Hillary and Fake News
Hillary Clinton, who survived sniper fire in Bosnia to run for the presidency, called on Thursday for a bipartisan fight to end an epidemic of “fake news” she now blames for her defeat by Donald Trump.
Hillary is a consummate serial liar. From lying to the parents of the four Benghazi dead in front of their sons’ caskets, repeating the infamous video lie, of which she arguably was the architect, to dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, to being named for Sir Edmund Hillary years before he climbed Mt. Everest, to her claim she made $100,000 in the futures market almost literally overnight just from reading the Wall Street Journal.
Her call for a war on “fake news” is laughable. As Politico reports:
"This is not about politics or partisanship," Clinton said during remarks at a tribute to retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "Lives are at risk."
Clinton's reference to the "real-world consequences" of fake news comes days after a gunman briefly occupied a Washington pizza restaurant mentioned in false reports of a child sex-trafficking ring linked to the former secretary of state. But Clinton went beyond domestic sources of fake news to decry "foreign propaganda," touting a bipartisan effort in Congress to "boost the government's response" to it.
Vladimir Putin may have ordered the hacking of Hillary's and the DNC’s damning emails to help Trump, but that’s irrelevant. The emails and Hillary’s lies about them are quite real. Russia didn’t set up her illegal and unsecured server, nor did Russia write, send, and then delete emails containing classified information under subpoena using sophisticated means. Hillary did that, not Russia. That’s real news, not fake.
As for putting lives at risk, Hillary’s lies and reckless carelessness included the transmission of emails containing the names of actual CIA operatives in the field involved in clandestine operations. As the New York Post reported:
Hillary Clinton’s e-mails included the names of CIA officers serving overseas and foreigners who are on the spy agency’s payroll -- potentially endangering their lives, it was reported Monday.
“It’s a death sentence,” a senior intelligence-community official told the Observer. “If we’re lucky, only [foreign] agents, not our officers, will get killed because of this.”
The paper said the intelligence community is in panic mode trying to determine which agents may have been compromised.
CIA officials assume foreign agencies intercepted unencrypted e-mails stored on Clinton’s home server while she was secretary of state.
Hillary is a master of fake news, particularly that involving the loss of lives she was responsible for. Her pushing of the narrative that Benghazi was the fault of a video was the ultimate in fake news. Hillary was an active participant in the Benghazi video lie repeated on five Sunday talk shows by then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, by President Obama six times before the United Nations, and by Hillary and the president to the parents of the dead in front of their son’s caskets.
The question of the day should not be about Melania Trump’s journalistic ethics, but about the total lack of conscience that allowed Hillary Clinton to tell her the daughter the truth about Benghazi being a terrorist attack and then lie about a video to the American people and to the parents of the Benghazi dead. As Patricia Smith, mother of Benghazi vicitm Sean Smith, told the convention:
“In an email to her daughter shortly after the attack, Hillary Clinton blamed it on terrorism. But when I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible,” Smith said. “Since then, I have repeatedly asked Hillary Clinton to explain to me the real reason why my son is dead. I’m still waiting.”
Then there is another bit of fake news which Hillary has embraced that has cost the lives of many police officers the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie that began in Ferguson, Missouri and which spawned the Black Lives matter movement.
Hillary sought the endorsement of Black Lives Matter but blew off the Fraternal Order of Police. As the Dally Caller reported:
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton pursued the endorsement of Black Lives Matter activists but blew off the largest police union in the United States…
The mothers of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner stood on stage in Philadelphia praising Clinton.“Hillary Clinton has the compassion and understanding to support grieving mothers,” Sybrina Fulton, mother of Martin, said. “She has the courage to lead the fight for commonsense gun legislation. She has a plan to divide that so often exists between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
On the other hand, the Clinton campaign appeared to string the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) on for a period of time until staff told the union Clinton would not seek its endorsement, The Hill reported.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke observed on Fox News recently that “fake news” has a birth date and a birthplace:
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Milwaukee County, WI Sheriff David Clarke said the entire phenomenon of so-called “fake news” began in 2014 with the “hands up, don’t shoot” claim of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
Clarke called it a “lie” and said it had been propagated by many mainstream media outlets.
“It’s the anniversary of that fateful summer night in August of 2014 that started with the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ lie that was propagated by every mainstream liberal media across this country,” Clarke said. “The New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, MSNBC all propagated that ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ lie. It was from that time forward that this concept of fake news was talked about.”
Fake news has been the trademark of liberal media outlets for a long time -- just ask Dan Rather and Brian Williams, whose career ended with lies and deceit. Whether you trace its beginnings to Ferguson or Benghazi or before, it has been perfected by liberals and Democrats. Liberals oppose the free flow of information and the right of people to make up their own minds. We’re not stupid, Hillary. CBS, ABC, and NBC are no longer the gatekeepers deciding what we see and hear. We can figure it out, just like we figured Hillary out. Fake news? Hillary Clinton is its poster child.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.