Responding to recent polls showing that only 30% of voters found 68-year-old Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton trustworthy, the Democratic National Convention has spent the entire convention vouching for her credibility. “She has acknowledged that she needs to earn the trust of voters and that this is something she needs to focus on . . .the convention is the beginning of that process,” said Hillary campaign manager Robby Mook. Mook’s no one to be trusted when he told reporters recently that the July 21 Wikileaks release of 20,000 emails was orchestrated by 70-year-old GOP nominee Donald Trump. Hillary’s trust problems hark back to the dark days of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal when she told the press that false allegations about her husband’s affair was “part of a vast right wing conspiracy,” trashing press as the height of yellow journalism.
During the 2008 campaign against President Barack Obama, Hillary told a George Washington University audience March 17, 2008 that she landed in Bosnia’s Tusla airbase under “sniper fire.” Hillary’s comments were strangely similar to former NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams when he told viewers Feb. 4, 2015 he was aboard a helicopter that took enemy fire when he landed in Baghdad in 2003. NBC News suspended Williams Feb. 10, 2015 for fabrication. NBC News President Debra Turness suspended Williams without pay or six months, only recently returning him to a minor role at affiliate CNBC. Hillary faced no consequences for lying to a George Washington University audience. “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we ran with our heads down to get into vehicles to get to our base,” said Hillary.
Spending the entire convention vouching for Hillary’s trustworthiness should alert voters that Hillary’s got a lot of damage control between her acceptance speech tonight and the general election. Dismissing Hillary’s trustworthy problem as just par-for-the-course for the Clintons, former pollster Stanley Greenberg dismissed the issue as something short-lived. “We always had a huge trustworthy problem,” said Greenberg, chocking it up to right wing attacks on the Clintons. Greenberg blamed Hillary’s 65% unfavorability rating on FBI Director James Comey July 5 for calling her handling of emails “extremely careless.” Greenberg also blamed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for calling out Hillary’s close ties to Wall Street. Bernie never mentioned Hillary’s close ties to Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf States, taking millions in donations into the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.
Dogged by the trust issues throughout the campaign, Hillary isn’t helped when she admits to scrubbing her private email server of 33,000 private emails, claiming they were personal in nature. After Mook blamed the Russians for the Wikileaks DNC email hack, Trump joked yesterday that he hoped the Russians would recover the 33,000 deleted emails. Mook screamed that Trump violated U.S. national security asking a foreign government to reveal national security secrets. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthhammer pointed out July 27 that if Mook thinks there’s national security secrets in those deleted emails, why did Hillary insist they were all personal, non-work related? Mook’s charges against Trump divert attention from the real reason 70% of voters don’ t trust Hillary. “A lot of people tell pollsters they don’t trust me. Now. I don’t like hearing that,” Hillary told a luncheon June 27 in Chicago.
Spending the entire DNC convention bolstering Hillary’s credibility wasn’t a bad strategy when you consider her abysmal 30% trustworthy rating. With only a little over three months between now and the election, time is running out on Hillary’s credibility. When Wikileaks’ emails proved DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tried to sabotage Bernie’s campaign, she was forced to resign July 25. Trump noted Wasserman-Schultz was “tossed under the bus,” largely to spare Hillary more embarrassment. But the real reason they got rid of Wasserman-Schultz was to prevent any connection to Hillary or her top lieutenants. It makes zero sense that the DNC would sabotage Bernie without input from the Hillary campaign. Watching Wasserman-Shultz resign in disgrace didn’t help Hillary trustworthiness or credibility, leaving more voters on the fence heading into November
Discrediting Trump and bolstering Hillary’s credibility has been the major aim of the DNC convention. Focusing largely on racial politics, the progress boasted by the DNC has ignored the recent spate of racial tensions and cop-killings, leaving American streets less safe. Mentioning little or nothing about the economy and foreign policy, the DNC hoped to divert attention away from legitimate Obama administration failures. There’s plenty of conventions goers, including First Lady Michelle Obama, more interested in talking about her accomplishment raising her two daughters in a primarily white privileged prep school than dealing with flat GDP growth and more terrorism washing up on American soil. No one’s mentioned a thing about how Hillary plans to deal any better than Obama with a Republican House and Senate, not likely to rubber stamp her future plans.
