar than Trump, or any other politician for that matter? No. In fact, according to PolitiFact Hillary Clinton is actually the most honest of any candidate that has run for President this cycle.PolitiFact has rated 24% of her contentious statements as perfectly “true.” While that may seem low, compare that to Bernie Sanders….who no one has ever called a liar….who rated at just 15% for perfectly true statements.
If you add up Hillary’s comments that scored “true,” “mostly true,” or “half true” she scores 72%. Bernie scores 70%. Only 14% of Hillary’s statements rated as “false” or “pants on fire.” By the same measure, Bernie scored 15%.
But if you really want to look at a good comparison, you have to look at Trump’s scores. Trump only gets the “true” rating 2% of the time. And when you add his “false” and “pants on fire” statements he scores a whopping 61%, which makes him the biggest liar of any politician PolitiFact has ever scored. And yet when Trump is literally lying 61% of the time….compared to Hillary’s 14%…..he is somehow still seen as being more honest than Hillary. Ironically every time Trump carries on about Hillary’s lies, it is actually Trump who’s lying.
Hillary is guilty of all sorts of scandals!
It’s interesting that Hillary-haters just automatically assume that she’s guilty because there have been scandals surrounding her. The truth is another thing entirely. Has Hillary had her share of scandals? Yes. But just because she has been accused of something or implicated in a scandal does not make her guilty. As a matter of fact, in every case she has been cleared of any wrongdoing. Funny how Repubs never mention that part.
Every time she is implicated in some new scandal, Republicans just continue to pound the “she’s untrustworthy” drum. And that’s the whole point. They know that every time they can attach her to a scandal they can feed their narrative.
The Republicans have spent more time and money investigating Hillary than any other politician in history. They once literally spent 10 days and 140 hours to investigate her use of the White House Christmas card list. Seriously.
Just look at how they’ve handled her “email scandal.” This is just another example of how Hillary is being held to a standard that no one else is being held to.
Hillary has been accused of using a personal email server that could have made classified documents less secure. (Never mind that the classified documents in question weren’t labeled classified until AFTER she sent or received them.) But, once again, after wasting time and money, the Republicans have found no basis for any criminal charges.
Compare the way Hillary is being treated about this whole email thing to the General David Petraeus scandal. Petraeus was the Director of the CIA when he purposefully gave his mistress classified documents revealing the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities, information from high level National Security Council meetings, and conversations that Petraeus has with the President. And if that weren’t bad enough Petraeus then lied about it to government officials and the FBI. There is no question about any of this. Petraeus eventually confessed to the whole thing.
Clearly what Patraeus did was far worse than anything Hillary has been accused of. Yet it is Hillary, not Petraeus who the Republicans want in jail. To this day Petraeus is a beloved figure to righties and the Republicans would bring him back to the White House in a heartbeat if Trump won. Double standard? Yep…just like with most attacks on Hillary.
Hillary is tied to big money and Wall Street!
Hillary has made a lot of money from speaking engagements, that is true. But she hardly invented big paying speeches. It is not uncommon for former politicians, or celebrities, or sports stars, or business tycoons to receive huge speaking fees. Paris Hilton has been paid $750,000 just to show up at events, for example.
After 9/11 Rudy Giuliani was making around $700,000 a month on speaking fees, with an average of about $270,000 per speech. It’s estimated that Giuliani made about $40 Million over the 5 years before he ran for President in 2007. But was he demonized for that? No. Did anyone question the fees or his loyalties? No. Clinton, on the other hand, has been scrutinized endlessly about this.
Now, there certainly is a discussion worth having about how much money is in politics. But pinning the entire game on Hillary is ridiculous.
As for Wall Street, the vast majority of Hillary’s money has actually NOT come from Wall Street. Since leaving her job as Secretary of State, Hillary has made approximately 100 speeches. Of those 100, only 8 of them were to Wall Street banks. The rest of her speeches were given to organizations like the American Camping Association, Ebay, Cisco, Xerox, the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, A&E Television Networks, the Massachusetts Conference for Women, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries….just to name a few.
All but one of Hillary’s 8 speeches to Wall Street paid her $225,000. While that is a lot of money, it wasn’t close to the most she was being paid to speak.
So do her speaking fees mean that she is suddenly beholden to the group who paid her? Hardly. And once again why is Hillary the only one questioned about this? Is she influenced by Wall Street? Yes. But please show me one politician or business, or person for that matter who is not affected by Wall Street. Wall Street drives our economy. How could we not be influenced by them? But influence does not equal guilty of corruption. This should not be a case of guilt by association.
And just for another basis of comparison, Trump has been paid $1.5 Million several times for speeches. So where’s the outrage about that? Oh, right….there is none….he’s a Republican. And a man.
Hillary is definitely not a perfect candidate. And yes, there are going to be times that she disappoints. She is an imperfect human….like we all are. But one thing that is for sure is that she is the most qualified candidate to ever run for the office. I’d hold up her resume to those on the Republican side any day of the week….and twice on Sundays.
And for all of the attacks that have been launched at her over the years, she has always come out standing strong. She is battle tested, sharp, and able to withstand endless unwarranted attacks. The attacks certainly feed into the Republican narrative about her, but very little is based in reality.
