The stunned silence among network news didn’t last long after a former DNC Chairwoman revealed that the Democratic Party allowed Hillary to take over during the primary and unfairly cheat candidate Bernie Sanders out of the nomination. Today, liberal pundits took to social media and television to use a single, otherwise worthless paragraph to dishonestly claim that the internal collusion was only for the general election and standard practice.
The Bombshell (in case you missed it)
An excerpt from former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile published by Politico Thursday laid out how the Democratic National Committee funneled funds and resources away from Bernie Sanders and into the control of Hillary Clinton.
“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.
…
Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races.
…
I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
To be fair, the excerpt has a paragraph in which Brazile appears to say that she could find no evidence of wrongdoing – something Democratic party pundits might have used to spin the damaging narrative [emphasis mine].
I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none.
Leaving out just the final sentence in that paragraph appears to exonerate the party and Clinton from any wrongdoing, but the next five words say otherwise.
Then I found this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
The silence
The three network news outlets, largely believed to harbor significant bias towards the Democratic party, aired zero coverage of the Brazile story for the first 24 hours after it broke. The gap could be seen as the networks ignoring any bad news for the party if they had stayed quiet, but they didn’t
The spin
After the networks awoke from their stunned silence, the talking points slowly congealed.
Feeling weakness in using Brazile’s own words to challenge her allegations against Hillary and the party, the DNC elite found a single paragraph in the joint funding agreement that they say proves that nothing wrong was done because the paragraph says nothing wrong was done.
Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.
After the “day of silence”, Brazile toed the DNC line. She took to Twitter to refute the statements she made in her own book.
“Today’s lesson: Being quoted by Donald Trump means being MIS-quoted by Donald Trump,” Brazile tweeted. “Stop trolling me. #NeverSaidHillaryRiggedElection”
Today’s lesson: Being quoted by Donald Trump means being MIS-quoted by Donald Trump. Stop trolling me. #NeverSaidHillaryRiggedElection
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) November 3, 2017
She then announced that she’d be on ABC Sunday morning to clarify just how everyone got what she said wrong.
“Thank you Mr President (a few others trollers), for translating my new book into Trumpspeak. #NotWhatISaid. Watch @ThisWeekABC for my views.”
Thank you Mr President (a few others trollers), for translating my new book into Trumpspeak. #NotWhatISaid. Watch @ThisWeekABC for my views.
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) November 3, 2017
And the pundits went to work:
https://twitter.com/GovHowardDean/status/926569099622338561
Wow. @DonnaBrazile managed to end her career three times on just one issue. https://t.co/3F0ZATqkHB
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 4, 2017
THIS, my friends, is how fake news is created. Run with an inaccurate storyline smearing Hillary Clinton, then ignore exculpatory details. https://t.co/K7WPOeboAR
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) November 3, 2017
Bernie Sanders former campaign manager Jeff Weaver dismissed the paragraph as “disingenuous.”
“Throwing this catchall at the end saying that this document doesn’t say what it says is a little disingenuous,” he said. “Anybody who suggests we were being treated the same way is playing semantic games.”
But the timeline!!!
ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN won’t dig further because they like the spun narrative. Suddenly, Trump, Bernie supporters and anyone else thinking the primary was rigged are wrong, Brazile is discredited and the DNC and Hillary Clinton are in the clear. What else could they want?
The problem is that their version of the story doesn’t match the timeline.
First, remember that Hillary didn’t clinch the nomination until June 6, 2016, then watch Julian Assange tear apart the narrative using the dates in the agreement. If the agreement was only for the general election, as the weasely little paragraph says, why did it end months before the Democratic National Convention during which Hillary became the official nominee?
Secret Clinton-DNC agreement proves @DonnaBrazile right. "It's for the general" is nonsense. Opposite is true. It specifies:
Sep 1, 2015: Commencement
Sep 11: Appointment of Clinton picked communications director
Oct 1: First cash payment of $1.2m
Mar 31, 2016: Termination date pic.twitter.com/hvUmdT8iQd— Defend Assange Campaign (@DefendAssange) November 4, 2017
Oops.
