Which was the bigger insult to Hillary: that she might have committed hanky-panky with the handling of her email, or that she's a huge Barry Manilow fan?
On today's With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin mocked Hillary's decision to delete thousands of supposedly personal emails: "was she running out of server space because she was, like, downloading every Barry Manilow song?" John Heilemann was equally unimpressed, quoting someone who tweeted: "Nixon didn't burn the tapes but Hillary destroyed the emails." Ouch.
Fire up the popcorn, folks.
JOHN HEILEMANN: Hillary Clinton saying, as Mark referred to earlier, she deleted some of her private e-mails.
HILLARY CLINTON: We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related e-mails and deliver them to the State Department. At the end, I chose not to keep my private, personal e-mails: e-mails about planning Chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends, as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes. No one wants their personal e-mails made public. And I think most people understand that and respect that privacy.
. . .MARK HALPERIN: The fact that she deleted her personal e-mails, I said before, I don't get that. I mean, was she running out of server space because she was downloading, like, every Barry Manilow song? Why did she need room the room on the server to delete emails about Chelsea's wedding? That is going to make people suspicious to say you deleted e-mails.
JOHN HEILEMANN: Why [did she delete]? Nobody deletes them! And you're talking about here, based on the review process quoted in this Clinton document, 30,490 were provided to the Department. 31,830 were private, personal letters. More than half of the emails she sent were personal. And I got to say, look. Maybe it's all: everybody has some sympathy for that. Of course, there are private e-mail correspondence that you, me, nobody would ever want anybody to get a look at, but the headlines. the two big headlines: 1. she destroyed thousands of e-mails, number one, and number two, as someone tweeted "Nixon didn't burn the tapes but Hillary destroyed the e-mails." Those are not great takeaways from this.
HALPERIN: I'll tell you though, this performance today probably calms the Democrats. And this, for the time being, she's satisfied them enough that it is a partisan issue and that works to her benefit.
HEILEMANN: And inflames the Republicans.
