Producer and director Judd Apatow has been really politically engaged for the past few years. While I rarely covered him, he was often tweeting or speaking out against Donald Trump and GOP policies. He was obviously a big Hillary Clinton supporter and contributor, but it was more than that – Apatow really tried to use his platform to speak up for women’s rights and more, all while acknowledging his own privilege. He grew on me a lot over the past year. Anyway, over the weekend, the New York Times published an interesting interview with Apatow now that Emperor Baby Fists’ inauguration is upon us. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Whether he’s going to lose his mind when Trump comes into office: “There’s a danger on the internet that you think you’re accomplishing something. So you see an article about a disease and retweet it and think ‘It’s cured now!’ And you’ve fooled yourself into thinking that you’ve done something productive.”
He doesn’t feel battered by Trump trolls: “I’ll get insecure and go, I don’t think my career’s going that well because nobody is saying anti-Semitic things to me today.”
Losing weight in the Trump Era: “It’s very hard to lose weight in the Trump era…I’m trying so hard to have it not turn into 30 pounds. I think it tests our ability to not want to numb out. There’s so many things that are hard to hear every day that you do want to have some Oreos. Like people say, what do you invest in during the Trump era? I feel like, Hostess Cakes. Most of us are just scared and eating ice cream.”
He believes the funnier candidate always wins: “I said it as a joke, but I think there’s something to it. Reagan was funny. Bill Clinton was funny. Bush was funnier than Gore. Obama was funnier than probably anybody who’s ever run for office.” Even though the president-elect rarely laughs, Apatow says, and “has a demented sense of humor, Trump is way funnier than Hillary Clinton.”
He thinks HRC made mistakes: “Clearly Hillary Clinton made a few enormous mistakes. One of those mistakes, to me, was that you can’t get paid that much for speeches and go back into politics. That has to be your victory lap — you cash in, you do the speeches and you’re done.”
Meeting Donald Trump as a young comedian: “I was performing in Atlantic City, and at the time, Donald Trump was in a casino war with Merv Griffin. There’s no one he can’t get in a war with. He was in a war with Merv Griffin. Who’s Merv Griffin ever been in a war with? And I think on some level, he thinks Putin’s Merv Griffin. He thinks you fight it out and you kick it around and two powerful men just decide what to do alone in a room.”Pres. Trump will run the country like he ran The Apprentice: “Donald Trump sits in his office. He sends his kids to watch the teams do their missions. Then they come back and tell him what they think of it and then he makes an impulsive decision based on the information that Donald Jr. or Ivanka give him. That’s how he’s running the country.”
He has a soft spot for Melania: “Of course. She lives with him. She made a major miscalculation she has to live with.”
What he thinks about the ‘stop-normalizing-Trump’ argument: “I don’t think it serves a purpose to be against him. It only serves a purpose to fight issue by issue. I’m trying to transition from making comments on social media to choosing one or two organizations to work with and support so that I feel like I’m actually being a positive part of the process. You don’t want to be a crank.”
Personally, I never cared that Hillary Clinton made speeches and got paid. What bugged me about that issue was that she should have just released the text of those speeches right away. The narrative about “Hillary got money for speeches” was stupid, but the narrative about “Hillary Clinton keeps secrets” is the one that stuck and really damaged her. When you’re running for office, there should be no secrets. Although now that the dust has settled, the fact that HRC was a wee bit too secretive about some things seems almost quaint compared to the incoming authoritarian rule of Emperor Baby Fists. And where are those tax returns after all?
As for what Judd says about comfort-eating … I’ve actually been working out a lot since the election and I lose my appetite whenever Baby Fists is on TV. But that’s part of a conscious choice I’ve made to disconnect as a way to cope – if I was absorbing 24-hour cable news non-stop, I would have put on 30 pounds by now.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
“I don’t think it serves a purpose to be against him. It only serves a purpose to fight issue by issue”
This. This is how he will loose popularity. His supporters don’t care he’s a bad person as long as they feel they are being served well by him.
I absolutely agree. Position by position. Generalized hate on general,principle on all things diminishes the impact of the hater……it becomes about their hate, not about the issues.
Deal with the issues. And DT will occasionally be right. As I’ve said before..
The auto industry keeping jobs stateside is good. So is aviation federal contractors reducing expenses, There will be more to support.
But much more to monitor and fight.
CItyHeat – you keep saying that we need to deal with the issues, then we list them as it stands, and the cause of the anger, and then you mention autojobs and aviation federal contractors as two “good” issues. Two “good” issues don’t outweigh the major shit show of all of his other moves. When you haven’t even left the gate and already you’re taking away rights and privleges from people, it’s hard to care about the extra 1,000 jobs he created. It shouldn’t have to be one or another.
So while the auto industry will potentially have more jobs in America, those SAME people will probably no longer have the health insurance they need to cover them when they are sick. Factory work isn’t forgiving, those people most likely aren’t getting private insurance.
Also, the auto industry is closely tied to the gas industry, and how convenient that Scott Pruitt, an ole greasy gas and oil lover, is the head of the Environmental Protection agency. You think those extra jobs are going to be making more electric cars? Probably not. So there goes the ozone layer.
Trump is NOT doing good things. He might brag about doing good things, but the underbelly of the brag is always steaming with shit.
@ctyheat, I tried to deal with the issue of healthcare and you told me I had to wait and see, despite the fact that Trump’s chosen nominee for HHS drafted the dangerous bills that Ryan is now ramming through Congress. Just as I said would happen.
No, Trump is not saving the auto industry, Obama DID that. And a tweet and a phone call have not resulted in Trump creating new jobs. Those plans were all in the works for months.
But will auto makers really stay in the US – no and definitely not for the long term. BTW my theory on why he keeps going after the auto industry is because Obama rescued them in 08-09.
Issues are important but so is the da*n hypocrisy that these supporters and GOP are working. Seriously – the man is so entangled in corruption and yet hey it’s okay. BS!
@ME I don’t think so, and started to address some of that above, but the truth is, Trump IS using a huge platform visting the rust belt states and promising more jobs. With the auto industry it’s more complex than just “more jobs”. Mexico manufacturing auto parts also gives the US more jobs, even if it’s not apparent. If he forces plants to move from Mexico to the US we will absolutely lose our production of certain parts that are exported out, and instead might go to Germany and China. What will happen is that the cars his supporters drive ( the wealthy ones at least) will pay a higher price because of this. (Not sure if that all makes sense as I write it).
In fact, almost ALL car companies have plants in the US. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota — have plants in SC, Alabama, Texas etc. G.M. gets more than a quarter of its sales outside of the US, Ford gets a third. All cars typically have parts made in China, even when manufactured in the US.
It’s complicated and unfortunately too many supporters are taking “oh auto moving back to the US” at face value, when it shouldn’t.
More jobs is always a good thing, Obama pulled us out of a severe Depression, but not at the risk of alienation, environmental health and disparaging other countries.
Nothing with T should be taken at face value. NOTHING.
It also satiates, even if he doesn’t do anything, the people will think because he’s outspoken that more jobs. This has a ton to do with the environmental laws that Obama’s administration put in place, which T has openly doubted greenhouse gas emissions as being as impactful as we’ve been told.
I agree 1000x. It does basically no good to argue against him as a person as it convinces no one but the already converted.
I follow Judd on Twitter and the evening of the election, he was my comfort coach. I am impressed. Acknowledges his privilege, posts the hate that folks send his way for his stand, and I believe he carefully thought thru this strategy and is putting his resources behind it. Don’t believe her speeches cost her the election. Her tv ads in my state till the end were about making a better world for children. She would have done it too. But all the white he-men in my hood didn’t want to hear that. Her father was a successful small business man in Chgo. She told of his struggle but not his success, which was considerable. Had she told that part of the story perhaps more of them would relate to her. She campaigned on her heart and it didn’t work.
An FYI, I live in a red state and hour north of the Mexican border. There are no campaign ads in Spanish and rarely POC or Native Americans in ads. Everyone is a white rancher.
Yes. That’s what I’ve been focused on. Specific issues about which I can speak and donate and volunteer. His supporters don’t care about global things, but I have found plenty who are worried about specific issues. That’s how we win.
I read a really good article that went into why Trump would be particularly susceptible to backlash if he doesn’t keep his promises.
Broadly speaking, Republicans tend to admire/vote-for powerful strict-father figures while Democrats admire/vote-for nurturing-parent types. So R’s want someone confident, dominant, who will “sort things out”. While D’s want someone who will “look after everyone”.
That means the standard of trust is different in the different parties. D’s are probably going to forgive a leader who fails to keep a promise – as long as they tried. R’s will not – the whole appeal of a strict-father is that they are in charge because they have power, they will get things done. There is a lot less room for attempting but failing because it is seen as a breach of trust.
If that theory is right, then the key is not to focus on any random issue but to focus on issues where Trump fails to live up to his promises.
Oh wow Judd, Hillary got paid for speeches so lets hate her and let the Racist WIN. Yes that makes sense. Apatow a Sanders supporter still mad his phoney Socialist with his new Country home in Vermont didn’t beat Hillary for the nomination.
I’m so sick of the Hillary bashing.
She got 3million more votes than Bernie and she earned them, She got the votes.
She got 4million more votes than Trump and was one of the most qualified candidates in history.
I don’t care about paid speeches, I didn’t care about emails. IMO All this was used by both Sanders and Trump to demonize her.
We have a race baiting, racist in the White House , who Putin put in place as his pupper and all Judd Apatow can talk about is some speech that Hillary made to people who work jobs on Wall Street. Wow.
#StillwithHer
I’m sick in bed, so I finally have the time to respond to things like this. What I don’t get is why everyone is trying to analyze what Hillary did wrong so badly and acting as if there was any other reason than xenophobia for people to vote for Trump. She barely lost this election and the thing that tipped it to the other side was people’s enthusiasm for hating other people and blaming other people. Trump got the white vote and not because his policies are going to be amazing for working class or middle class people, because they probably won’t be. He got them in the same way your Southern states enacted Jim Crow, with the assistance of white people who rather vote for the people who’d ruin them than share equal standing with non-white people.
Your entire American history is build on that concept, Nixon and Reagan won on that concept. It’s why people keep voting for the Republican party even though that party often works against their own interests. And people all over the world do this. We got poor people over here voting for a neo-liberal party based on identity politcs. Apparently identity trumps economy for too many people.
+ 1 Wilma
Well done, and I hope you feel better soon.
Yes, I totally agree. And yes, feel better soon!
Completely agree. Get well soon!
This exactly and it’s been said many times around here, but people still insist on blaming everything on HRC.
EXACTLY.
UGH we had the flu over here last week and it was KILLER. Did not move from bed for four days. Awful. Feel better!
I completely agree, and want to add that not only did he reach that white demographic, he did so against a woman. The odds were never in Hillary’s favor, now that we realize what we are working with.
By taking *how* the campaign was run by each and dissecting them both is pointless. Hillary was damned prepared and whether or not she campaigned “correctly” (in retrospect) when placed side by side with the way he campaigned, she still is the clear “winner”. His campaign was a shit show. And he won. Paid speeches ultimately didn’t matter. Not visiting those states didn’t matter. Because ultimately those are not the reasons she didn’t win.
More than half of America didn’t even vote. That played a part. Russia played a part. The FBI played a part. Her vagina played a part. The emails played a part. Ridiculous voter regulations played a part. Understimating how racist and misoginistic the remaining voting population is played a HUGE part.
Yes, I do think there are more sides to her loss, but what tipped it over to him were the white voters and they really could have stayed home if they weren’t enthusiastically for her, but they wanted to vote for him. And when you look at his campaign there really can be only one reason they wanted to.
Wilma, right on.
Agreed. The stomach bug is making its way up the East Coast and we all have it, ugh. Get better soon.
I also think misogyny played a big part. I heard grown women say they didn’t think a woman should ever be president because they are too emotional.
Let’s not blame it all on the white people. Fewer people of color to turn out across the country and in swing states than they did for Obama in 2008. She suffered from a small but critical enthusiasm gap. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to win. I blame misogyny, Comey, Russian interference and, yes, to a degree, Hillary herself. She wasn’t the perfect candidate but she was pretty damn good.
I think it’s faulty reasoning not to blame Trump’s win on the people who actually voted for him, which turned out to be mostly white voters. And really, looking at his campaign there can be no logical reason to vote for him when you’re an college-educated middle class white women, but they did and in droves.
Pop up instead of blaming people color why not blame voter registration laws that suppressed their votes?
And now Republicans will have even more opportunities and less resistance to redraw the districts, enact their restrictions on voting and so on.
I would blame a lot of those white voters, but I don’t think it’s ALL on them. I also don’t think it’s ALL about voter suppression, though I think that also did play a role for sure. There was lots of blame to go around. You don’t get to a decimated Democratic party without taking on some of the blame yourself.
But it’s not decimated. Most seats in congress and senate that were up were Republican to begin with. She lost Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania by 1,3%, 0,3% and 1,2% respectively. That’s not being decimated. He really barely won the electoral college and it’s in those states that it really mattered what white people voted. And they voted for him.
I also like to clarify why I think that the Democrats should not start looking at themselves based on experiences in my own country (The Netherlands) with our far-right populist party, the PVV. They have the same kind of talking points as Trump, share some of the same financeers, connections in the alt-right, ties to Russia etc. And their leader was a guest of Trump at the Convention. The first time they participated in the elections they got about 6% of the votes. Now, we have a lot of political parties so our percentages are not as shocking as yours. But the first thing all the other parties did was bending over to appease the PVV-voters. Which in turn legitimized the PVV as a party for people with real and serious concerns. But that’s crazy, because you really can’t blame everything on other people and expect a strong leader to fix all problems, you can’t legitimately call that valid. But our parties did and they started to incorporate some of the talking points of the PVV. Next elections the PVV got 15% of the vote and all the other parties turned even more introspective, blaming themselves for ignoring the voters. But 15% of the voters should not be equated with THE voters as a whole you’d say. But they did and legitimized the PVV even further. They had a slight dip in votes the next election, but this march they are projected to become the largest party over here with around 30% of the vote. And I think our parties are to blame for that by reacting too panicky instead of doubling down on the PVV.
I think Trump and the Republicans love that the Democrats are turning on themselves and mostly blaming themselves whilst legitimizing the people who voted for Trump and I think that’s the wrong way to go.
@Wilma
+1000000
Preach sister!
Yes!!! Well-stated, Wilma.
Bingo! The fact is that some voters decided not to do their actual civil duty, which is to consider the candidates and vote for a qualified person to lead the country. Instead, they chose to throw a temper tantrum and vote for an unqualified oaf who voiced their dirty little xenophobic and misogynistic opinions out loud on TV and twitter. On top of that, another set of voters decided to push for “change” by voting for one-off candidates, which split the vote for a moderate, qualified candidate (who is not perfect but demonstrated during and after the primaries that she could have been pushed to be more progressive). Actually, I am very interested in knowing just where this “revolution” is that people like Susan Sarandon said would happen upon Trump’s election. Funny, all I hear is silence from that group.
Exactly Thank you. I’m so sick of the Hillary bashing.
The woman won 3million more votes than Sanders and 4million more votes than Trump. She was one of the most qualified candidates ever who was attack for almost 40 years with fake scandal after faux scandal and not one charge.
I am proud of her.
#STILLWITHHER
I have completely stopped watching the news. It’s my only way to cope. I get home from work and turn on HGTV and it stays on there for the rest of the evening. I used to listen to NPR but I had to stop that too. Now I listen to an all classical music station while at work.
@bluesky same here, makes me want to hurl when I try to watch something and the Tang is on the news because he’s fighting with someone in Twitter
I’m with you. During the holiday I watched all of The Hills, Bunheads (GREAT show, I didn’t even know) basically anything that is mindless fluff. Watching the news was giving me incredible anxiety. I still read the news, because I need to be informed, but as for watching…I simply can’t. It was sucking my soul DRY. Every day it’s another disappointment .
The Hills is a good mindless show to watch when you want to escape from our daily, hellish reality.
@Little Darling. I do the same thing. I will read the news but I just can’t with watching anymore. I don’t want to be completely in the dark because I need to stay informed too.
OMG Kitten, it was so fun hanging with LC and the gang. Gee, talk about simpler times. Speidi, at that time, was THE worst villain to ever come out of reality tv, you know? And now, well, here we are, with this orange haired reality tv star about to run our country.
Bluesky, exactly. It’s just too much to bear, watching and hearing him. But I still need to hear about every bad decision he is making. Ugh.
Bunheads was a great show. I wish ABC Family (freeform) has given it a better chance. Whoever is in charge of programming over there is awful. They have brought out several shows that only go for a season before getting cancelled.
I won’t watch anymore. I hate the cable stations and the local news is shameful. I will only watch PBS news when i must. I read from now on. Less bullshit and I never want to see him.
I tucked into Lemony Snicket on Netflix this weekend (for the same reasons). It was GREAT! I went into it cold, and was pleasantly surprised.
You know what hurt Hillary? “Hillary has a vagina.” There were huge segments of the population who decided a white man, any white man, was better than a woman. Nothing, absolutely nothing Hillary did was worse than we learned about Trump: the sexual assault, the huge debts, the bankruptcies, the misogyny, the racism, the inciting violence, the admiration of dictators, the list goes on and on and on.
I think people would have gotten behind Elizabeth Warren. I’m a lifelong dem, and I couldn’t stand Hillary. She’s everything that’s wrong with D.C. and people perceived her as too polished and slick and manufactured and fake, bought-off by special interests, out of touch, and a panderer, etc. Liz Warren is clean and bold; doesn’t take sh*t from anyone. It was HILLARY, not that she is a woman. Listen, Sarah Palin would have never gotten to where she is if she wasn’t considered “hot” — that worked for her in the Neanderthal red states when she obviously said dingbat things that disqualified her from VP status. In the US (and elsewhere I know) you either need to be hot or no-BS as a woman to make it (UNFORTUNATELY!). Hillary was full of BS, and everyone saw through it. Having said all this…..I wish very much that Hillary won. She would have been so much better than our current Twilight Zone situation!
I have to agree. There were so many folks I knew that just could not vote for Hillary because it was Hillary. It had nothing to do with having a vagina but all about not being able to trust HER. Most of those folks voted third party because they detested Trump just slightly less than Hillary.
I think she lost because she’s a woman, mainly because Donald Trump is the most incompetent candidate that’s ever run. Another man, even a seemingly slick and fake one (which most politicians are anyway), would have most likely won against him.
If Hillary had lost against anyone else, I could see why people might say she didn’t lose simply because she’s a woman. But when someone like Donald Trump wins, then, yeah, I definitely think her gender worked against her. Hillary could be or not be fake (opinions vary), but she is competent. Against the most incompetent candidate in history, she should have won. So, yes, I believe gender did play a factor when it finally came down to these two particular candidates.
The fact that she’s seen as fake as she is seems to have some kind of gender bias in there as well, I think. I don’t really see any difference between her and male politicians in terms of authenticity. I don’t get it when people say she’s more dishonest. Most politicians seem dishonest to some degree (isn’t that what makes them politicians in the first place?). There might be other women politicians who are considered more authentic than Hillary, but I also don’t know if they’ve been vetted as much by the media as Hillary has been through the last 30 years. The scrutiny of Hillary has always seemed more intense.
The Republican Party started to vilify Hillary the second Bill Clinton won a presidential primary in 1992. She was bossy and domineering and she had a job and she kept changing her hairstyle and she wouldn’t bake cookies and just wasn’t First Lady material, unlike the sainted grandmotherly Barbara Bush. (I’ve met both and Barbara Bush is a monster.). And oh, her husband cheated on her so that’s her fault too. And it intensified with each primary win into the White House. How dare she take an interest in healthcare? Why would she do First Lady things like flower arranging and sending bandages to lepers? And they wasted hundreds of millions investigating her, insisting she MUST be lying while finding NOTHING. They were the liars. And who was Trunp’s advisor? Women-hater Gingrich. That she can’t be trusted is a myth created by Gingrich
I don’t think any of it is right, what happened with Hillary. You guys have sort of changed my mind a bit to agree that, yeah, some misogyny played a role (especially the poster who said that it was OK that Trump was all the things I said Hillary was: fake, manufactured, etc.). I’m just pointing out that dems didn’t want Hillary. We wanted Bernie (well, many of us — I don’t want to speak for others). I know of all Hillary’s accomplishments and that she’s overall a good person who has dedicated herself to public service and making things better for Americans. She would have been fine as prez. But she didn’t invigorate dems and so many sat at home on Election Day and LET Trump happen. Bernie was the voice of true progressive values — he was bought off by ZERO special interests. When people say that are tired of Washington and its ridiculousness (“drain the swamp”) what they really want is government for the people, by the people, and I think Bernie was really all about that — he walked the walk and talked the talk. Hillary? No.
@Roevyred – we Democrats did, in fact want Hillary. That’s why we voted for her.
My husband says the same thing you are saying. He said several months before the election that lots of men will not vote for Hillary. He told me they would prefer someone incompetent win than a woman. I believe the deck was stacked against her with the Russia leaked emails and DT everyday yelling she was crooked and to lock her up. I read that the Republican Party tested the leaked email and found it worked in their focused groups that’s why DT was always using the email story. So, yes, the Russians rigged the election in DT’s favior. And then Comey put the nail in the coffin about 10 days before the election. Before Comey interference Hillary was leading about 4-5%. Imo, Hillary had too many interference stacked against her so..
But why are we talking about what hurt Hillary anyway, when she got 3 million + more votes, and it’s become increasingly clear that Russia and the FBI had a hand in electing Trump? In my mind, we don’t need to over-analyze what went wrong with Hillary because she didn’t really lose the election.
ETA: I completely agree that some people were so sexist that they never would have voted for her, and that sucks. But she still got more votes.
Exactly Shambles. We keep talking about why she didn’t win, and it’s like, the real coversations should ONLY be focused around how the hell did HE WIN??? I mean, that’s the lesson here.
I can’t wrap my head around all of this information about the FBI and Russia and everything and there is nothing the democracy can do to re-evaluate this mess. Like, the train keeps going to no man’s land, we know there is a YUGE fire on it, and yet we can’t get off OR CHANGE TRAINS.
As much as it pains me to say it, she DID lose the election, according to the electoral college rules. Those rules are antiquated and give too much weight to the underpopulated rural states, but she lost. He won by a narrow margin in the counties and states that mattered. Math. I want to believe that Comey and Russia did her in, and I think it’s plausible that their actions may have depressed the vote for Hillary, but not sure any of the tainted info swayed the majority of actual voters.
Thank you!! The electoral college was created to give slave states parity. Same with gerrymandering. And discouraging women from voting or holding any office. You cannot claim to win elections when you’ve restructured the whole damn country to do so. Democrats have taken their eye off the ball with all this “we have to understand and include white working class haters” approach. They should be working to eradicate racist and sexist structures. And emerging third parties need to learn how to compromise so they can grow and contribute to actual positive change.
I don’t think this was the *only* reason why people didn’t vote for her but I absolutely agree that it was a huge part of it for some people. And the thing is, I don’t think a lot of those people are even aware that it was sexism on their part–I think a lot of it was subconscious.
Latent/subconscious bias at its worst. Take the person upthread who said that Hillary was “slick and manufactured and fake, bought-off by special interests, out of touch, and a panderer, etc.” And yet, this describes Drumpf to a “t” as well, so why is it bad when it’s Hillary but electable when it’s Trump?
I put my post in the wrong place.
‘Personally, I never cared that Hillary Clinton made speeches and got paid. What bugged me about that issue was that she should have just released the text of those speeches right away. ‘
X 1000. This infuriated me because it was such an easy step and the speeches proved nothing. Instead it left people to imagine the worst. I’ve always believed HRC’s problem was that she didn’t trust anyone, especially the public (who could blame her) and that read as untrustworthy to most people.
And yet the Orange Orangutan never disclosed his taxes and no one cared (at least not enough people cared to make a big deal out of it).
Exactly, how many freakin’ times did he get caught in a lie? He admitted to assaulting women, he had his quack of a doctor release a bogus health statement and people just didn’t care. But Hillary should have been more transparant…
People didn’t even care enough about his competence as most voters believed he was not competent enough and yet voted for him anyway.
@ nasty woman – my comment was not meant in comparison to him because there is nothing to compare to him, just a statement on HRC’s campaign in general. Like Wilma said, she should have been more transparent. It was her Achilles’ heel and she, and/or her campaign, didn’t do enough to change the perception.
I’m more angry at the “journalists” out there that had an opportunity to literally hold up a sign and say things like “You’re denying you said China was behind the climate change conspiracy. Yet on ____ here is the tweet YOU wrote. Here it is word for word. Why are you lying?” Where was that confrontation? We saw it in the debates toward Hillary, but I never once saw someone say “Here is your proof, can we put it up on the big screen over there? Look Trump – look, you are lying.” I think too many people saw Hillary confronted directly and yet Trump was able to sidestep it. I’m so effing angry at how he was treated with such gentle hands throughout this whole thing. I really do blame the media. Which, by the way, why is someone not saying “Hey Trump, you said the media was rigged against you and yet you won. How do you explain that?”
ARGH! I’m still seething over this. I have to get through it but I have no idea how.
The issue is that people have a double standard regarding men and women. A woman got paid for something so everyone starts screaming that she has to to justify it. Meanwhile Trump has countless conflicts, lawsuits, wouldn’t release his taxes, etc, but none of his supporters cared about that.
It’s why the right wing had to make up “crimes” for Hillary (and Bill) that were equal to or worse than the crimes Trump actually did commit – corruption, sexual perversion etc.
I don’t think she could release the text of private speeches without permission of those who hired her. It’s an ethical issue. They paid for it and they “own” it. She was talking plainly to them and they might not have wanted to release the talks. Probably nothing really there that she hadn’t said before, but it still wasn’t hers to give. She was basically paid as a consultant.
This. They weren’t hers to release! And then when the Russians did release them, they weren’t anything horrible at all.
I think being paid for speeches is not a problem if you declare it. We allow our MPs to have commercial activities, gifts, speeches etc as long as they declare them.
That said, finding out that she made undeclared speeches to bankers was a storm in a teacup until you read the text of some of those speeches. Wikileaks included the text of some speeches in their Clinton email dump. It was damaging to discover that she was telling the bankers that she holds a private position AND a public position on any given issue and the two were not necessarily aligned.
It’s similar to Charles’s spider memos. A huge scandal until the memos were released and people discovered they held harmless opinions. Scandal averted.
Finding out that Clinton was telling bankers, a class already distrusted by the public, that she was two faced in her opinions was not good for her reputation at all.
Christopher Hitches once said that the Clintons’ default position was lying, and Hilary’s secretive behaviour has never disproved him, including the text of those speeches.
At every turn, consciously or unconsciously she proves him right.
And given that Trump’s default position is lying, here we go.
Her default position seems to have been withholding, not lying per se, perhaps after decades of relentless attacks. She became extremely defensive.
You make the mistake of equating Trump with Clinton. And therein lies your faulty argument.
Trump is and was every horrible thing you wish to call him. He never hid it. Frankly, given what has gone before, i remain flummoxed that he threw his hat in the ring, and he was elected.
Every politician is attacked. Clinton feels more attacked than most, BUT they (Bill AND Hilary) mishandle their defense such that they end up looking like liars. So many situations became/become bigger because of their default lying as the first line of defense. Having lied, they dig in. And the situation devolves into a big scandal. That was Hitchens’ assessment of them.
LAK- those speeches were given as a private citizen, iirc. And they belonged to whomever paid for them. So I understand why HRC didn’t disclose more.
And “It was damaging to discover that she was telling the bankers that she holds a private position AND a public position on any given issue and the two were not necessarily aligned” only because folks are idiots.
That was not being two faced. That was being a trustworthy representative of the people. There SHOULD be a private and public position for all representatives of government. The private should be sometimes at odds with the public. Otherwise, you are serving your own private interests!!
Example: I loathe abortion. Think it’s murder. But I am a politician who serves a constituency that supports it. I therefore, publically support it. That’s not two faced- that’s serving my voters. It would be wrong to let my private feelings dictate my service.
Or prayer in school. I might be privately okay with it. But if I’m a politician sworn to uphold the constitution, I say there’s a separation of church and state and cast my private feelings aside to be publically aligned with the constitution.
Ultimately, people were idiots to let that private vs. Public statement make them think Hillary was two faced. That statement was evidence she’d be an objective President.
We should not want our President to be a slave to his personal beliefs. That’s how we ended up with Trump, who only cares about himself, and Pence, who thinks it’s okay to force his private beliefs on the public via his religion stances on abortion and LBGT people.
Rampunzel: You misunderstand the problem entirely.
This wasn’t about Clintons’ personal beliefs nor was she hired to give her personal beliefs. Public vs personal are two very distinct things and i agree with your point about personal beliefs.
The speech that was leaked concerned policy decisions. What she claims her positions to be in public vs what her policy decisions are in private.
Finally, i started out by saying i don’t have any issue with politicians having side commerce if those interests are declared. Personally, Knowing that she gave speeches to bankers was not an issue at all.
It became an issue when she publicly talked about regulating Wall street whilst telling those same bankers that her public policy positions aren’t the same as her private policy positions. That’s the issue.
Using your own analogy, i would be mightily offended to hear you publicly support abortion THEN find that you are privately telling abortion clinics that you will cut their funding. That is a policy position. Your personal beliefs about abortion wouldn’t factor into the offense UNLESS that was the reasoning you gave for cutting the funding. That would make you a double hypocrite because you would have twice betrayed your stated public position.
LAK- I see your distinction, and it’s valid. But you are taking the stance that a private policy position means private policy promises and deals. That’s not necessarily the case.
I suspect that whole statement was badly worded and thus misunderstood.
The public vs private positions wasn’t about being two-faced. It was clearly about choosing which aspects to emphasize with different people, which is indeed necessary. For example, the moral repugnance of bombing unarmed people may be the driving force for me in objecting to bombing people. But I’ve found that many people don’t respond well to that argument because they think they have the right to drop bombs and get uncomfortable if anybody suggests it’s fundamentally wrong. So I will then use the the equally true argument that bombing people is very counterproductive and creates terrorists.
To be honest, as someone who was 110% for Bernie, her highly paid speeches for Wall Street were the biggest problem I had coming around to her once she had won the primaries.
But I’m a sane person who cares about myself and other people and the country in general, so I got over it and voted for her.
The only reason Bernie hasn’t been doing paid speeches is because he has been in Congress continuously. Hillary didn’t do them as Senator or Secretary of State. Really, it’s normal.
I really don’t understand the problem with paid speeches, public or private. It’s a type of consultancy work especially if done with private groups. The privacy is so the audience can freely talk in the discussion and ask questions. It doesn’t mean she was plotting the death of the Republic. But it does mean she isn’t free to release transcripts. That’s not keeping secrets, it’s respecting the privacy of your clients.
He’s not wrong. I think the bad thing about the Dems is they want to blame everyone else when part of it should be placed at their feet
Don’t get me wrong America is racist, filled with idiots, the FBI director should be fired for withholding info AND opening a nonsense investigation to sway the election, etc.
But the DNC lost the ground game, didn’t go to the areas necessary like the rust belt, apparently counted Bernie out before the primary was over, called a large part of their voting base stupid (the millennial block), did not do enough about BLM and criticized them via emails which were later released.
I’m not saying the odds weren’t stacked against them because I do believe the election was sabatoged. But pretending the DNC didn’t misstep a lot is a disservice because in the midterms if we lose a seat we lose the power to block anything. And pretending the DNC is infallible is how we slid so far back. It’s also why I’m not a registered Dem myself. I find them insufferable on certain issues and they’ve lost their way quite a bit. Obama stemmed the flow of backlash but it was coming
Bernie was already predicted to lose the primary before the date of the infamous DNC emails. He had the same amount of funding as every other Democratic candidate – in fact, I do believe he spent more overall on the primaries than she did – and had access to more debate time than previous candidates. The DNC made missteps overall, but they are not responsible for why Bernie Sanders lost the primary. If he wants to run again in 2020, go for it, but his supporters need to stop blaming the DNC and look at why moderates and minority voters did not turn out for him.
But… but… but…
The democratic candidate got more votes! 3 million of them! How can we talk about the DNC’s shoddy ground game when the only reasons Hillary lost were Russia, James Comey, and the electoral college? I just don’t understand all this blame being thrown at the Dems and Hillary when she basically won the election.
Maybe I’m missing something, so feel free to enlighten me.
Because a lot of those votes are from California and useless? HRC won Cali and she had a huge margin there but she didn’t win where it counted in the system we have NOW.
And yes the DNC absolutely should get blame because they lost many states Obama won clearly. Heck they lost PA which is a BLUE STATE. Its time to stop pretending like the neo-liberal movement isnt full of issues. It is. And the constant denial is why we don’t have enough senate seats to block the impending doom we have hanging over our heads until midterms.
And I’m not blaming the DNC for Bernie’s loss I’m saying that they didn’t sway his voting block by calling them idiots and not merging the gap after the primary was over. There’s no reason that the huge Bernie following should not have swung to HRC.
The dems know how the game is played and the popular vote (very sadly) is meaningless. They screwed up in a million ways, not the least of it was pushing the Hillary nomination.
I was screaming 2 years ago that it had to be Biden. After 8 years of Republican obstruction of the most dignified and brilliant President we’ve seen in our lifetime, 4 years of Hillary would have been 4 more years of Republican torture from non-stop (unwarranted) investigations in Congress to endless Hillary bashing on Fox.
Biden is a white guy and even Republicans like him! All of the insanity that the Republicans could feed off of would be gone. And he could have gotten things done and moved progressive items forward. We probably wouldn’t have lost the senate if he had been on the top of the ticket and we’d get a progressive Supreme Court.
It was not Hillary’s “turn”. She had sooooo much baggage and Judd is right… if she knew she was going to run WTF with the speeches to big banking??? She damn sure knew it is just more ammunition for the blood thirsty right wing to get her. Plus, she spent tons of time doing fund raisers in Hollywood instead of figuring out how to get her message out in the states where it was going to make a difference.
Her baggage led to things like Comey and the Russian interference. With Biden, that stuff wouldn’t have happened. There was no hatred for him that could have been used against him with fake news…
In an ideal world, she would have been a fantastic President, but this is far from an ideal world. I certainly voted for her, but it was the wrong place, wrong time, wrong candidate. Hillary and the DNC has no one to blame but themselves.
“There’s no reason that the huge Bernie following should not have swung to HRC.”
No there isn’t a reason yet the fact remains that many of them did not swing to HRC.
Is neoliberalism to blame? Partially, but I also know a lot of Sanders supporters who NEVER would have voted for HRC not just because of her Wall Street ties and famous last name, but because she’s a woman.
Sanders had a contingent of supporters who made it their mission to spread misogynistic memes and anti-Hillary rhetoric based on false news. So I think it’s an oversimplification to say that it was merely the DNC’s fault, especially when we know the highly-effective smear campaign against Hillary has been ongoing for the past 20 years.
Many Sanders-supporters did the GOP’s dirty work by perpetuating the image of “Crooked Hillary” in lieu of “Crooked Donald”–let’s not forget that.
I’m not saying its ALL the DNC’s fault. I said a huge part of the blame needs to be laid at their feet and people seem to be avoiding that conversation. Sure Bernie bros didn’t vote for HRC but youth? Minorities? Latinos? Working class? Where was the pull for them. Trump got a larger latino vote. Many minorities stayed home. The gap was not insurmountable but the HRC campaign were so SURE that they would swing her way even after the primaries when you still had the DNC alienating those people.
And I don’t buy that Bernie bros did huge damage to HRC during the primary. If that were the case no voters would swing to the part ticket after the primaries. Bernie played the game to get the nom and he didn’t win. The gap to close should have been easier between 2 than 12.
Although Bernie can miss me with all the BS he’s been spouting lately too
None of this matters any more. When people vote in 2018 and 2020, they will do so based on what happens in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, not on what someone’s campaign did in 2016. We have to move on. Every time I point out an issue with Trump, Ryan or McConnell, Trumpets tell me: “get over it. Hillary lost. Move on!” I respond that I am over it. Hillary Clinton and emails and Benghazi are not the issues and they need to stop waving them around like shields. The issues now are Trump, Ryan, and McConnell and they can’t hide behind “But Hillary!” They need to move on and face the disastrous fall-out of their ill-informed actions.
“There’s a danger on the internet that you think you’re accomplishing something. So you see an article about a disease and retweet it and think ‘It’s cured now!’ And you’ve fooled yourself into thinking that you’ve done something productive.”
THIS! So sick of celebrities making their daily post about the hyped theme of the day: wheter is that somebody dies, or a tragedy happened or a celebratory day like MLK they all post a nice picture or a cute quote and they think they’ve made themselves relevant for the day, they’re at peace.
I have a friend who calls himself an activist because he shares articles on Facebook.
The petitions bug me. So many, and I doubt they go anywhere but give people something to do … instead of making the calls and writing the letters, which we do nearly every day and you know what? It takes a lot of time.
Ha, I have an acquaintance who does the same thing. She spends so much time on FB doing that I don’t know how she accomplishes anything else in her life. Some of the stuff she posts is good, but some makes me cringe…she doesn’t seem to distinguish between legit news stories and click bait.
If she had released the text of the speeches, we would have ripped them apart to find everything wrong about her ideas and views, even if they were better or the same as Trump’s. The reality is that nobody wants to face is just how racist, sexist, and xenophobic we really are as a country. We thought we were better than that. Well, we’re not. People are scared of an emerging future in which they don’t see a place for their self, and they voted along with those fears. Placing the blame at any individual’s feet is just senseless at this point. The people responsible are the people who voted for him. Period, end of story. Time to focus on the work that needs done from this point forward because it’s all uphill from here.
Thank you! All of this hand-wringing over what Hillary did wrong, when we literally have the worst presidential candidate in recent history being inaugurated this week is bizarre. He spoke to enough xenophobic, racist, sexist people to get elected. Period. His whole platform was based on those things. He never changed it and he never apologized for it. That is what people voted for. The end.
Well-said!
Maybe I am wrong, but her only message was we can’t put Donald Trump in office because we cannot trust what he will do. That is not enough of a message to get people to the polls. I wish she had picked up on what Bill said about healthcare and had run on that. Made her message something along the lines of, “The ACA has done tremendous things for millions of people in this country. We want to build on all of the things it has done right but make some improvements. It is crushing small businesses and we need to fix that. This is how we are going to do that…” Not that trump has an economic message, but he had sound bites and that goes a long way. I agree that she shouldn’t have been so secretive about the paid speeches. It looked like she was hiding something. Maybe she was, but I would rather be dealing with Hillary’s secrets right now than whatever skeletons are hiding in Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s closet.
“but her only message was we can’t put Donald Trump in office because we cannot trust what he will do.”
She spent so much time emphasizing that message because it was necessary, as proven by the fact that a good number of people still wanted him as their leader despite all the crap he said and did. She wasn’t underestimating the stupidity of the American public like so many did leading up to the election.
She has had a lengthy political career focused on children and families, education, and women’s rights. It’s not as if she had no message whatsoever.
ITA, Shamby. Unfortunately, talking about the importance of the ACA wouldn’t mean much to people who still use the term “Obamacare” in the prejorative and who consistently lament the rising cost of insurance premiums. I actually know people who voted for Trump precisely BECAUSE they hate the costs associated with “Obamacare” and like the idea of it being dismantled. It’s now been explained to them ad nauseum the dire repercussions of the ACA being dismantled and they STILL think it’s a good thing.
Was it necessary to build an entire campaign on that message? If it had worked, maybe, but obviously it didn’t work. I know about Hillary Clinton’s unselfish work that she has done for our country. We are a better country because of Hillary Clinton, but when she needed a stronger, but simpler message to win, and she didn’t have one.
Rhiley,
I didn’t mean to insinuate that you aren’t familiar with Hillary’s long political history, and I’m sorry. I simply meant that she has been very vocal about what she stands for over the last 30 years, and all it would take is a little research to refresh someone’s memory on that. She spent so much time emphasizing Donald Trump’s complete incompetence because she had to, because it felt like half the country was drinking the coolaid while the rest of us were being made to feel like we were going crazy.
Ha Shambles, he WISHES everyone drank the COOL-aid. That’s all he ever wanted, was to be with the cool kids, at the cool table and be loved, admired and respected. Unfortunately he confused that with Kool-aid drinkers, who are a rabid bunch with no real allure to him. They’re the uncool aids.
@Shambles- no need to apologize. I apologize if I came off a defensive. I always appreciate your perspective. .
@Rhiley: What was Donald’s message? He ran on a “slogan”. “Make America great again”. That’s not a message, it’s a slogan and it worked. He’s not going to build the wall and make Mexico pays for it. Now he wants the American tax payers to pay for the wall and Mexico will reimburse. Mexico is not going to pay for a wall on American soil, they are not stupid. Then he was going to put Hillary in jail, remember, “lock her up”, now who knows. If I was a betting person I would put my money on Donald Trump going to jail before Hillary. Then he was going to lock out Muslins coming in the country, now not a word. The man talks out of both sides of his mouth and when his mouth is moving he’s lying.
Exactly my point. He had sound bite, and in this country, sound bites work. I have been a Hillary supporter my whole life. I voted for Hillary before I voted for Obama. I voted for Hillary over Bernie Sanders. But when she had answers like, “I do have an economic policy. In fact, you can read my book about my economic policy…” I cringed. I also had some choice words when I read the “deplorables” speech. What the hell was she thinking? Seriously, who set her up to do that? Because if we learned anything from Mitt Romney it is never go after the voters directly. My point, I think, is: Hillary’s campaign made a lot of mistakes. A lot of costly mistakes. The Comey interference certainly stopped momentum, but I question whether it cost her the election. You can’t just give up on states- Ohio for instance- early on in the campaign and then think you are going to be president.
But she did put out that message about the ACA. Repeatedly. And when she did it during the debates, the Cheeto went on a long rant about how once the ACA was repealed insurers under his plan would be making so much money they would be happy to give coverage to people with pre-existing conditions for free. Which should have been an indication that he was crazy.
@Rhiley , If you think that was her only message you never read her webpage which put out everything she wanted but the press was too busy screaming EMAILS, EMAILS, EMAILS.
There are no skeletons to find with Hillary. It’s all GOP Fake ass scandals , to bash her and they’ve done it for 35yrs and NOT ONE CHARGE, NOT ONE, NOT ONE. ALL these scandals come to NOTHING. It’s all fake bullshite and investigations that lead to nothing.
STILLWITHHER.
F the GOP
If Hillary’s speeches to bankers was really an issue, you’d think Trump actually selecting bankers for his Cabinet would be an issue for those same people. But it isn’t. Because NONE of this why Trump won.
Trump won cause the people who voted for him were looking for reasons to hate Hillary. They didn’t want to do any research into Trump himself. They didn’t care. They were looking to be handed excuses to vote against progress. To vote for someone who would make their lives magically better by getting rid of all the progress that has “ruined” it.
+1,000,000
Not just hate Hillary, hate. Just plain hate.
They want to hate, loudly.
There was no need to research Trump. The man has been embroiled in scandal since the 80s. You really have to have lived under a rock not to be aware of Trump and the many ways he offends.
I was a kid in the 80s and i remember Trump!!! That’s how much noise and flimflam he created.
Right from the gate of his candidacy, he was offending. Vintage Trump.
Lots of media throughout the campaign spotlighting all the ways he was offending.
No research needed.
LAK- sad, but true. No research needed. Everyone should have known better.
I suppose by “research” I meant actually look at his plans, or lack of vs. HRC. Many Trumpsters didn’t want to do the work to see whether Trump’s ideas actually benefit them. Ergo, we have tons of them now regretting their votes cause they didn’t understand they’d lose their insurance.
Truth. People want to hate Hillary; it’s an irrational hate. They are so quick to disparage her and her alone for her apparent satanic deceitfulness and evil, yet Trump is fine, even to evangelicals. Once I saw people in my own life doing this, I could see that they had no capacity for rational thought regarding her. It was purely emotional based on some fucked up biases. I heard a lot of “I don’t want to vote for either of them,” as though they were equally repugnant.
The odd thing about the evangelicals’ support of Trump is that he really isn’t a religious guy. He’s nominally some kind of Protestant but not the regular church-going kind. His odd way of referring to one biblical quote made it clear that he’s not into bible study either.
In contrast, Hillary has been actively involved in her church and actually underwent serious faith-based marriage counseling with Bill. She doesn’t make public noise about her religious beliefs but they are clearly important to her. She just doesn’t impose them on others.
Exactly and sadly I saw the same hate from the Millenials going towards Hillary, most had no idea why they hated her, except Bernie and Trump said she was bad. They just repeated GOP mantras….Hillary bad, Hillary bad…..I asked but most said oh she’s qualified but bad….but couldn’t say why.
Trump’s campaign was a mess, one mess after another. He won. I still believe Trump Whisperer Kellyanne saved him, because his imploding campaign seem to stabilize somewhat. He would listen to her.
I’m really tired of people blaming Hillary.
Fact is, a huge percentage of the US population never even tried to develop any sense of empathy for anyone remotely different than themselves. Then they found a leader who gave them the way to broadcast their archaic viewpoints, regardless of whom might be hurt, or worse, as long as they got to be exactly whom they’ve always been, just now in public.
The only people to blame are the ones who voted for trump, and IMO those who voted 3rd party, in a time when there are so many people about to be hurt by his administration.
It certainly is deplorable.
I agree with him in almost everything he said. HRCs lack of transparency in several areas is one of the reasons I couldn’t vote for her, Her attitude when questioned was smug, then when the questions continued, exasperated. It all led to an air of secrecy that was unnecessarily exaggerated to the point of damage, and it didn’t have to be.
Another reason…..The huge pay checks for Wall Street speeches? Cmon, it smacks of subtle pay for play given her known presidential aspirations at the time,
And the final nail in the coffin that prohibited my support of Clinton…… add in the Clinton Foundation and its own pay for play allegations. And before the defense of same comes up, what I said would happen HAS happened…..
The Clinton Global Initiaive funding donations completely dried up after the election…..all those foreign governments and foreign and domestic big shots contributing didn’t feel the love so much for the so important work of the foundation when she is politically impotent. It was recently announced that most of the staff is to be laid off and will shut its doors in April.
Impossible to pretend like that was all about bartering access and favors, real and perceived, Especially now that it gets belly up after the election.
I couldn’t stomach the conflicts and The appearance of conflicts.
As bad as Trump is….and he is, again I didn’t vote for him either……pretending like she wasn’t a deeply flawed candidate on her own is myopic in my opinion. Yours will likely vary. (Shrugs)
I’m glad you can equate the flaws of Hillary with the flaws of trump, and his administration.
May you sleep soundly at night, knowing you actively participated in the downfall of the rights of millions of americans.
Though if you cannot see the simple difference, I am willing to bet you do sleep soundly.
The cries of the families who have members dying of cancer and cannot get treatment shouldn’t affect your life at all. (shrugs)
A few weeks ago, she told me I was overreacting on the health care thing. And the past week saw everything I said Ryan would do come true.
Alright, HRC was a flawed candidate.
And every single candidate that has ever run for President has been flawed, to varying degrees of depth.
But because Hillary was a woman, and a woman who persued her own goals and success while her husband was rising through the ranks of politics rather than smiling and waving as politicians wives are supposed to do, people decided they didn’t trust her. And so, every single thing she has and hasn’t done has been magnified and maginified in order to fit with this narrative that she’s untrustworthy.
The reality is that she received 3 million + more votes than her opponent, so blaming her for being a “deeply flawed candidate” holds no water, for me. She was still able to garner the support of more than half the country. She just had an antiquated system, Vladimir Putin, James Comey, and a 30 year smear campaign stacked against her.
She wasn’t able to get the needed vote out……she did get 3 million more …..but almost 5 million who were galvanized to vote for Obama couldn’t be bothered to show up for her or anyone else. She lost because of poor traditionally democratic voter turnout in many cases. So it could have and should have been more voters and in places other than California which was the source of those 3 million.
There are dozens of reasons she lost Including but not limited to sexism. Absolutely! But pretending like she didn’t contribute to this outcome is myopic.
Genuine question: how do you believe the aforementioned issues that you had with Clinton’s candidacy would have affected her ability to be POTUS? How would these concerns translate into policy that would/could potentially affect your quality of life?
I also have to add that as someone who has seen former presidents and political figures speak at large financial conferences, they’re there to give a rah-rah type speech to assuage any economic trepidation or concerns and to essentially kiss the ass of people who work in the financial sector.
I’m not sure what people would expect Clinton to talk about but companies don’t pay $200K to have someone criticize their alleged misdeeds in front of an auditorium full of bankers and financial types. What she did was hardly criminal or even suspicious IMO, actually really typical of these paid appearances. The only mistake she made–and it was a crucial one–was with the timing of these appearances.
How does lack of trust and perceived / real pay for play impact her ability to be POTUS?
Seriously? Cmon.The same way it impacts Trump and all the screaming about his business ties, conflicts of interest etc. The answer to that is self evident, Kitten. You and I and all readers know the answer.
Former presidents on the victory lap (as Apatow put it) is one thing, Presidential wannabes cozying up to Wall Street in return for mega bucks For little effort SMACKS of not so subtle pay for future play.
Yes it is a timing issue. You are right. But in this case, timing was every thing. And she was not and now will never be a former president. And just like those foundation donations…….Those Wall Street speaking gigs for big dollars are a thing of the past for her too.
Another indication of their true intent.
PERCEIVED Pay for Play. PERCEIVED is the key word because unlike Trump, where there is clear and indisputable proof of business conflicts, there has never been any concrete proof that Clinton was involved in pay-to-play simply by giving speaking engagements to banks.
What’s scary is that people fall for Trump’s BS: he makes a false and or/overreaching statement without any factual proof (in this case: “A couple of very bad ones came out and it’s called pay-for-play and some of these were really, really bad — and illegal. If it’s true, it’s illegal. You’re paying and you’re getting things,”) and he effectively changes the conversation. Giving a speaking engagement to a bank is not in and of itself proof of any collusion between HRC and banks–it’s actually more believable that the woman simply wanted to make some damn money.
Post-presidency, Bush made $15M giving speeches to private firms–one was even made to a Swiss bank sanctioned for keeping secret bank accounts–and nobody batted an eyelash.
Again, the only mistake HRC made was doing this before she decided to run for POTUS–a terrible mistake as we all agree–but certainly not evidence of creating a *sinister* relationship with bank execs.
I’m not sure what would have been the doomsday scenario that liberal idealists were envisioning if Clinton brought her Wall St ties to the White House: Goldman Sachs in her cabinet?
Well, guess what?
That happened anyway with Trump.
Had she won, perhaps HRC could have reassured voters by NOT appointing a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street and vowing to work closely with Elizabeth Warren on banking regulations but now we’ll never know, will we? We’re stuck with a cabinet full of people who are actively working against the very things they should be advocating for. We’ll never have the chance to hold HRC accountable, because we’re too busy trying to make sure that democracy doesn’t die under the current administration.
Again, I’m an Independent who voted for Sanders in the primary and wanted change as much as the next person but when push comes to shove I knew the alternative would have been a nightmare.
As a liberal pragmatist, I voted for someone who I knew would at the very least be a continuation of the same. You guys wanted a liberal revolution without realizing that the wave of nationalism was rising and they wanted a revolution of their own. Even though I can get on board with the criticisms of the Democratic Party and neoliberals with the best of them, I have little-to-no patience left for people who keep hammering on HRC when we have Tinkles the Clown and his KKKrew in the White House. More of the same neoliberalism that we enjoyed for the past 8 years seems like a dream by comparison.
BTW, an HRC win would have been better for Sanders, better for Warren, and better for the Left in general. Now we have the Right controlling everything and a madman at the helm. Get used to the steady erosion of all the social progress we achieved under Obama.
Meh, Sorry but I don’t buy for a second that the opportunity for big speaking fees are going to dry up for either Hillary or Bill Clinton. I know FOX News has made a huge deal out of this idea lately and I suspect that’s where the poster is getting her talking points.. (My guess is they are trying to mitigate Trump’s CLEAR kleptocracy by bringing up the SUPPOSITION that Hillary was bought and paid for. There was plenty of QUID for Hillary but never any proof of PRO QUO. In contrast, we already have proof that Trump is benefitting from his position. It makes it hard to take these critiques of Hillary seriously tbh )
The truth is there are a limited number of Ex Presidents and Ex First Ladies of the US and they all have the capacity to make a ton of money making speeches. Some of them, like Ford, lived off these type of speeches and appearances and he stopped being super relevant to most people in the late 70s.
@keaton. Then now do you explain the sudden dry up post election of donations and now he shuttering of the global initiative????
@CItyHeat-Ok but this has been happening for almost two years now. It’s simply false to characterize this as something that coincided with HRC’s loss.
“Donations to the Clinton Foundation nose-dived last year amid Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, pay-to-play allegations, internal strife and a black mark from a charity watchdog.
Contributions fell by 37 percent to $108 million, down from $172 million in 2014, according to the group’s latest tax filings.
The cash plummeted as Hillary Clinton left the nonprofit in April 2015 after announcing her ill-fated candidacy. The foundation became a major issue in the race, with Donald Trump vowing to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate it. Not only did contributions drop, but so did revenue the Clintons brought in from speeches. That income fell to $357,500 from $3.6 million in 2014.
By the time the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative held its annual conference in September 2015, many donors had bailed, including Samsung and ExxonMobil.”
Thank you @Kitten.
Tangentially related: I was watching an event on CSPAN several months ago where legal scholars were discussing the Presidents . This was after Hillary had announced her run for the Presidency but it was before the Trump campaign started the “Crooked Clinton Foundation” onslaught. And I SHIT YOU NOT – Kenneth Starr of all people was there and he talked about how much Bill Clinton had redeemed himself post-presidency with his foundation. Weird right? It’s amazing how rapidly that Foundations reputation was destroyed. I have never read the book but I heard “Clinton Cash” played a huge part in it. It’s been popular with the Brietbart alt-right crowd but if Kenneth Starr was characterizing Bill’s charitable work positively then clearly the more main stream conservatives didn’t see it as negatively.
It’s just something I found interesting.
I agree. You say this so well.
Also, I think people forget that many Republican politicians come from families that already have money. Further, they have more wealthy donors to donate large amounts to their campaigns. They don’t have to find other means to make money the way someone who was not born with money has to.
Re: drying up of donations.
I agree the optics are bad, but I have to wonder exactly what people thought the donors were supposed to get out of it if there really WAS pay-for-play. The two largest donors were Australia and Norway. I can’t think of a US policy that’s big enough to effect either of those countries but small enough to manipulate with a bribe. For example, Australia was pro Pan-Pacific Trade, but that’s such a big thing that a $50 million bribe wouldn’t change the outcome.
I think it’s more likely that there was no real scandal at all. Australia and Norway are small enough that it initially made sense to seek “technical assistance” from the Clinton Foundation for help dispersing foreign aid … but being linked to a US political scandal raised questions at home, so the partnerships were dropped.
And yet you have said you voted Libertarian, which put forth a candidate both smug and clueless and a VP candidate in Bill Weld who is a giant package of smug (usually drunken smug), who also took huge paychecks for speeches
The third party voters are not worth trying to convince , they will never admit the truth, that they gave Bush 2 and helped Trump.
They put Trump in office.
Cityheat- the Clinton Foundation did not get a negative mark for their charity from any legitimate source, one watchdog outfit simply decided that their usual templates for judging charities was hard to apply to the Foundation projects because of the way they were structured and their evaluation methods would need to be revised before re-issuing an evaluation.
The Foundation was recognized as a legitimate charity that did good work both in the US and internationally. They funded most projects directly rather than being a pass-through directing donations as grants to other organizations. One false rightwing claim interpreted the small pass-through grant percentage as the total percentage of donations reaching recipients, but the real figure is about 89%. So their overhead expense was only 11%, which is excellent. The Clintons themselves donated millions of dollars to their Foundation, thanks to those infamous speakers fees… They are a public foundation and their finances are transparent in accordance with law, so you can easily check them out yourself. The Clintons have also released decades of their own tax returns so you can see what they claim as charitable contributions.
Trump’s Foundation is the sketchy one under investigation – it is a private foundation and its finances are not public. It is under investigation by the New York attorney general because Trump authorized (signed the checks himself) use of Foundation funds for improper purposes such as buying portraits of himself for display in his properties, donating to the Florida attorney general who then soon after dropped a requested investigation of Trump University from Florida citizens affected, buying sports memorabilia, and settling lawsuits against his business. Trump himself donated very little to his private foundation.
To avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest, the Clinton Foundation started making plans at least by last summer after the nomination to transfer the international projects and donations to other organizations. The donations didn’t “dry up”, they were no longer being accepted by the Foundation and directed elsewhere at least by September according to something I read (with real quotes by real people with their real pictures who were involved in the real Foundation…). Originally it was a contingency plan in case she won the election, but possibly they decided to just do it anyway as long as they had the options set up or the logistics would have been too time-consuming to wait until November. Or maybe your source assumed that filing the plans was equal to executing the plans, I don’t know. In any case, this was a move voluntarily planned by the Foundation itself. Your quoted material sounds as though it was not from a reputable site but rather one of those smear sites, so be careful about believing everything you read. Fake news, remember?
There was never any evidence of the corruption you assume, that was always just a Trumpian and rightwinger baseless accusation against Hillary that never matched reality or a casual glance at real records. Her meeting schedule is known and available for scrutiny. As Secretary of State, the record shows that she met with people any Secretary of State had met with in the past or would meet with because of their positions in their government or as representatives of organizations with which they were affiliated. Donors definitely did not get access to her just because they were donors and we saw evidence of that from responses of her office. Associated Press wrote an odd piece where they engaged in their usual practice of writing misleading headlines and first paragraphs (and tweets in modern times) but if you read the entire article, you can see it actually backs up what I’ve said.
I don’t know why I continue to read these articles. It is rage inducing. The DNC “failing” to “reach out”- once the alternative was Trump, what more was needed?? Honestly, the comments from some democratic supporters are along the lines “I can’t be bothered to vote unless a special unicorn runs” is maddening. And who sees that changing? I sure don’t. I will always vote, but my belief is that it’ll matter less than it already does.
Yes, that is what sane people do. When the ideal option isn’t there, you look at the candidates and hold your nose while you vote for the least repugnant option. Seriously, in March I get to choose from 14 parties and I will choose the party that is most likely to stop our version of Trump and I will suck it up.
About 100,000 people in 3 states (MI, PA, WI) made the difference in the election. I don’t think anyone voted for Trump based on Hillary’s paid speeches. But it’s possible some (likely middle to upper class) progressives in those states stayed home or voted 3rd party because of those speeches. :/ I have zero respect for anyone that fits that description tbh.
As far as the funniest candidate winning: I totally agree that Obama is much funnier than Romeny but I think McCain was pretty funny. Obama was just a special candidate, once in a lifetime. We’ll probably never see his likes again but it stings to see someone like Trump replace him. 🙁
I know Trumpets who cite those speeches as their defense but they were Trump supporters any way.
Exactly @Liightpurple. In fact I’m starting to think more and more that most Trump supporters were going to vote for a Republican regardless. People often look for excuses for justify what they are already inclined to do.
It’s like the whole “Oh I’d be happy to vote for a woman, just not THIS woman” Sorry but that doesn’t hold water with me when you opt to vote for a SIGNIFICANTLY less qualified, less competent, tempermentally unfit, bully with no clear plans instead.
Someone ^^ mentioned that DT was accused of all kinds of horrible things, ” He never hide it”. That’s is totally false. DT NEVER admits any wrong. He will always pivot to someone else and says they are “lies”. The same with his spokes person kellyanne Conway, she is a pathological layer and whatever is asked about DT failings she pivots to Hillary Clinton as the wicked witch and DT as the Angel. Take for instance the pu$$y grabbing, DT denied totally doing the grabbing. Something we all heard him saying in his own voice saying in his own voice. Burney Sandards told us, DT is a pathological liar.
Meh, Comrade tRump charged $1.5 million a speech. Washington Post, Kathleen Parker, February 5, 2016, Opinions section.
I put the blame square on the shoulders of the DNC. The powers that be were so hell bent in getting their golden candidate and it blew up in their faces. The DNC can suck a lemon as far as I’m concerned.
Bernie LOST , Because he got less votes, nothing else. Stop trying to make out he was cheated somehow. BERNIE used the Democratic Party for fame and to make money, then immediately went back to being Independent. IMO, He tried to Primary Obama too but couldn’t because they kept his ass out of the Primary that year,
Bernie LOST BY 3MILLION VOTES to Hillary. He also had practically NO African American vote and very little minority vote. He would have lost even worse.
Bernie had practically NO Minority vote, he would have lost even worse. Not everyone was enamoured with him. Look at his almost ALL white crowds.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting paid for giving speeches. Ronald Reagan got into politics because General Electric liked his speeches for them so much. It’s no worse than writing books or magazine articles – or performing as an actor or a musician. People who are well known and have something interesting to say and an interesting way of saying it get paid for speaking engagements. She was even at the low end of the pay scale for her speakers bureau. Those amounts are quite reasonable for such functions and the people paying such fees do not feel cheated. Colleges and universities often have endowed lecture series so they have the bucks to pay for speakers such as Hillary Clinton.
Honestly, no man has ever thought that getting paid to speak precludes his running again for political office! Not a single one has ever thought that way. I’m astonished anyone would even say such a thing myself. Where is that kind of thinking even coming from?
As far as “keeping secrets” is concerned – if she was hired to give private talks, ethically she could not just release the transcripts herself. The people who hired her could, but it would really be a breach of ethics for her to do so unilaterally. From the leaked info, though, she wasn’t saying anything she couldn’t say in public (or probably had already said). At points she was basically telling them that if they didn’t get their own house in order then the government would do it for them. Sounds like a good message for them to hear.
By the way, the Clintons both plowed a lot of those speakers fees into the Clinton Foundation for its various projects – millions of dollars all together.
I agree but one small correction: HRC owns the rights to all those private speeches and the banks do not have the legal rights to release the transcripts.
That being said, seeing what happened with the emails it would have been a HUGE mistake to release the transcripts of her private speeches to banks during an election year. It would have just provided fodder for her opponents to pick and chose which comments to take out of context and spin to appeal to the “Never Hillary” base.
Even if Hillary retained copyright (which would let her recycle for books and other speeches), there still might be privacy concerns and of course the problem of quotes out of context (as we saw when they were leaked). She really had good reason to be cautious, the unrelenting attacks on her for quite normal behavior were astounding. Shows how competent she was, if she were not so effective then no one would have bothered.
Kind of like the ACA itself – the Republicans aren’t afraid of it failing. They have always been afraid of it succeeding and being associated with the Democrats even though it was based on Romneycare in Massachusetts. If they back away from repealing it, they will just remove aspects vital to its success so they can claim it failed.
“Miscalculation” – brilliant.
Bullshite. after the fact. Another male putting down Hillary.
It would take all day to talk about the reasons why Clinton lost. The Democrat power brokers knew she was deeply unpopular, knew that people wanted change and knew that the election was the anti-establishment election. But they thought they could get away with forcing her on to the public and it backfired spectacularly.
Exactly. Nothing more to say. Blame the Russians all day but Hilary and the DNC made it damn easy for Trump to win.
The DNC only mistake was letting that two faced Sander’s in who is still putting the party down, when he is not even a Democrat.
She beat Bernie by 3. 5Million and Trump by 4million or more.
The woman had even the Networks working for Trump nonstop.
I disagree w/ Apatow. If anything she was too transparent. Nothing she could have done or said would have overcome the sexism and double standards. Trump and Bernie showed that not releasing info such as tax returns ended up benefiting them.
RAINY…honk for you
G….& I used to love him. Well, his work
Hillary is woman…. so let’s obsess what she did wrong… secretive personnel emails, speeches, over aggressive DNC strategies….. ALL FOUND NOT ILLEGAL.
Trump allows black protesters to be damn near pulverized by his (whites-shall-rise again supporters), has several lawsuits that women and young girls have filed saying he raped and sexually assaulted them, lawsuits on fraudulent business practices where he pretty much victimized older people out of their retirement, speaking on how he grabs women by the genitals, being chummy with russian powers, not showcasing his tax returns, utilizing wiki leaks to spurn fear and hate, threatening to undo NATO agreements, not taking intel briefings, mocks and belittles a muslim family that sacrificed THEIR SON FOR THIS FINE COUNTRY, belittling renown Civil Rights Activist John Lewis, making tax payers pay for a wall against a NAFTA country/ally, threatening a trade war with china (disregarding a ONE CHINA policy —decades in position) shall i MF continue…. fist issues to issue….of these things IVE LISTED some are down right are impeachable offenses or a least downright tawdry and lude, and make US vulnerable for implication and war.
Hollywood is so fickle and a lot of these commentators are as well….. fight issue to issue give me a break you “fickle franks”