Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:45 pm
Donald Trump’s future White House Communications Director suggested that the American people should be discussing punishing Hillary Clinton for “manipulating” the 2016 election.
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Transcript of Sean Spicer on ABC’s This Week:
SPICER: What this says is that the DNC had a problem with their IT security and people tried to hack it and they need to do a better job of protecting it…
KARL: The Russians succeeding in hacking…
SPICER: But the fact of the matter is, but we’re having part of a conversation. Why aren’t we talking about the influence, other influences on the election? Why aren’t we talking about Hillary Clinton getting debate questions ahead of time? That’s a pretty valid attempt to influence an election. Somebody giving her the debate questions and the answers of an election. No, no, no. It’s not hey. We haven’t, no one’s asking those questions. And the fact is is that everyone wants to talk, make Donald Trump admit to certain things. When are we going to start talking about the other side of this. Which is what did Hillary Clinton do to influence the election? Is she being punished in any way? What are we doing to make sure that people don’t get the debate questions ahead of time, because I can tell you this, if my boss at the time, Reince Priebus, had gotten the debate questions, and handed them off, he would have been driven out of this town on a steak, and Donald Trump would have been vilified. No one wants to ask those questions now.
Trump’s press secretary/White House Communications Director floated the idea of punishing Hillary Clinton to distract and take attention away from the Russians interfering in a presidential election to help Donald Trump.
The president-elect and his team use projections of their own crimes and misbehavior to attack their political enemies as a standard technique. The American people should be appalled by the fact that the incoming administration can’t stop talking about abusing their power to punish their political opponents. Spicer never mentioned how Hillary Clinton manipulated the general election.
Instead, he tried to falsely equate Clinton potentially receiving a primary debate question in advance with a foreign government interfering to impact the outcome of a US presidential election. The facts are that Hillary Clinton didn’t manipulate a general election. The Russian government did. Congress and every American need to ask in a common voice why the Trump administration continues to defend Russia and try to sweep election hacking under the rug.
Punishing Hillary Clinton won’t distract anyone from the reality that Putin and the Russian government got Donald Trump elected president.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
