Rupert Murdoch’s right wing media empire is pulling out all the stops against Hillary Clinton. Their latest stunt is an attempt to disguise Clinton smearing as Anthony Weiner news.
This comes to us from the News Corp owned tabloid the NY Post:
Bill and Hillary Clinton are angry with efforts by mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner and his campaign to compare his Internet sexcapades — and his wife Huma Abedin’s incredible forgiveness — to the Clintons’ notorious White House saga, The Post has learned.
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“The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging — that Huma is ‘standing by her man’ the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did,” said a top state Democrat.
….
Worried about the potential impact on Hillary’s likely run for president in 2016, the political power couple has begun aggressively distancing itself from the crippled mayoral contender, according to sources.
Meanwhile, at least one prominent Hillary Rodham Clinton political operative was described as close to “going public” with a sharp criticism of Weiner — in order to send the message that the Clintons, fearing longtime damage to Hillary, want him out of the mayor’s race. (That would be someone other than former Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who said yesterday that she was sure the Clintons wanted Weiner out of the race.)
This all sounds the typical right wing tabloid stuff, but knowing the Clintons, it is also believable. This story jumped the shark when it tried to connect Weiner to the potential Hillary run for president in 2016. What the Post was really try to do with this story was connect Weiner to Hillary. I suspect this is yet another dirty trick by News Corp to remind everyone of Monica Lewinsky.
If that’s the case, the right seems to have forgotten that scandals only make Clintons more popular.
However, nothing would really surprise me when it comes to the Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Clintons are well known for keeping a list of people who have crossed them. According to Mark Leibovich’s book ‘This Town,’ the former president and then future secretary of state put together a list of people who they believed crossed them, and were now considered dead to them after the 2008 Democratic primary. Unless one is huge political force in their own right, think Ted Kennedy endorsing Obama, crossing the Clintons is not a good idea.
Much like the rest of the right’s propaganda machine, the Post story takes quotes from a source, but then draws their own conclusions. No one is quoted in the article as saying that the Clintons are worried that Weiner might damage her potential 2016 bid. That is something that author attributes to unnamed sources.
A deconstruction of this article reveals a bit of potential truth (the Clintons are livid about this) and a whole lot of News Corp trying to use Weiner to bring down Hillary ahead of 2016. Mostly though, it looks like another step in the effort by Rupert Murdoch’s empire to try to stop Hillary Clinton before 2016.
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
