Discussion: Hillary Clinton:

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“People have been saying on-air here, and I’ve been reporting it on CNN and I’ve been reporting it here, that you were the person behind the whole birther thing and that the senator at the time, the President-elect, actually confronted you about that. Do you care to respond?” Lemon asked, according to audio posted by Mediaite. "Did you or your campaign start the whole birther thing? And did you have a confrontation with the President?”

mutters "Of all the ‘apples’ to pick off that tree…the GOP continues to shoot for that one. Anyhow…’

Claims about Obama’s birthplace appeared in chain emails bouncing around the Web, and one of the first lawsuits over Obama’s birth certificate was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general and a self-described “moderate to liberal” who supported Clinton.

But none of those stories suggests any link between the Clinton campaign, let alone Clinton herself, and the advocacy of theories questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

One of the authors of the Politico story, Byron Tau, now a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told FactCheck.org via email that “we never found any links between the Clinton campaign and the rumors in 2008.”

The other coauthor of the Politico story, Ben Smith, now the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said in a May 2013 interview on MSNBC that the conspiracy theories traced back to “some of [Hillary Clinton’s] passionate supporters,” during the final throes of Clinton’s 2008 campaign. But he said they did not come from “Clinton herself or her staff.”

Sigh

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

October 19th, 2008: Meet the Press: Colin Powell.

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22

Some of the adherents of the Democratic Party are similar to people in the Tea Party. They were Reagan ‘Democrats’ back in the day and highly prejudiced. Most of those have migrated to the Republican party in the face of their own best economic interest.

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23

Obama is a secret Muslim. Ergo, HRC is a secret Birther.

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24

Here is a write up on the guy.

The guy was/is a bit of a crank. He never worked for the Clinton campaign, besides donating some money, and neither Hillary nor anybody working for her campaign advanced this notion.

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Sorry but he tweets alone…

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The “awkward” moment being the interview that is including in this article? Where she repeated says she doesn’t believe that Obama is a Muslim? Using language like “Of course not” and “there is no basis for that”?

Yeah, it was definitely a shot if you are using those Super Duper Clinton Decoder Rings to parse every word and nuance to figure out the she said something entirely different than what she actually said.

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It is too bad the author of this piece couldn’t have done a little research. Of course it isn’t the job of the media to do actual journalism.

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28

Isn’t Don Lemon the dipshit who questioned if a missing aircraft had been swallowed by a black hole?

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“You don’t believe that Senator Obama’s a Muslim?” Steve Kroft asked Clinton.

“Of course not," she responded. “I mean, that’s, you know, there is
no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. There isn’t
any reason to doubt that.”

This is completely unremarkable pol speak. They always hedge their statements and if I were running for office I would do the exact same thing.

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not sure…

but I do remember him getting schooled by Talib Kweli or was it Maryland’s governor and Baltimore’s mayor?

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Cutting it off there does make it seem worse, though the unfortunate “as far as I know” was there, was all Hillary, and a mistake. But then to take that clip, which references as all-ready existing smear, and suggest that Hillary started it, is bullshit…

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32

The only reason that this has come up now is that Trump is lying about me to try and get out of the trouble he got in when he revealed his bigotry.

That exactly should be her response! But she’s terrible at conveying the message that resonates.

Like so many things said about Hillary, our broken media’s amplification of the “truthiness” that she birthed the birther movement is ridiculous and grossly unfair. A handful of supporters (not even surrogates) passed around some emails – no links to her campaign or to her personally at all.

Instead of turning the charges around, however, her tendency is to focus on “I’ve had all these terrible things said about me” and “I’m used to it” – a victimization narrative that’s too evocative of Nixon. Nobody who isn’t already ardently in support of her feels sorry for her, nor should they. That’s not a winning message.

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It always amazes me, and both sides are guilty of it, that so many people invested in a campaign expect their opponent to endorse their guy/girl completely, with soaring praise of how he/she is the greatest evah…and anything short of that is taken as a deeply offensive affront.

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Yup. When I first read the story in '08, I thought, “Ah, another swipe at Hillary. Sounds like a big nothingburger.” Then I saw the clip that ended with “as far as I know” and thought it sounded more like Hillary was doing something back-handed. Seeing the whole exchange makes it pretty clear it was another hit job on a Clinton.

Pretty disgusting. And here we go again with CNN reporting it as fact and THEN asking her later if she had a response.

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A friend of mine told me she didn’t trust HRC because of the travel vouchers fuss. Had to think about that for a moment and then realized it happened during Bill’s administration ca 1993. We’re not yet through with Blame Obama but are entering into the era of Blame Clinton.

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Agreed all the way around. She and Bill usually know exactly what they’re saying, and you have to assume she was trying to have it both ways. They both fight to win. But making wild, baseless, absurd smears isn’t really typical of them. I don’t watch TV but this Don Lemon seems like a huge twit. I guess the comedy trope of the bonehead anchor dude isn’t necessarily make up out of thin air.

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37

Don’t forget she also single-handedly talked JFK into starting World War I before the ink on the US Constitution had even dried.

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Well, she only said no six times when asked if he was a Muslim. Anybody who truly believed he was American* would have said no at least eight times, and would have slapped the person who asked it. I think that confirms she started it.

*As if that is the polar opposite, and mutually exclusive of Muslim.

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39

She’s a Zelig-like figure to the RWNs, she was everywhere when something momentous happened, and this is what makes her aplomb even more remarkable, that she can still find some humor in the bullshit conspiracies they throw at her.

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I’m sorry, but Joe Fucking Scarborough is the arbiter of whether something is true or not? The man’s the most pathetic excuse for a partisan hack in today’s television cable “news” shows that nobody watches.

Anything that comes out of his putrid mouth can be considered absolute garbage. Even if it’s true, it’s tainted by association to that asinine asshat.

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