October 13, 2016

THE ILLUMINATING BUT UNSURPRISING CONTENT OF CLINTON’S PAID SPEECHES


JOHN CASSIDY, NEW YORKER


Clinton accuses WikiLeaks

Hillary Clinton’s campaign fired back on Tuesday as WikiLeaks released a new tranche of hacked emails from the account of its chairman, John Podesta, calling the website a “propaganda arm of the Russian government”. More than 2,000 emails, disclosed on Monday, included messages relaying concerns by Chelsea Clinton over potential conflicts of interest for the family’s foundation. Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told CNN that accusations that Russia was behind the DNC hack were “flattering but ridiculous”.


There is not — as of yet — a smoking bomb in the thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's top advisers that WikiLeaks has been releasing last week and this week. (Also no evidence that Trump allies had a heads-up on what WikiLeaks was doing. But I digress.)
The real problem for Clinton, writes Fix Boss Chris Cillizza, is that the emails detail a calculating politician, someone who's making decisions based on what's best for her political future.
Of course, that's technically the definition of a politician: Appease constituencies you need to get elected and stay elected. But unfortunately for Clinton, a "politician" is the opposite of what voters in 2016 want: "People hate politicians," Cillizza writes. "The more you look and sound like one, the worse they think of you."