Vin Suprynowicz

New York magazine, which seems to be making an attempt to corner the market on left-wing cluelessness of late, runs a piece by Ed Kilgore (who coincidentally is also managing editor of something called “The Democratic Strategist / Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority”) asserting it’s somehow “dangerous” for Donald Trump to be telling the huge crowds at his rallies that most of the mainstream press is in the bag for Hillary Clinton, going the Full Monty with any uncorroborated last-minute smear the Democrats see fit to throw out against Mr. Trump, while burying or studiously avoiding Mrs. Clinton’s many very real and well-documented crimes, misjudgments, lies, obfuscations, and blatant disqualifications for high office.

(See http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/10/15/new-york-magazine-bemoans-trumps-dangerous-attacks-on-media-bias/ , or find the full article at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/trumps-dangerous-game-of-beat-the-press.html .)

The one thing Mr. Kilgore never bothers to ask himself, of course, is whether he and his brethren in the all-out-for-Hillary media could be, just possibly, you know . . . guilty as charged.

(See http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/14/wsj-nation-now-proof-hillary-scandals-leftist-media-devote-front-pages-trump-story/ , or the original Wall Street Journal column at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-press-buries-hillary-clintons-sins-1476401308 .)

(You may have to take the Journal up on their 12-week introductory online subscription offer to read the whole column. As the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are about the only dailies covering this race straight, it’s worth considering.)

“The press buries Hillary Clinton’s sins,” is the headline on Kimberley A. Strassel’s Oct. 16 “Potomac Watch” column in the Journal. The sub-hed reads ”As reporters focus on Trump, they miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record.”

“If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women,” writes Ms. Strassel, an editorial writer and member of the editorial board at the Journal.

“But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

“It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders,” columnist Strassel continues. “The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency. . . .”

‘THE LEAKS SHOW THAT THE PRESS IS IN MRS. CLINTON’S POCKET’

“Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails — three weeks before a technician deleted them,” Journal columnist Strassel writes. “The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

“A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the ‘vast majority’ of career agents and prosecutors working the case ‘felt she should be prosecuted’ and that giving her a pass was ‘a top-down decision.’

(The Journal here links to http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/13/fbi-doj-roiled-by-comey-lynch-decision-to-let-clinton-slide-by-on-emails-says-insider.html )

“The Obama administration . . . was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign,” continues Ms. Strassel, who in 2001 was the first mainstream journalist to expose the fraudulent research behind the 2000 book “Arming America,” whose author, Michael Bellesiles, subsequently resigned his History professorship at Emory University. “The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.

“Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were ‘FOB’ (Friends of Bill) or ‘WJC VIPs’ (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.

“The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and money,” columnist Strassel continues. “The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner, suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation official wrote: ‘Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.’

“The entire progressive apparatus — the Clinton campaign and boosters at the Center for American Progress — appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome, segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned into silence,” columnist Strassel writes, using the standard Politically Correct formulation “progressive” to mean “kleptocrat Marxist-globalist destroyers of the free-market economy, who ridicule as ‘racist’ those who favor ANY enforcement of the immigration laws or tracking of invading terrorists.”

“The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket. Donna Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of a coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event. Other media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from interviews, worked to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.

“Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove that she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy,” the Wall Street Journal columnist continues.

“Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it,” Journal columnist Strassel concludes.

And that’s just the scandal of the unsecure emails while she was Secretary of State, which may have caused the death of defecting Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, despite Mrs. Clinton’s assertions in the televised debates (about the only time voters see the candidate in any environment that’s not closely staged and controlled by her campaign –- and even the debates are carefully staged by the two mainstream, incumbent parties) that “There’s no evidence my (unsecure, private) emails were ever hacked.”

Really? See http://www.nationalreview.com/morning-jolt/438766/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-iran-scientist-executed or http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263776/did-clintons-email-negligence-lead-execution-ari-lieberman

(The mainstream press reports these concerns only in the context of debunking them as “another ridiculous Trump conspiracy theory,” of course. Funny how many of those are subsequently proven true.)

GLEEFULLY PROMOTING UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMORS, WHILE IGNORING SOLID, DAMNING FACTS

Ms. Strassel mentions nothing of the way Mrs. Clinton left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans to die in Benghazi, holding back a ready-to-go rescue mission, apparently out of fear such a visible “military presence” would expose what she had really sent Stevens to Benghazi to do -– ship surplus Libyan heavy arms to the ISIS rebels in Syria, arming the very Islamic terrorists she’s always claimed to be fighting.

(See http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438605/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-benghazi-scandal-arm-syrian-rebels-al-qaeda-isis-libya-turkey . Even Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has confirmed this Obama/Clinton illegal arms dealing; see: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/04/real-benghazi-story.html ; or see http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-admin-admits-to-covertly-sending-heavy-weapons-to-syrian-rebels-2012-12 .)

Ms. Strassel does mention in passing Mrs. Clinton’s secret speeches to the Goldman-Sachs bankers, in which she admits she favors “open borders” -– admitting millions more Muslim terrorists bent on converting America to a Muslim colony under Sharia law. ( http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/8/hillary-clinton-dreams-open-borders-leaked-speech-/ . . .

Ms. Strassel mentions nothing about Mrs. Clinton’s blithe assurance in the second debate that “Of course I wouldn’t allow any refugees into this country who hadn’t been properly vetted” -– when immigration officials complain the Obama administration has BARRED them from vetting these Muslims with even the most basic questions about their religious convictions and motivations. (You see, Islamic terrorists commit terror because their RELIGION urges them to use jihad, or “Holy War,” to kill the unbelievers and impose Islam world-wide. It promises them they’ll go to heaven if they die while engaging in such actions. So, how do you screen or “vet” such characters if you’re barred from asking them about their RELIGION?)

(See http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/10/another-dhs-official-confirms-no-way-to-vet-syrian-refugees/ , and http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/23/u-s-officials-cant-ask-syrian-refugees-key-questions/ .)

Ms. Strassel says nothing of the way Hillary ran the “bimbo eruption war room” in the 1993- 2001 Clinton White House, intimidating victims of Bill Clinton’s rapes or sexual assaults until their lives must have seemed a living hell, spending vast sums on private detectives to “dig up dirt” on these women in an attempt to prove they were “gold-digging sluts” and “whores with kneepads,” dispatching men to flatten their tires and “disappear” their pets and warn them their children could be next if they dared to speak out . . . when any champion of “women’s rights” might instead have been expected to ask these sexual assault victims if there was any way she could HELP them.

( See http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261957/trashing-bills-accusers-what-did-hillary-do-and-larry-elder . . . and . . . http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2015/03/14/hillarys-war-on-the-women-who-boinked-bill-n1970596 and http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435941/hillary-clinton-enabled-bill-clintons-abuse-women-her-own-standards .)

Why is NBC declining to run their entire interview with Bill Clinton rape victim Juanita Broaddrick? No news value or public interest? Or are they just afraid it might help Mr. Trump?

Nor does columnist Strassel of the Journal mention the way reporters at mainstream/leftist publications and Web sites have been fired this year for even ASKING about Hillary’s frail and degenerating health, when the Wikileaks e-mails make it clear the Hillary campaign was very worried, early on, about how to avoid or manipulate media coverage of the two “extremely sensitive” and vulnerable topics of her failing health and her taxes. (Hillary now takes off at least three days before each debate, a period which Dr. Ted Noel theorizes may be a “drug holiday,” since Leva-Dopa for Parkinson’s disease is more effective at suppressing tremors and “freezes” after a several-day “drug holiday.”

(For a detailed explanation of the health analysis, see . . . http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/dr_ted_noel_takes_a_close_look_at_hillarys_debate_performance.html . Meantime, for proof that Campaign Hillary knew her health (as well as her taxes) were major vulnerabilities, see . . . http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/16/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-campaign-health-hyper-sensitive/ .)

That the vile and ambitious unindicted felon Hillary Clinton is running the most despicable and repugnant “below-the-belt” campaign in U.S. history — pre-emptively accusing her opponent of being everything she and her husband actually are — is hard to miss. What threatens the fabric of American society and freedom of the press, though, is that so many in the media today are acting as her giddily enthusiastic agents, allies and enablers, casting aside the last shreds of their previous cloak of “objectivity” and “balance,” seizing on and trumpeting every absurd newly promoted claim that Donald Trump “touched” or “bumped” or “groped” some woman (who often turns out to be a big Hillary donor, or who claims the assault happened at a concert when it turns out there was no such concert at that location on that date) as much as 30 years ago -– unsubstantiated claims curious for surfacing only in the final weeks of a presidential campaign, years later.

Not only that, these media whores decline even to demand that these finger-pointing women be cross-examined under oath so at least they can later be indicted for perjury and criminal libel if it turns out they’re lying — a standard precaution — while those same Hillary acolytes blithely bury and ignore all the Hillary scandals above . . . including the unavoidable evidence that she has some kind of progressive neurological disease which could well lead to dementia and an inability to complete even one term in the White House . . . assuming she isn’t already crazy enough to get us into a nuclear war with Russia over Syrian affairs in which the United States has not one iota of war-worthy national interest.

(Hillary’s Parkinson’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mYx5oCxEg , . . . and . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHOxwXanszQ .)

Hint: Russia is fighting ISIS in Syria. Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration CLAIM to be fighting ISIS (though in fact Barack Obama favors Muslim interests, including the widespread colonization of the U.S. by radical Muslims who want to impose Sharia law.) Although total non-involvement in Syria at this point would be best, if the U.S. were to JOIN with Russia in seeking to destroy these Islamic radicals, who want to drag the Middle East back to the Ninth Century, how long would it take for such a team effort to reach a satisfactory conclusion, at which point we could shake hands with Putin and get out of there?

Yes, Donald Trump has real weaknesses, and the press has a duty to examine them. Running private companies is different from managing a government bureaucracy, because unionized government bureaucrats are much harder to fire and thus more resistant to change. And Congress doesn’t have to follow presidential “orders,” at all. Does Trump have the skills of a “persuader”? Trump should be pressed on his position on reproductive freedom. And what’s this “stop-and-frisk” nonsense?

But in America, calling an owner of hotels and resorts and casinos a “racist” and a “misogynist” has traditionally meant he won’t promote black, Hispanic or female employees above the level of maid, janitor, or cocktail waitress, that he won’t rent his rooms to blacks or Jews or even allow them in the showroom — except as waiters or busboys. Since those things are clearly not true of Donald Trump — or we would have heard all about it by now — calling him a “racist” goes beyond simple carelessness or “lack of nuance.”

Team Hillary is purposely using the “racist” label to stir up panic and hatred among certain constituencies when what they’re really referring to is the fact that Trump — with the backing of a clear majority of Americans and even a majority of LEGAL immigrants — wants to enforce our current, long-standing immigration laws, and especially to keep out Islamic would-be gang rapists, murderers, “honor killers” and terrorists. (See the current fate of Western Europe, swarmed by millions of “Muslim refugee” squatters from primitive cultures, most of whom seem to be embittered, unemployable young men, unfamiliar with Western standards of sanitation, who think it’s OK to grope or rape any woman not wrapped up like a mummy.)

Rather than just picking up and repeating this libel, the job of the press should be to explain the real issue — a policy difference concerning immigration enforcement, in which Hillary Clinton is echoing the current position of the Obama administration, that the PRESIDENT SHOULD REFUSE TO ENFORCE THE LAW . . . but disguising this stance by asserting that any other position is “racist.”

I was a professional newspaper journalist for 40 years. Believe me, it is NOT standard procedure to run with an uncorroborated story that a candidate “bumped’ or “touched” or “groped” some woman as much as 30 years ago, when such a previously unreported allegation comes to the attention of the press three weeks before election day. The timing alone should send up huge red flags.

Any editor who has not sold out his profession to become an absolute partisan for that candidate’s opponent should and almost always would tell the reporter, “OK, we’re going to follow up on that. If you’ve talked to this woman in person and you find her credible, then we’re not going to just ignore this assertion, this claim. But we’ve got work to do. Find out if this woman ever went to the police, offered a sworn complaint or deposition, and filed either a criminal or a civil court action in which she’s been required to answer interrogatories, face SOME kind of adversarial questioning under oath. Make sure, if she’s done that, that this charge or a similar charge from this person wasn’t already thrown out by the courts as groundless, at some earlier date.

“Anybody can make an unsubstantiated claim three weeks before Election Day, and then quietly disappear 22 days later. We’re not going to be used, here. We want to know if this woman has put herself in a position where -– if it turns out she’s lying -– she at least stands in SOME jeopardy of being held in criminal contempt for perjury, or opens herself to a civil proceeding for libel and defamation. Find out if she has corroborating witnesses, or if there are witnesses for the accused who contradict her story; interview them. And if it takes us till well after the election before she can meet all those tests, and her story doesn’t run till January, that’s fine. We have our standards -– WE’RE not the ones who decided to bring this forth three weeks before Election Day.”

There are plenty of other experienced journalists out there, reading this. Am I wrong? Wouldn’t that be standard, responsible procedure . . . if these folks weren’t hoping to bury Donald Trump, by any means necessary?