I continue to be astonished that Hillary Clinton has no serious opposition for the Democratic presidential nomination. This time eight years ago, Barack Obama was mounting a full-scale challenge. Now, there are occasional noises from the likes of Jim Webb, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, but that’s about it. (Sorry, folks. Elizabeth Warren isn’t running.)
The latest piece of appalling news about the Clintons is a front-page story in today’s Washington Post revealing that the Clinton Foundation, run by her husband, Bill, took in millions of dollars from foreign governments while Hillary was secretary of state. Much of the money, write the Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, “came from countries with complicated diplomatic, military and financial relationships with the U.S. government, including Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.”
The story is a follow-up to an earlier, equally appalling Post story about the Clinton Foundation’s dubious fundraising.
Caveat: Yes, the foundation’s money goes to good causes like earthquake relief, lowering the cost of drugs used to treat AIDS and HIV, and alleviating climate change. But it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that foreign governments seeking to curry favor with the Obama administration funneled money to Bill Clinton in order to receive more favorable treatment from Hillary Clinton.
Exposed! Check out this comment from Bob Gardner: “Not surprised that this story would get traction from an employee of the Koch-funded WGBH.”
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Tobe Berkovitz
Caveat caveat. “Caveat: Yes, the foundation’s money goes to good causes like earthquake relief, lowering the cost of drugs used to treat AIDS and HIV, and alleviating climate change.” Yes, some of it goes to good causes. But what is the overhead for the Foundation? Does Chelsea have a salary? What are the travel expenses paid out of the Foundation for AirHillary and AirBill? etc
A. L. Luttrell
I would say it is more than dubious……. Corruption and ethics violations surround the Clintons in everything they are involved in.
Bob Gardner
Not surprised that this story would get traction from an employee of the Koch-funded WGBH.
Rick Peterson
So your logic is:
The Kochs are conservatives
The Koch’s donate to WGBH
Therefore WGBH and Dan Kennedy are conservatives.
Do you even own a television?
Good luck trying to get to the left side of Dan.
Dan Kennedy
@Rick, I guarantee you that @Bob is to my left. He’s called me out a number of times for being too moderate. Not as unusual as you’d think.
Bob Gardner
Dan, thanks for the compliment. My point is that it’s easier to cast aspersions than it is to defend yourself from accusations. The donors who gave to the Clinton Foundation may be questionable, but so are the Kochs who gave to WGBH. I really haven’t followed the Post series. Are there allegations that there is a quid pro quo for the Clinton Foundation donations?
Because it seems like, at least at Beat the Press, there have been some very strange discussions lately. Consider the discussion of Bill O’Reilly’s misrepresentations. Confronted with clear instances of O’Reilly not telling the truth about his experience as a war correspondent, the panel one by one all claimed that O’Reilly wasn’t lying but only “bloviating”. It sounded like five Michael Palins telling us that his dead parrot was only “pining for the fjiords.”
Was all this the result of WGBH depending on contributions from David Koch? I don’t know. But if the mere fact of Hillary Clinton’s husband accepting donations from certain people raises questions about her integrity, then there are similar questions hanging over WGBH.
Beat the Press was very dismissive a couple years ago when the subject of the Koch donations came up. They shouldn’t have been.