In the middle of the furor over Donald Trump’s Muslim remarks, Hillary Clinton managed to get out an e-mail titled “A Word on Donald Trump.” There was nothing unexpected in one sense. She disagreed and was attacking him. Ho hum.
But well in to the e-mail was this:
To Muslim Americans, I want to say this: What you're hearing from Trump and other Republicans is absolutely, unequivocally wrong. I'm proud to be your fellow American, and many, many other Americans feel the same way. Now is the time for all of us to stand up to hateful, dangerous words and deeds.
Just a few days ago, two young women wearing headscarves were trying to have breakfast at a café in Austin when another diner started shouting racist things at them. The girls left in tears -- in part because of the ugly words, but also because no one came to their defense.
As they left, one of the girls asked the room, "Who cares about us?” Somebody called out, "Nobody." "We left," they said, “because it was true."
But it's not true. And we have to make sure Muslim Americans know that. It's how we stay true to our values as Americans. And it's how we show the world who we really are -- a strong, proud, united country that still knows, after all these years, that all men and women are created equal.
Catch that? The story about “two young women”? Yes, she was talking about the women as Muslims. But she, the would-be first woman president, surely didn’t pick this particular story by accident. Sadly, there are other stories out there of this or that Muslim in America being treated badly, and they aren’t all women. In fact, there’s even one report of a woman attacking Muslims praying in a park.
One can surely believe that as is her habit Hillary Clinton used the example of the alleged mistreatment of these two Muslim women because they were -- women. And therein is exactly the problem that lies ahead for Clinton - assuming the media does its job.
Last month Clinton tweeted this:
“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. https://t.co/mkD69RHeBL
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 23, 2015”
A little over a week later, campaigning in New Hampshire -- alas the day after the San Bernardino shootings and amid the massive coverage of that -- a little reported story illustrated the Clinton problem. Campaigning at a town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire, Hillary was asked this (a clearly unexpected inquiry):
“You recently came out to say that all rape victims should be believed? But would you say that about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones? Should we believe them as well?”
Clinton had lips pursed, then responded:
“Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”
And the audience of loyal Democrats applauded -- making Clinton smile tightly. In other words, suddenly women who report rape and sexual assault are expendable and no big deal...if they are accusing Bill.
In a snapshot, the problem Democrats will have with Hillary-as-nominee was captured right there. It’s hard to campaign as a champion of women when in fact there are women out there accusing the candidate of being her husband’s enabler in his sexual assaults on women. It’s particularly difficult when one realizes the instant ease she has in throwing an issue she supposedly champions under the bus if it affects her personally.
Last month Juanita Broaddrick, the Arkansas woman who alleges then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton raped her in an encounter at a Little Rock hotel, gave an interview to Aaron Klein Investigative Radio in which Broaddrick recalled what she said was Hillary Clinton’s threatening behavior towards Broaddrick in the aftermath. As written up here at Breitbart, Broaddrick said this of Hillary:
“Three weeks after the incident, Broaddrick says she was still in a state of shock and denial about what she said had transpired. She said she attended a private Clinton fundraiser at the home of a local dentist, where she had an encounter with the Clintons and was directly approached by Hillary.
Broaddrick said a friend of hers who had driven the Clintons to the fundraiser from a local airport informed her that “the whole conversation was about you coming from the airport. Mostly from Mrs. Clinton.”
She recalled: “And so then about that time, I see them coming through the kitchen area. And some people there are pointing to me. He goes one direction and she comes directly to me. Then panic sort of starting to set in with me. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what do I do now?’”
Broaddrick told Klein that Hillary approached her “and said ‘It’s so nice to meet you’ and all of the niceties she was trying to say at the time.”
“And said, ‘I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate the things you do for him.’ And I just stood there, Aaron. I was sort of you might say shell-shocked.”
“And she said, ‘Do you understand. Everything you do.’’’
“She tried to take a hold of my hand and I left. I told the girls I can’t take this. I’m leaving. So I immediately left.”Broaddrick said that “what really went through my mind at that time is ‘She knows. She knew. She’s covering it up and she expects me to do the very same thing.’”
Got that last line? Where Broaddrick says “what really went through my mind at that time is ‘She knows. She knew. She’s covering it up and she expects me to do the very same thing’”?
At the moment all the attention, or the lions share of it at least, is going to Donald Trump. But there will come a time after the 2016 campaign begins in earnest with the primaries that the spotlight will return to Clinton. And the question is: will the media give Clinton a pass on her own treatment of women, as well as a pass on her husband?
GOP candidate Carly Fiorina has her pluses and minuses, but most assuredly one of those minuses is not her treatment of other women. Not to mention has she ever been accused of being an enabler to a man’s proclivities for sexual assault. Safe to say across the political spectrum, from Republicans to Democrats on Capitol Hill or in governorships, has any other woman been directly accused of Hillary Clinton-style behavior in the treatment of women.
Broaddrick is hardly alone in making her charges against Hillary, Kathleen Willey, like Broaddrick a one time supporter of Bill Clinton, famously accused Bill Clinton of groping during a visit she made to the Oval Office. Says Willey of Hillary:
“This woman wrote the book on terrorizing women, on terrorism. Her tactics and the things that she set in motion against all the women like me, the ones you have heard of and the ones you haven’t heard of, and the ones who are so scared that fled the country, are terrorist tactics like I’ve never seen before. I went through them. I lived through them. And I know exactly what I am talking about. She is the war on women. I don’t care what anybody says.”
Then there are all the tales of Hillary hiring private investigators to dig in to the backgrounds of husband Bill’s women. Biographers across the board, from insiders like George Stephanopoulos to liberal reporters like Carl Bernstein and conservatives as well, have reported Hillary doing everything from personally interrogating Bill’s alleged paramours to hiring private investigators to investigate them. In 2007 The Washington Post ran this story headlined:
Books Paint Critical Portraits of Clinton
It read in part:
A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Carl Bernstein, reports that Clinton as first lady was terrified she would be prosecuted, took over her own legal and political defense, and decided not to be forthcoming with investigators because she was convinced she was unfairly targeted. While in Arkansas, according to Bernstein, she personally interviewed one woman alleged to have had an affair with her husband, contemplated divorce and thought about running for governor out of anger at her husband's indiscretions.
Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., reports that during her husband's 1992 campaign, a team she oversaw hired a private investigator to undermine Gennifer Flowers "until she is destroyed." Flowers had said publicly that she had an affair with Bill Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas.”
The way the Clintons go about dealing with these attacks is to say some version of “this is old news.” As if that dispenses with the issue. "Is it possible to be quoted yawning?" spokesman Philippe Reines then quipped. But the hard fact here is that all of these problems of Hillary Clinton in her treatment of women comes down to a repeated problem -- the same problem
Whether it is Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey from the 1970’s and 1990’s, or the families of today’s Benghazi victims, the two constant threads here are that Mrs. Clinton is a deliberate teller of untruths -- a liar -- and that she has been particularly brutal in her treatment of women she doesn’t like. The lying charge in particular was the charge hurled at her in January of 1996 in the pages of no less than The New York Times when the late columnist William Safire labeled her a “congenital liar”. That was the finding of that now famous Quinnipiac University poll from this past summer - almost twenty years after Safire’s famous column -- when voters were asked to free associate a word to describe Hillary and as ABC reported:
“The word ‘liar’ was mentioned 178 times in association with Hillary Clinton. Some of the other top words voters said to describe the former Secretary of State were ‘dishonest,’ ‘untrustworthy,’ and “criminal.’”
The question now is whether the media, which frets aloud about the personality best suited for the Oval Office, will give a pass to Hillary -- she who would be in charge of the entire federal government of the United States including the FBI, the CIA and the IRS if elected. Will they zero in on her treatment of women - her personal war on women? Will they ignore the pressure from the Clintons to treat charges about her integrity as “old news”?
We will see.
