Adapted from the Twitter feed, January 27, 2019. Typed up and posted February 3.
President of the World at Work: Bill Clinton having fun doing good and being Bill in Puerto Rico heading a Clinton Foundation initiative to bring more disaster relief to the island still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria. That’s Hillary Clinton in the blue top on the right. Uncredited photo courtesy of the Clinton Foundation.
Got an email last week from the Clinton Foundation announcing they're helping to send 30,000 pounds of medical supplies to Puerto Rico. The supplies---which include hospital beds, ambulation devices, general primary medical supplies, exam tables, stretchers and which “Accion Social will distribute the equipment to home care providers that service for over 1,000 older adults throughout the 76 municipalities, and to Federally Qualified Health Centers in Hatillo, Arecibo and Utuado that care for over 16,000 patients per year”---are travelling to Puerto Rico via an airlift being organized by the Ayfa Foundation, with funding donated by the Greater New York Hospital Association and Pearl Aircraft’s Chairman Jan Söderberg. Swift Air has donated the cargo space on the 737 jet. “StratAir is assisting with the cargo buildup, breakdown, and ground handling” and the Clinton Foundation is handling the coordination and support. This is the same foundation the media called to be shut down during the 2016 Presidential campaign because “questions could be raised.”
Questions were being raised---by reporters’ Republican sources asking “Why are you running so many negative stories about Trump? Where are the ones about Hillary?”
They were also being raised by Trump himself who was busy performing the usual Republican trick of accusing his opponent of doing what he was in trouble for. Republicans are habitual projectionists but Trump does it with wilder abandon and more than a touch of real delusion.
“Disgusting” he called the Clinton Foundation. “The most corrupt enterprise in political history” he said another time. Over and over again at his rallies he accused Hillary Clinton of having been on the take when she was Secretary of State. At his and Hillary’s third and final debate, he pretty much accused the Clintons of collusion with the Saudis. Horrible figured in his description of the people he’d be defending from allegations of murder two years later.
Mike Pence just outright lied.
And for the most part the media played along.
They reported the tale of the two foundations the way they reported other Trump outrages and scandals:
“Yeah, what he did was less than kosher, but she’s no angel. And even if she didn’t say or do things anywhere near as bad, she said and did things we don’t approve of and she should know better than tick us off.”
Over and over again they reminded us that they each had the lowest approval ratings of any major presidential candidates ever, without noting how much lower his were than hers or bothering to explain who disapproved of them and what they disapproved of. The words liar, bigot, and fraud didn’t appear in their reporting. “Populist” was their convenient term for avoiding saying “Right Wing authoritarian racist demagogue”. They went on covering his rallies as if they were rock concerts and sporting events, judging them as spectacles and entertainment and scoring them according to how riled up his mobs of hideous men got. Then they shook their collective heads over the enthusiasm gap.
Mostly they tried to have it both ways, focusing a critical but but cynically non-judgmental eye on him while finding and taking every opportunity to criticize her. This story from NPR is typical. It does a credible job or listing all the signs the Trump Foundation was a fraud and a good deal of the evidence the Clinton Foundation wasn’t. But it glosses over the part where the Clinton Foundation’s work actually saves thousands and thousands of lives a year and devotes at least as much time and space to emphasizing the appearances of less than ethical strictness in all matters and at all levels.
There are fair criticisms of the way the Clinton Foundation goes about doing the business of charity. Not every one of its initiatives is handled in the most efficacious manner. The role the Clintons themselves play as the public personas of the Foundation---particularly Bill’s clearly loving playing at being President of the World---can be off-putting to even their admirers and perhaps throw things out of kilter and...well...create the appearance that ethical strictness is being sacrificed to personal vanity. But there’s no doubt that the Clintons intend to do good and routinely succeed in doing it, and the Foundation earns its high ratings.
And there’s no comparing it to the Trump Foundation or, rather, no comparing the Trump Foundation to it except to show what a fraud Trump has been perpetrating.
There's never been any evidence that the Trump Foundation was anything more than a tax dodge and a personal piggy bank for Trump and now it's one of the scams he ran that might get him perp walked by the state of New York. But you know...her emails!
The media's coverage of that election was an ethical disgrace. The country deserves an apology and more than that an explanation.
Fat chance will get either.
I like to try to understand people and their behavior, but, even as a former reporter, I cannot fathom the treatment of the Clintons by the media. There just seems to be no rational reason.
Posted by: Mark P | Monday, February 04, 2019 at 11:25 AM