We’ve just obtained an email that shows that the Obama campaign yesterday circulated a negative, and ultimately false, story about Bill Clinton — that he allegedly made money giving a speech on September 11, 2006.<\/p>\n
Campaigns, of course, circulate negative stuff about each other all the time. This email is unusual in that it is flagging something potentially negative not about a primary rival but about the former President — one who obviously isn’t running in the Democratic primary and who remains popular with Dem primary voters. […]<\/p>\n
The email, which was sent out by Jen Psaki of the Obama campaign and circulated to reporters (not us) on an off-the-record basis late yesterday, details some things that the Obama campaign found in Hillary’s financial disclosure documents, which were released yesterday…. One of the things the email points to was the fact that Bill Clinton allegedly gave a for-profit speech on Sept. 11 — something that presumably would be likely seen as controversial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If it were true. Which it is not.<\/p>\n
Now, I don’t mind that top-tier presidential campaigns are going to scrutinize rivals’ disclosure forms; that’s pretty normal. I’m less comfortable with top-tier presidential campaigns going after a rival candidate’s spouse, though with the Clintons, the circumstances are a little unorthodox.<\/p>\n
But what really bugs me is that the Obama team got the story wrong. They dug up some dirt, dished it, but screwed it up and hit a very popular former president for something he did not do.<\/p>\n
I seriously doubt Barack Obama personally signed off on this kind of thing — no candidate can micromanage that kind of operation — but it’s up to the candidate to establish a style for his or her campaign. During the unproductive Geffen flap a couple of months ago, Obama said he’d direct his campaign not to engage in these kinds of political games anymore.<\/p>\n
Note to Obama: it might be time for another chat with the team. This one was cheap and ugly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drudge has been touting his latest Clinton “scandal,” this time accusing the former president of giving a for-profit speech for Asian investors on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Like far too many Drudge “scoops,” this one’s false. Drudge told readers: FORMS REVEAL: Bill Clinton commemorated the 5th anniversary of 9\/11with a paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}