Clinton mounts full-court press against media

[anatta]

Hillary Clinton's campaign went on a full-court press against a familiar opponent Wednesday: the media.

Ripping into an Associated Press report finding that more than half of the people outside the government who met with her as secretary of state donated to the Clinton Foundation, top-ranking officials with the Democratic nominee's team accused the media and critics of "cherry-picking."
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"Well, because they took a small sliver of her tenure as secretary of state, less than half the time, less than a fraction of the meetings, fewer than I think 3 percent, the number they've looked at of all the meetings," chief strategist Joel Benenson told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day." "This is a woman who met with over 17,000 world leaders, countless other government officials, public officials in the United States. And they've looked at 185 meetings and tried to draw a conclusion from that."

In its report, the AP noted that 85 of the 154 people from non-government-related interests who met with or who had scheduled phone calls with Clinton either donated to her family's charitable organization or had committed funds. The article disclosed, however, that the analysis only covered the first half of Clinton's tenure and did not include the many meetings with foreign diplomats and U.S. government officials.

The report was just one of a slew of articles that have emerged in recent days detailing the overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during Clinton's four-year tenure leading the agency. To add to the pressure on Clinton, Trump's campaign has also been unusually disciplined about attacking alleged "pay for play" activity in which political and corporate leaders who donated to the Foundation got access to Clinton and other power brokers.

While there's little sign that Clinton herself will soon offer a full-throated defense, her aides and surrogates have been flooding the airwaves and other media as they attempt to tamp down the latest flare-up in the long-running scandal.

Clinton Foundation President Donna Shalala has been heavily promoting the myriad changes the group announced this week, should Clinton be elected president, including Bill Clinton stepping down from the board and stopping his fundraising efforts.

"We're not responding to the outside criticism," Shalala told NPR on Tuesday. "I was brought in a year ago to help start thinking through what the form would take if she was elected, and the president wanted to do it very carefully."

Beyond Shalala, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, long-time Clinton ally James Carville, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon and Benenson have all offered up passionate defenses of the Clinton Foundation in the past 24 hours.

Fallon on Tuesday evening issued a lengthy statement, calling it "outrageous" that the AP would use a subset of Clinton's meetings to draw such a big conclusion.

On Wednesday, Benenson called the AP report "

one of the most massive misrepresentations you could see from the data. And then they're trying to malign and implicate that there was some, something nefarious going on when, in fact, there wasn't.

"She met with noted people like a Nobel economist. That's who's on the AP list," he said, alluding to Muhammad Yunus as "somebody who got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who was unanimously given the Congressional Gold Medal, by Democrats and Republicans. How many unanimous things did you have in a Democratic and Republican Congress in the last eight years?"

Cuomo shot back on CNN that Benenson was also "cherry-picking."

You know the game very well. You know politics. You know journalism very well," Cuomo remarked.

"The idea that this many people on the private citizen side as opposed to all officials were connected to the foundation and meeting with her at the State Department smells bad. You say nefarious. I'm not saying it's illegal. I'm not saying it's a felony. That shouldn't be the bar for wrongdoing either. It seems wrong and inappropriate. Isn't that enough to draw criticism?"

Benenson responded by pointing to Clinton Foundation donor Melinda Gates, whose work fighting AIDS and malaria coincides with State Department priorities.

"

People support this foundation because of the good work it's done, just like they support [the George H.W. Bush-founded Points of Light], just like they support other foundations," Benenson added. "We shouldn't forget that's what's going on in the world."

Mook offered a similar defense on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," poking at Trump, who he called connected "to all kinds of international entities."

"The Bank of China. A number of large Russian companies. Goldman Sachs. He is indebted or reliant for income on a number of these entities and nobody is asking him to disclose or divest," Mook protested. "Hillary Clinton doesn't have a conflict of interest with charitable work. That's all it is. So, I think we need to look a lot more closely at Donald Trump if we're going to drill down this deep on Hillary Clinton."

Asked whether Clinton would end her 263-day streak without a press conference as a result of the AP's latest story, Mook was noncommittal.

"We're considering everything every day. She's been answering questions, she's gonna continue to do that," Mook said. "I think all we would ask is that people don't cherry-pick 100-something meetings and then say that half of them were with Clinton Foundation donors at the exclusion of 1,700 other meetings.

Carville, who earlier this week suggested people could "die" if the Clinton Foundation is forced to pull back its charitable work, said on Wednesday that the group's track record of success cannot be denied.

"The three things by Bill Clinton, who I love, his three greatest achievements in my mind was he stopped the genocide. He did the human genome project which is going to save our children and grandchildren, extend life and the Clinton foundation. I think it is a terrific organization," Carville said.

Benenson, in his defense, made note of the Republican nominee's past $100,000 contribution to the foundation, sarcastically asking if he was "paying for play," as it has been suggested of the other donors.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...#ixzz4IGNiyePm
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[anatta]

hilarious. they try to obscure in every way possible -the Clintonian go to answer for all her self-inflicted scandals.
Now they are reduced to attacking the AP

Suppose it's only 180 cases of "pay for play" (more Emails to come) as compared to the rest of her meetings?
Is that some kina justification?

And if there is nothing there why NOT shut it down? Not keep accruing big foreign gov't /national donors.
They conveniently forget the part about foreign kings/ gov'ts getting access -how corrupt is that?

It's another of those damn "Vast RW conspiracies" I tell you!

[anatta]

The report was just one of a slew of articles that have emerged in recent days detailing the overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during Clinton's four-year tenure leading the agency

this was just one of many articles (Emails) Judicial Watch and Citizens United discovered by their FOIA requests.
Notice they don't talk about those-they go after the "more then half" phrase.
Because if they can sully the numbers you'll forget what the AP and other Emails were showing.

What a bunch of corrupt dissemblers ( being kind)-as usual they rally around the queen and pettifog everything.
Next comes the "why are we still talking about this?" parsing

[PostmodernProphet]

poor Hillary.....someone from the press criticized her and she's not used to it......

[Cancel 2020.1]

poor Hillary.....someone from the press criticized her and she's not used to it......

Somewhat ironic from a Trump supporter.

[anatta]

she will hold a press conference and clear it all up

[PostmodernProphet]

Somewhat ironic from a Trump supporter.

if you think so its even more ironic than you know......

[Celticguy]

The media does love dirty laundry and now they have it. They will run with it as they are sick of looking stupid trying to make it seem like Trump has any.

[anatta]

The media does love dirty laundry and now they have it. They will run with it as they are sick of looking stupid trying to make it seem like Trump has any.

there has been scads of dirty laundry-but now the Clinton Machine is going after the media (AP).
I think the media will fold like cheap suit..but we'll see

[PostmodernProphet]

I have to agree that the media will fold.....I forget which reporter I heard it from but he said "my god, this latest scandal comes from People magazine......what have we fallen to if the next Woodward and Bernstein work for People magazine"........

[Jarod]

The media does love dirty laundry and now they have it. They will run with it as they are sick of looking stupid trying to make it seem like Trump has any.

You don't think he has any?

[Celticguy]

there has been scads of dirty laundry-but now the Clinton Machine is going after the media (AP).
I think the media will fold like cheap suit..but we'll see

I agree with that concept but the media are taking a beating financially largely due to their bias. This is Watergate class stuff and that is the mother lode they have been looking for since Watergate.
And they have never been happy about their treatment throughout this administration.

[anatta]

I have to agree that the media will fold.....I forget which reporter I heard it from but he said "my god, this latest scandal comes from People magazine......what have we fallen to if the next Woodward and Bernstein work for People magazine"........

they broke the Powell interview where he said he was sick and tired of the Clintonistas blaming him for her Email woes.

[Bill]

I wondered when she was going to steal a page from the trumpf play book & start getting some free press.....

Now she needs to tweet something stupid, delete it a half hour later & say she was just being sarcastic.....

[PostmodernProphet]

I wondered when she was going to steal a page from the trumpf play book & start getting some free press.....

Now she needs to tweet something stupid, delete it a half hour later & say she was just being sarcastic.....

are you claiming Hil-liar-y is our very own Legion Troll?.....