Hillary Clinton believes the Russians manipulated the American press into giving outsized coverage to her scandals during the 2016 presidential election.
It’s unclear whether she believes the Russians also manipulated the press into supporting her candidacy.
“We knew that there was some kind of communication going on [between Donald Trump’s associates and the Russians] because it would take people in the American political system, and in this campaign particularly, to say, ‘Drop the WikiLeaks now. Get them out there because we can distract the press from the really horrible video of Trump admitting to sexual assault,'” Clinton said Monday in an interview with NPR.
“That’s exactly what they did, and the press fell for it,” she added.
The way Clinton tells it, the conspiracy worked like a charm: She kept getting negative news coverage, and reporters were too stupid to realize they were being used.
For example, she said, on the same day that the Washington Post reported finding a video from 2005 of Trump bragging to then-“Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush about grabbing women “by the pussy,” WikiLeaks published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, and various Democratic National Committee staffers.
Clinton said Monday that the timing of the release of the Podesta emails was “absolutely” intentional.
“They were holding them,” she said
Given that the news of the “Access Hollywood” tape easily overshadowed the release of the Podesta emails, earning wall-to-wall coverage and the top spot on front pages everywhere, her overall point is a bit unclear.
Not missing a beat, Clinton moved on Monday to gripe about the reporters who covered the stolen Podesta emails. She believes the press couldn’t just ignore them, but also she believes every story on the issue should have come with this massive caveat:
Every story should’ve started: These were stolen emails, and the best judgement from our intelligence professionals and independent analysts is that they were stolen by Russia, and they were stolen for a purpose and they are clearly meant to … prevent any more attention on Trump’s bad behavior and to be like shiny objects all over the place, waving in front of people, and to be weaponized … into negative stories that can then be posted on right-wing sites, can be covered on Russia TV and then can migrate to Fox News and Breitbart and everything else.
Her suggestion that she was unfairly targeted by the press is an interesting one, but it’s worth keeping the election coverage in perspective. The press covered Clinton scandals. It also covered Trump scandals. At least, it tried. It really, really tried.
If it felt like reporters paid more attention to Clinton’s issues, recall that the Democratic nominee came with basically only three legitimate scandals: Her emails, the DNC and Podesta emails and the Clinton Foundation.
Trump, on the other hand, was surrounded by a million different offenses that would’ve sunk any other candidate. If it felt like reporters didn’t harp on his scandals as hard as they harped on, say, Clinton’s private State Department email server, recall also that the press simply couldn’t keep up with the GOP nominee.
Reporters could keep after Clinton precisely because she was responsible for only a fistful of legitimate scandals (hello, FBI investigation). In contrast, a Trump scandal would pop up before reporters even had the chance to ask him about the last one. Trump was a tornado of shocking statements and improprieties, and the press mistakenly thought it could handle it all. But in trying to target everything, reporters ended up running in all different directions, and no one locked onto the actual target.
Reporters definitely covered Clinton. She was a slow target with legitimate issues. She also didn’t do herself any favors by dodging reporters and offering answers that didn’t add up. Reporters also tried to cover Trump, but he is in a league of his own and media were 100 percent unprepared it.
One final thought: Clinton’s media criticism isn’t new. She has been saying stuff like this since at least to her days as Arkansas’ first lady. She reiterates a lot of her long-held distaste for media in her new book, What Happened, which argues at length that journalists are partly to blame for her failed 2016 presidential campaign.
Interestingly enough, however, her book makes no mention of the fact that by Nov. 6, 2016, just two days before Election Day, an astonishing 57 newspapers had endorsed her, while only two had endorsed her opponent. Clinton’s new book also makes no mention of the fact that by August of last year, a whopping 96 percent of all political donations from media went to Clinton, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis released last fall.
She can complain all she wants about the election coverage last year, but should also mention she was the press’ preferred candidate. Or perhaps she believes the Russians were responsible for that, too.
