Also, water is wet.
In the interest of fairness, I’m going to start with some honesty: I fully believe that if I had a giant multinational nonprofit organization and I had a hundred million dollars, I would probably launder some of my personal wealth through said organization. I mean, why not, right? I would also make sure that I didn’t get caught doing it. So do the Clintons do some things that might be illegal through their foundation? My guess is probably. Are two people that intelligent and well-versed in the law ever going to get caught for it? Hahahaha. No, no they aren’t.
In case you missed it, or in case you stopped caring that one of our political parties is trying to turn fog into smoke and prove that San Francisco is actually on fire, here’s a quick recap. A conservative activist group called Judicial Watch (because these people love Orwellian names) decided to do an FOIA request on Clinton’s emails – those that were released as well as another fifteen thousand that weren’t. The latest theory is so-called “pay to play” – that Clinton was trading favors as Secretary of State in exchange for contributions to her charity organization. In reality, what we’ve learned is:
- Rich people know other rich people.
- Hillary populated both the State Department and her foundation with people she liked and trusted.
- Those people occasionally emailed.
- Rich people would ask the Foundation to email the Secretary’s staff on their behalf in addition to going through official channels.
- People who contributed to the charity organization also talked to the State Department.
- These people included the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Bono, and the CEO of SlimFast.
- Bono wanted to broadcast to the International Space Station because he’s Bono.
- A sports executive once asked for a favor on behalf of a soccer player with a criminal past.
- That favor was not granted.
Now, obviously, there are still like 14870 emails to sift through, but my God is this what we’re clutching our pearls over? That Bono emailed one Clinton aide at one Clinton organization instead of another Clinton aide at the Clinton State Department? How dare he! He wanted to – to – I can barely bring myself to say it – broadcast to the ISS! Talk about pay to play.
One of the other things that gets wrapped up in all of this is Bahrain’s history of human rights abuses. Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the US has lots of friendly relations with strategically important countries (Turkey) who have issues with democracy (Saudi Arabia) and the like. We try to shy away from, say, the Kim Jong-Un’s of the world, but diplomacy is messy. Like that time we backed Saddam Hussein! Or the time we armed al-Qaeda (oops). Or the time we toppled Saddam Hussein and let ISIS fill the void (dammit). The history of the United States is littered with examples of propping up people who matter to us with a less-than-stellar track record on any number of abuses or rights violations.
Regardless, the Crown Prince of Bahrain is an important person who can get an audience with the Secretary. His 32 million dollar scholarship fund didn’t secure him that audience. Being the Crown Prince of Bahrain did.
My guess – and I’m speculating – is that Bono had a business card from one of the charity functions where he was trying to end fucking AIDS in Africa and thought “Oh, hey, I bet my dude Doug can pass along a request.” Would it have been better for Bono to, I guess, Google the State Department main line, call an operator, say “Hi I’m fucking Bono and I’d like to speak to Huma.” Sure. Do I blame him for not doing that? I don’t.
Politics is dirty, rich people are above the law, and I think once you hit, like, a hundred million dollars, you just get the little black book of famous people’s information. When I found out that Kanye had Taylor Swift’s phone number I didn’t decide to launch an FOIA request to figure out why. I just assume the people in those circles far, far above mine occasionally meet and hang out.
As usual, these emails confirm what people want to be true. If Clinton did actually engage in pay-to-play, I promise you she wouldn’t have an email saying “I’ll trade you an ambassadorship for a million dollar donation.” She’s a Yale-educated lawyer. She understands better than you, or me, or the pitchfork mob that calls itself Judicial Watch, what discoverable evidence is. Even if you believe she did all of the evil things of which she’s accused, there’s a reason no one can prove it.
By the way, did you know Donald Trump has the Donald J Trump Foundation? It’s a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and it receives and disburses money. That’s literally all I know about it. There’s a blank splash page for the Donald J Trump Foundation for Veterans. And there are a handful of tax filings.
But for a candidate who hasn’t released his personal taxes (Clinton has, and they go back to the 70s because of all the various offices she and her husband have run for), who hasn’t released a real health report (“all of the tests came back positive!” is about all we have, and the assertion that he will be the healthiest President in US history), who has a completely opaque charity, who promised his wife would address allegations that she abused a tourist visa while working in the US but who still hasn’t proven she didn’t, whose until-last-week campaign manager literally received off-the-books payments from a Ukrainian political party in exchange for DC lobbying efforts that were legally required to be reported to the government but weren’t – for that individual to call for a special prosecutor, an immediate investigation, and whatever words he thinks sound like a thing a President should say…well it’s the height of hypocrisy and the height of irony. But I’m not sure if either of those count among “the best words” that Donald Trump uses or understands.
Stop pretending that a charity foundation is SPECTRE, okay? And also, shame on anyone who still feels comfortable voting for the least transparent candidate in modern US history.
By the way, with 77 days until the election, we still don’t know Trump’s actual policies – on basically anything. He re-released his tax policy, which was stolen from Paul Ryan. He’s still working through his immigration policy, his domestic policy, his international policy, basically every policy other than “electing Donald Trump.” Jesus, can we talk about any of that? Or do we need to keep focusing on what Bono told Huma over fucking appetizers?
Chris Talks Politics 2016! 