Smoking Gun

I listen to MSNBC each morning as I drive in to work. For the past six months, it's been wall-to-wall Donald Trump. Listeners are told just how "disastrous," "dangerous," and/or "Hitlerian" his presidency would be. His every word is dissected, criticized, and roundly condemned. Of late, there's a slight whiff of desperation in the words of MSNBC's talking heads as Hillary's poll numbers keep dropping.

And Hillary? She's almost invisible at MSNBC—at least in the early morning time slot. But when her name comes up, a supporter (that means virtually everyone at the network and almost every talking head that appears on air) goes into full defense mode: "HRC is unduly criticized, the email scandal is a GOP witch hunt; there is no evidence of wrong doing, no lies, there is no smoking gun."

These arguments (actually they are specious assertions) are remarkable in their own right—they truly are an example of the three monkeys—hear, speak and see no evil (when it comes to Hillary Clinton and the Democrat cause).

Most maddening is the the Democrats' assertion that because there is "no smoking gun," Hillary should get a pass. Jonah Goldberg comments:

... it’s interesting to hear the Clinton campaign respond to every single new email-related revelation: “There is no smoking gun here.”

Now, I’ve been banging my spoon on my highchair for over a year that Clinton’s stealth server is the smoking gun. It’s just sitting out in the open smoldering like an abandoned-tire fire. The server’s mere existence proves she did something wrong, which even she has admitted albeit in a Nixonian way. Mistakes were made, as Tricky Dick used to say.

It’s worth revisiting the smoking gun of the Nixon White House. What did the tape prove? It didn’t prove that Nixon ordered the break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. It proved that he had been in on the coverup far longer than he had claimed, and that he wanted aides to monkey-wrench the FBI’s investigation.

Well.

On Aug. 8, 2015, Clinton submitted to a federal judge a signed declaration in which she swore "under penalty of perjury" that she had directed all emails that "were or potentially were federal records" to be handed over to the State Department. In October, she swore to Congress that “I provided the department, which has been providing you, with all of my work-related emails — all that I had.”

These were lies. In May, the State Department inspector general confirmed that numerous relevant emails weren’t handed over. Then in July, FBI Director James Comey told Congress that the FBI found thousands of emails Clinton had never turned over. Also, a new report from the FBI confirms that the Clinton organization started deleting emails after it was ordered not to by Congress.

This barely scratches the surface of the falsehoods and coverups Clinton is guilty of. Nearly every single factual assertion she made to the public in her initial news conference has proved to be a lie. When The New York Times reported on the existence of her server, Clinton campaign officials screamed bloody murder about how inaccurate and unfair it was. They also started deleting emails and smashing BlackBerrys in a hurry, even as Clinton was publicly bragging about her dedication to transparency.

In the through-the-looking-glass world of the Democrats, all of the evidence that Goldberg delineates has been disregarded because in their view, there is no smoking gun. Except ... there is. 

Just as many national figures within the GOP properly criticize Trump for the things he says, you'd think that many prominent Democrats would properly criticize Hillary Clinton for what she does. Except ... they don't. And that might be the most profound indication of just where the heart and soul of the Democratic party really is.