Conservatives will see corruption and liberals will see corporatism and expedience, but the exchanges simply expose the candidate who’s been there all along.
They capture a candidate, and a campaign, that seems in private exactly as cautious, calculating, and politically flexible as they appeared to be in public. The Clinton campaign underestimated and then fretted about rival candidate Bernie Sanders, worried about Joe Biden entering the primary race and Elizabeth Warren endorsing her opponent, plotted endlessly about managing Clinton’s image in the press, took advantage of its close ties to the Obama administration and the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, and took public positions to the left of comments Clinton herself made during private paid speeches to Wall Street firms.
.. These were hacked from the accounts of John Podesta, her campaign chairman, and very few of them are from Clinton herself.
.. Those who view Clinton as hopelessly liberal, craven, and corrupt will seize, as the Trump campaign has, on her stated “dream” of “a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.
.. The most common thread in the Podesta emails, however, is that they show a political candidate being political.
.. Take the example of the Keystone pipeline. It was painfully obvious that for months, Clinton avoided taking a position on the hotly-debated energy project, perhaps in the hopes that the Obama administration would decide to kill it first. The emails bolster this theory. Once she decided to publicly oppose it, her aides wavered on how to announce it and ultimately timed it so that it would take the focus off revelations about her email server.
.. Ultimately, Clinton did not back Glass Steagall and instead argued that her more targeted Wall Street plan was more workable than Sanders’—a position that, according to another email from Schwerin, represented her actual policy belief.
.. For the significant number of people who are fed up with typical politicians, these emails won’t do Clinton any good. But at least in the batches released so far, they don’t really contradict the campaign she’s run.
.. Many of them might be discouraged to see, as Clinton herself acknowledged in a paid speech, “the sausage being made.”
.. Though anti-Clintonites on the right and left may find their suspicions about Clinton confirmed, there’s nothing in the emails that would provide them new lines of criticism—or provide new sources of worry to her allies.
Trump demanded Obama’s records. But he’s not releasing his own.
Years before he ran for the White House, Trump built his political brand by accusing President Obama of concealing his past. Trump called on Obama to release his college applications, transcripts and other records, asking how such a “terrible student” got into Ivy League schools. The business executive also demanded that Obama release his passport records and, most famously, his birth certificate, declaring in a video released before the 2012 election: “We know very little about our president.”
But Trump has ensured that Americans know relatively little about him.
He has refused to release many of the same documents that he demanded from Obama, including college transcripts and passport records. He has shirked the decades-old tradition of major nominees releasing their tax returns and other documentation to prove their readiness and fitness for office. And he has yet to release records showing why he received a medical deferment during the Vietnam War and whether he has actually donated the millions of dollars he claims to have given to charity.
.. Trump’s approach reflects a calculation that weathering the criticism for withholding documents is more politically palatable than the scrutiny that would come from giving the information to Trump’s opponents and what his campaign sees as an unfair media.
.. According to filings, legal documents and other public records, he paid no federal income taxes for at least five years — 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991 and 1993. Tax analysts say it is possible that Trump has continued to pay little to no income taxes thanks to generous tax deductions, including real estate depreciation.
.. Before he was a candidate, Trump presented himself as a champion of disclosure, particularly when it came to tax returns.
In 2011, he said he would release his filings if Obama released his long-form birth certificate.
.. In 2014, Trump said he would “absolutely” release the returns “if I decide to run for office.” In 2015, he said his disclosure was contingent on finding “out the true story on Hillary’s emails.”
.. In January, Trump said he was almost ready to disclose his “very big . . . very beautiful” returns. But a month later, Trump reversed course, citing ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits of several years of his taxes.
An IRS spokesman said that nothing, including an audit, “prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.” And President Richard Nixon released his tax records while under audit.
Buffett challenges Trump to release tax returns
The Omaha billionaire also compared Trump to Joseph McCarthy in a speech promoting Hillary Clinton.
“You’re only afraid if you got something to be afraid about. He’s not afraid of the IRS. He’s afraid because of you. I will meet him in Omaha or Mar-a-Lago or he can pick the place,” Buffett offered. “We’re both under audit. And believe me, nobody will stop us from talking about what’s on those returns.
.. “No member of the Buffett family has gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. No member of the Trump family has gone to Iraq or Afghanistan,” Buffett said. “We have both done extremely well during this period and our families haven’t sacrificed anything, and Donald Trump and I haven’t sacrificed anything, but how in the world can you stand up to a couple of parents who have lost a son and talk about sacrificing because you were building a bunch of buildings?”
Roger Ailes opts for secrecy, cowardice in face of Gretchen Carlson suit
Fox News management made a sound decision in choosing the American Arbitration Association (AAA) as its agent of choice.According to a 2011 study by Cornell University’s Alexander Colvin, employees prevail less frequently and recover less money in cases arbitrated by the AAA — the study examined nearly 4,000 cases between 2003 and 2007 — than they do in trials.
.. Paul Bland, an expert on arbitration clauses and executive director of Public Justice, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that as a general rule, only the parties to an arbitration clause can invoke it. After reading the court documents filed by Carlson’s lawyers, Bland noted that the agreement is between Fox News and Carlson. “Ailes is not named in it. Their argument is that FOX means Ailes. They should have written more broadly, most arbitration clauses name others who work for or with, are associated with, etc. I consider him a non-party under this language. Poor drafting,” writes Bland in an email.
.. “The problems of secrecy in arbitration are really highlighted in this case — you look at all of the women who have come forward with very similar stories, and you can see why Ailes would prefer to keep a lid on all of this by avoiding the public court system where the evidence becomes a matter of public record.”
.. Another thing to consider is that Carlson worked at Fox News for 11 years, presiding in some way over thousands of hours of programming. Over all those hours, Carlson was adjudged reliable and honest enough such that Ailes and his lieutenants placed their precious Fox News audience in her hands. Now, all of the sudden, she has become the source for her lawyers’ dissemination of “one false and defamatory statement after another.” Even you, Roger Ailes, can’t have it both ways.