Even in the openly liberal media, likely Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is getting only scant support as her email scandal festers.
Clinton’s awkward Tuesday press conference drew broad condemnation and skepticism in most media, and even the praise from left-leaning pundits was lukewarm.
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, a reliable supporter of Democrats, said he could “understand” Clinton’s claim that she chose to use one mobile device, citing her age.
“I think there’s a little bit of comedy to that actually,” he said Tuesday. “There’s a lot of people in her demographic that just don’t want to be overwhelmed by that technology that are going to take the easier, simplest route to do something. I get that.”
Clinton is 67.
David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog Media Matters, appeared as a guest on Schultz’s program and agreed. He said Clinton’s defense was “common sense,” and that the way she operated with one email account “was the easiest way for her to work.”
Paul Waldman, a liberal blogger for The Washington Post, also said Clinton’s excuse was “reasonable-sounding.”
Others dismissed the matter as a non-controversy.
“[N]one of this matters and the reason it won’t is because the Republican Party will never ever stop hating Hillary Clinton,” Jimmy Williams, executive editor of Blue Nation Review, wrote Tuesday.
A writer at the liberal Daily Kos blog chalked the affair up to journalists attempting to “play out the tired narratives about the Clintons that they long ago bought from Republican operatives.”
But most well-known political writers, even the more liberal ones, were far less sympathetic to Clinton, who during her four years as secretary of state used a nondescript email address and hosted all her correspondences on a private server that was kept in her home and registered to an apparently fictional person.
During her Tuesday conference, Clinton said she hadused a personal account and a single mobile device out of “convenience.” The former first lady and U.S. senator from New York also said she handed all work-related emails over to the federal government.
Clinton’s comments were marked by inconsistencies and contradictions, however, and when pressed she copped to having deleted thousands of “personal” emails from her account.Most commenters criticized her comments and in particular the dismissive tone she used in responding to reporters.
Maggie Haberman at The New York Times said Clinton was “increasingly defensive.”
John Harris, editor-in-chief of Politico, described Clinton as “likable enough” in a sarcastic reference to a line by President Obama that was directed at his former presidential campaign rival.
BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith described Clinton as having “projected the stoicism of a person who really, truly hates what she’s doing…”
Dan Balz of The Washington Post, in a think piece that took pains to present a sympathetic Clinton battered by “a quarter-century of political combat,” nevertheless said her answers were perhaps indicative of a “defensive and wary” candidate in waiting.
“Her defense was not satisfying,” read a post at the left-leaning Gawker blog.
Mark Halperin, managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Clinton had a “cavalier attitude toward the Freedom of Information Act,” the law mandating government records and communications be made available to the public.
