http://www.theatlantic.com/

August 1, 2016

 

The Atlantic: Why Can't Hillary Clinton Stop Lying?

 

The Democratic presidential nominee came off a successful convention week in Philadelphia and landed right back in hot water with another fabrication.

 

This is a note to Clinton Democrats—a desperate plea, actually. Your candidate staged a winning convention in Philadelphia: big stars, tight messaging, and a compelling case against her rival, Donald Trump.

The Republican nominee followed up by smearing a war hero’s family, revealing his ignorance about Russia’s incursions into Ukraine, denying a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he had previously claimed, and failing to quell suspicions that his team changed the GOP platform to protect Putin’s interests.

Hillary Clinton may be rising in the polls as a result, which is good news for people like me across the political spectrum who find Trump to be vacuous, soulless, and temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

Yet I’m not angry at Trump; I expect him to be repugnant. I am angry at Clinton, because she followed up her convention with another unnecessary lie; another excuse for people to distrust her; another thin reed upon which undecided voters could justify a belated allegiance to a man who former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called “a dangerous demagogue.”

 

On Sunday, the former secretary of state told FOX News’ Chris Wallace that FBI Director James Comey cleared her of misleading the public about her rogue email server at the state department: “Director Comey said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.”

That’s wrong and she knows it, which makes it a lie.

“Clinton is cherry-picking statements by Comey to preserve her narrative about the unusual setup of a private email server,” wrote Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who awarded Clinton the maximum four “Pinocchios” for her whopper. “This allows her to skate past the more disturbing findings of the FBI investigation.”

Read here if you want to know about the FBI’s findings. In addition, her actions were an assault on the Freedom of Information Act and the hallowed concept of legislative oversight.

 

And yet, in my mind, the case against Clinton is not as disturbing as Trump’s mendacity, megalomania, intolerance, and intellectual slovenliness. With Clinton and Trump, the two most unpopular presidential candidates in the modern era, there is no equivalence.

I’m angry at Clinton because I expect better. The country needs better. I say again: If Trump becomes president, the world will have Clinton to blame.

Her dishonesty could push an unknown number of independent and undecided voters into Trump’s camp or toward a non-major-party candidate. If too many swing voters walk away from Clinton because she destroyed her credibility or because they don’t want to condone her behavior, the nuclear codes go to Trump.

That is why Clinton’s advisers, senior Democrats, and members of the liberal media need to stop covering for Clinton. Stop repeating her spin. Stop spreading her lies. Stop enabling her worse angels. It’s too late for Clinton to come clean, but honorable Democrats should at least insist that she stop muddying the water.

Please, for the sake of the country, tell her: Stop lying.