During a round-up of political news on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer promoted the 2016 Democratic front-runner taking to social media to answer softball questions: “Hillary Clinton hosted her first Facebook chat as a presidential candidate on Monday. It was followed by thousands, with topics ranging from her plans to reform Wall Street to Libya to business attire for women. The former Secretary of State saying, ‘I never met a pantsuit I didn't love.’”
Lauer then touted her blasting the GOP: “Clinton also weighed in on her Republican rivals on the issue of immigration, saying, ‘Donald Trump in particular is getting a lot of attention for some hateful rhetoric, but Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio actually agree with him on denying a pathway to citizenship.’”
He noted that Clinton only answered twelve questions out of “thousands” and that only four of those were from reporters.
While Lauer mentioned Libya as one of the topics of discussion, he failed to explain that Clinton ignored such questions. BuzzFeed’s Andrea Kaczynski asked directly: “Do you feel responsible for the current situation in Libya?”
Kaczynski offered several pointed questions that were all ignored by Clinton:
> Why didn't you list Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization?
> What would you say to Democratic primary voters who are concerned that 4 of your top 6 donors in 2008 came from massive investment banks?
> Will you commit to releasing 30 plus years of tax returns like Jeb Bush?
> Why has the the State Department been unable to find emails from Sidney Blumenthal in the 55,000 pages you turned over?
In addition, Clinton was pressed on tax policy by Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist: “CBO says that the top 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 24 percent of all federal taxes, and has an average federal total tax rate of 29 percent. Why do you want to raise taxes even higher?”
Judicial Watch grilled her on the e-mail scandal: “Why didn't you tell the truth to the American People about your secret email accounts as Secretary of State? When will you release all of your hidden emails and turn over your email server?”
Clinton was silent on all those topics, but at least Lauer could quote her talking about pantsuits.
