Vince Foster’s Sister Calls Trump’s Conspiracy Mongering ‘Irresponsible’ and ‘Cruel’

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:01 pm

In an op-ed penned for The Washington Post Thursday, the sister of former White House counsel Vince Foster, Sheila Foster Anthony, unleashed her fury on Donald Trump for indulging in a decades’ old conspiracy theory that the Clintons had something to do with her brother’s suicide:

It is beyond contempt that a politician would use a family tragedy to further his candidacy, but such is the character of Donald Trump displayed in his recent comments to The Washington Post. In this interview, Trump cynically, crassly and recklessly insinuated that my brother, Vincent W. Foster Jr., may have been murdered because “he had intimate knowledge of what was going on” and that Hillary Clinton may have somehow played a role in Vince’s death.

“How wrong. How irresponsible. How cruel,” she wrote, asking,

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This is scurrilous enough coming from right-wing political operatives who have peddled conspiracy theories about Vince’s death for more than two decades. How could this be coming from the presumptive Republican nominee for president?

Like CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday, Sheila Foster Anthony brought up the numerous investigation that found Foster had killed himself. She testifies that her brother was suffering from depression, because he told her so:

Vince called me at my office in the Justice Department a few days before he died. He told me he was battling depression and knew he needed help. But he was worried that such an admission would adversely affect his top-level security clearance and prevent him from doing his job.
 
I told him I would try to find a psychiatrist who could help him and protect his privacy. After a few phone calls, I gave him three names.

She knew without being told that he had killed himself. Never for a minute have I doubted that was what happened.” Of the theories that the Clintons had killed her brother and now Trump saying the circumstances were “fishy,” she captures Trump’s recipe for success in a single sentence:

“Repeat something enough times and in enough venues, I guess, and people begin to question their own good sense.”

She made it clear that she was speaking out at the request of the Post, and that she has donated money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obviously, none of this will have any effect on Trump, who always claims “he” isn’t saying but that he’s just commenting on what others are saying.

It is to be hoped, however, that her words will have some effect on those who have not filled their ears to excess with Donald Trump.

This is a woman whose family has suffered, first because of her brother’s suicide and then because of the irresponsible conspiracy mongering of those who want to blame the Clintons. She has made it clear that she does not blame the Clintons, and that doing so is “wrong,” “irresponsible,” and “cruel.”

Three better words could not be found in the English language to describe Donald Trump and the Republican Party that created him.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.