The Washington Free Beacon noted that former NBC investigative reporter Michael Isikoff insisted NBC News should release the full tape of its interview with Juanita Broaddrick – “NBC ought to check its archive and run the full interview. (AS long as they’re now culling their archives!)”
He added that it was “amazing to watch” Democrats that he saw defend Bill Clinton against his accusers now jump to embrace women accusing Trump. “It’s amazing to watch how D’s who attacked those women are now embracing the Trump accusers, while the Rs who believed them attack them,” Isikoff said.
Since Broaddrick attended the second presidential debate -- with Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones, who both claimed non-consensual harassment from Clinton -- Hillary defenders have tried to pretend they were just bimbos. On The View, Whoopi Goldberg ignorantly claimed "May I just point this out, several of those women slept with him knowing he was a married man, okay?...So, again, she [Hillary] is the victim here. She's the victim here."
On February 26, 1999, NBC’s Dateline broadcast an interview with Broaddrick, who claimed then-Attorney General Bill Clinton raped her in a hotel room in 1978. Correspondent Lisa Myers investigated her claims to confirm that both Broaddrick and Clinton were in the Camelot Hotel where Broaddick said the assault took place.
In a C-SPAN interview last August, her NBC interviewer Lisa Myers said "Nothing has come up since that story was reported that in any way undercuts what Juanita Broaddrick said.”
Hillary has never been challenged to address her raging hypocrisy by a TV interviewer as she's tweeted self-righteously about believing every woman’s charge of a sexual assault. Last December, one of those "everyday Americans" asked her about it in New Hampshire (on video), and Mrs. Clinton said "I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence."
NBC and Myers never made any mention of Hillary Clinton in their Broaddrick interview, but Broaddrick told Sean Hannity and others that Hillary came up to her and shook her hand firmly after the assault, saying something like “I just want you to know how much Bill and I appreciate what you do for him.”
Her horrific story brought forth the imagery of Bill Clinton biting down on this poor woman’s lip as he violently attacked her...Broaddrick in shock, her face bloody and swollen, her underwear torn...and then Clinton putting on his shades and saying “You better put some ice on that” as he left the room.
And in reply, the president never had to say more to the press than legalese: “My counsel has made a statement about the first issue and I have nothing to add to it.”
Back then, NBC sat on the Myers interview for weeks – until the Senate voted not to remove Clinton from office. So Broaddrick gave her story to the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz, who published it on the editorial page on February 19. Later that day, in a brief press event with three questions allowed to U.S. reporters, no one asked a single question about Broaddrick. But Larry McQuillan of Reuters asked, "I wonder if you could share with us some of your thoughts about the pros and cons of Hillary running for the Senate seat in New York?"
Six days later, NBC finally relented to public outrage and presented Broaddrick's emotional testimony and the Myers investigation that placed Broaddrick and Clinton in the same hotel on April 25, 1978. The evidence was as incriminating as the details were horrifying.
How did the public react then? A USA Today/CNN poll found that fully 66% of Americans found the rape allegation to be "no big deal," perhaps because 54% of them didn't believe Juanita Broaddrick. How could the public be so calloused? But a deeper look at the survey revealed 44% of the public, almost one half of those polled, had never heard of the story. That survey, in the final analysis, was useless except to wave the story off.
Another one couldn't be dismissed. MSNBC, to its credit, conducted another survey. It asked people who were familiar with the report to call in and register their opinions. An astonishing 30,000 called. Eighty four percent believed Juanita Broaddrick's story; and only 16% were swayed by Bill Clinton's (limited, modified) denial through a lawyer.
It's not hard to guess what the big cover story should have been in Time and Newsweek the Monday after NBC's Broaddrick segment. But it wasn't. "Senator Clinton?" was the cover of Time, with a painting of a dignified, smiling Hillary in a black pantsuit against a blue backdrop. Newsweek was gushier: over a head shot of a twinkly, smiling Hillary, the cover read: "Her Turn: Senate or world stage? Either way, Hillary's ready for her own run at history."
Both magazines carried nine pages or more of heavy-breathing coverage. Time's story was illustrated a huge flattering cartoon of Hillary standing over the New York skyline, large enough to dwarf King Kong. The headline read "A Race Of Her Own: Hillary ignites the country with talk of a New York Senate bid. But will she do it, and with the media and maybe Rudy lying in wait - can she win?" Two of the pages were flattering black-and-white photos of smiling Hillary on rope lines and on Rosie O'Donnell's talk show. One shot in a lighting shop with her smiling and looking upward looked like an outtake from the old Marlo Thomas sitcom "That Girl."
Newsweek's story had a two-page photo of a smiling Hillary handing back a child with the headline "Hillary's Day In The Sun: Now it's her turn. After a quarter century of standing by Bill Clinton - and rising to power with him - the First Lady is ready for a run of her own. Where will she make her mark? In the Senate or on the world stage? The road ahead is risky, but at the moment Mrs. Clinton is the hottest commodity in American public life." Even photo captions betrayed their enthusiasm - "At last, a role reversal...Hillary's fierce devotion to service was forged early." A Jonathan Alter column was titled "Paging Eleanor Roosevelt."
In those same issues, Time's Adam Cohen wrote a one-page article on Broaddrick's rape charge, noting the "vociferously conservative" Wall Street Journal editorial page printed it first, and argued "the story seems unlikely to have much traction."
In Newsweek, the only mention of Broaddrick came in the snippy "Conventional Wisdom Watch" feature. While Hillary drew an up arrow ("Run Hil, run. NY Sen race would make Gore-Bush look like Student Council bid"), The "CW" writer (usually wise-cracking Jonathan Alter, "the son the Clintons never wanted" quips Shirley) called Broaddrick simply by her Starr Report name, "Jane Doe 5," and declared: "Should have leveled (unproven) assault charge in '78, or '92. But sounds like our guy."
Sounds like our guy?
But no reporter sought the First Lady's comment on the Broaddrick assault, and the networks stayed quiet, even when the White House was shameless enough to speak out against violence against women. On February 26, 1999, just two days after the NBC interview, Vice President Gore held a White House event on domestic violence. He proclaimed: "Physical brutality at the hands of a partner or spouse is not simply love gone wrong, or someone needing to blow off steam at the end of the day. It is criminal assault, pure and simple. We don't do anybody any favors, least of all the abusers, when we ignore it."
Coming on the heels of the Broaddrick accusation, the irony should have been inescapable. Yet Associated Press reporter Sonya Ross reported it without any Broaddrick mention. On ABC's Good Morning America, anchor Antonio Mora blandly previewed: "And Vice President Gore announces $223 million in grants to communities to fight domestic violence." Evening news coverage? Zero.
On March 4, 1999 Hillary Clinton declared in a speech at the United Nations: "It is no longer acceptable to say that the abuse and mistreatment of women is cultural. It should be called what it is -- criminal." Given that her own husband now stood accused of abuse on a monstrous scale, again the connection should have been unavoidable. The New York Times carried it, but made no reference to Broaddrick. Neither the AP nor the UPI wire services even bothered to transmit the quote. Nobody cared. Network TV coverage? Zero.
