The New York Times’ chief Hillary-following reporter Amy Chozick delivered some unfiltered Clinton campaign propaganda in Tuesday’s “'Conspiracy’ Validation Seen by Clinton Camp,” vindicating Hillary’s notorious late-90s paranoia about a “vast right-wing conspiracy” taking on the innocent, scandal-free First Couple, with Chozick defending the claim as "not entirely baseless.".
It took just a few hours, after Donald J. Trump announced a major staff shake-up last week, for Hillary Clinton’s campaign team to settle on a new buzzword.
“He peddles conspiracy theories,” her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said of Mr. Trump on MSNBC.
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For the better part of two decades, the invocation of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the Clintons, as Mrs. Clinton famously called it when allegations of sexual misconduct engulfed her husband’s administration, has elicited eye rolls even among some of the couple’s allies.
It was not worth amplifying such attacks by responding to them, advisers often reasoned. And any discussion of a secret plot to undercut the Clintons risked sounding like paranoia, peevishness or just an attempt to duck responsibility.
But with Mr. Trump’s appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, as his new campaign chief, Mrs. Clinton and her extended orbit have sensed an unfamiliar opportunity: The so-called vast right-wing conspiracy might actually be lending her a hand.
For longtime Clinton allies, the elevation of Mr. Bannon has inspired competing emotions. There is a sense of vindication, bordering on the surreal -- a we-told-you-so impulse that cannot be suppressed as purveyors of conspiracy theories seize the reins of an actual Republican presidential campaign.
Chozick defended the corrupt Clintons and their endless scandalabra as "generally groundless."
Yet after more than two decades of attacks from conservatives -- some seizing on Mrs. Clinton’s own missteps, her former aides say, but most generally groundless -- others worry that an even darker turn is possible, given the advisers now guiding Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Team Clinton, as usual, will rely on a willing mainstream media to do its dirty work, something a Republican candidate would never be able to do.
Clinton aides said their playbook called for a careful balancing act: ignoring or dismissing Mr. Trump’s most outlandish attacks, while also encouraging independent fact-checkers at mainstream news outlets to debunk any that threaten to gain traction.
So as insinuations about Mrs. Clinton’s health began to spread from conservative websites like the Drudge Report into Mr. Trump’s own speeches and Twitter messages, her campaign released a statement from Mrs. Clinton’s internist, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, vouching for her “excellent health” and providing a summary of her medical history.
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Those close to Mrs. Clinton pointed to the so-called birther questions about President Obama’s birth certificate, led by none other than Mr. Trump: Mr. Obama, they said, may have inadvertently fueled those questions by initially resisting a forceful public rebuke.
Actually, the birther movement was “birthed” by Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2008 Democratic primary, a fact Newsbusters has often pointed out but which the Times seems unable to grasp.
Chozick even defended Hillary Clinton’s infamous “vast right-wing conspiracy” claim.
Theories aside, Mrs. Clinton must tread carefully in blaming Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative news media for all of her political problems. After all, early questions about Mr. Clinton’s relationship with a White House intern prompted Mrs. Clinton, then first lady, to suggest the existence of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” in a 1998 interview on the “Today” show.
But Mrs. Clinton’s claim was not entirely baseless: Amid a congressional investigation, she and her husband learned of a small team of lawyers who had worked in secret to bolster a sexual misconduct lawsuit by Paula Jones, helping to push the case into the office of the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr. Mr. Starr later expanded his investigation to include the Monica Lewinsky affair.
“A small team of lawyers” working in politics? Oh the horror.
