CNN’s New Day host Alysin Camerota let her liberal bias show Wednesday morning as she teamed up with Joe Biden’s former chief-of-staff Ron Klain to push their narrative against American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp.
Klain started off the frenzy of misinformation when he suggested that President’s Trump firing of FBI Director James Comey was detrimental to the investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign:
What made it potentially criminal is when the President then fired the FBI director and acknowledged that it was for the purpose of obstructing the Russian investigation. That is, Jim Comey was proceeding with the investigation, notwithstanding the comments from President Trump, until the President took one additional step, which was to fire the FBI director.
In response, Schlapp correctly pointed out that the firing most likely had no effect on the investigation:
The only thing I would say back to that, Ron, is that you now have the person running the FBI who is saying that the White House has done nothing to impede any of these investigations....it didn't impact any of the operations in the FBI with all of these officers and these field agents who were doing a good job.
If anything, the firing helped the investigation. The acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe, is married to former Democratic Virginia state Senate candidate Dr. Jill McCabe. It was the Clinton ally and current Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe who pushed her to run for the state Senate seat.
Later, in the segment, Camerota channeled her inner pundit imitation, complete with a snarky tone:
So Matt, it's general sloppiness when the President divulges classified information, but not when Hillary Clinton has three e-mails that she sends that are mislabeled with a “C” and she sends to her own staff? How is that possible?
Klain then jumped in to state that what Trump did was much worse than Clinton because, “there is no evidence that anything Secretary Clinton did ever led to the release of classified information to adversaries.”
That claim is almost laughable. The servers on which Hillary Clinton kept her e-mails on, which did contain classified material and had less effective security than a commercial account (Gmail, AOL, etc.). This meant it was more vulnerable to be hacked. Even the New York Times was forced to admit that she was most likely hacked. She likely even compromised the name of CIA personnel. An article published by the Associated Press stated:
At least 47 of the emails contain the notation “B3 CIA PERS/ORG,” which indicates the material referred to CIA personnel or matters related to the agency. And because both Clinton’s server and the State Department systems were vulnerable to hacking, the perpetrators could have those original emails, and now the publicly released, redacted versions showing exactly which sections refer to CIA personnel.
On Special Report with Bret Bair, Charles Krauthammer torched the Democrats on Fox News Tuesday night for their hypocrisy on this issue. He told the panel: “Their candidate for the presidency had been spilling classified information, some of the highest level for a year, a-year-and-a-half, and the Democrats pretend it wasn’t a problem or that it should be ignored..”
Back to CNN, this reality did not stop Camerota from coming to the defense of Kain saying, “Absolutely. This was to her staff.”
Klain then went on to proclaim that Trump has aided Iran by his actions:Donald Trump handed Israeli intelligence to the patron of its arch enemy, Iran, a Russian client state. There could be nothing more damaging to Israeli security than giving Israeli intelligence to Iran’s principal client.
First, he made this claim with no evidence. Second, maybe he forgot that, under President Obama, the United States unfroze billions of dollars of Iranian assets as part of a deal that put Iran in a better position to develop a nuclear weapon.
The full transcript is below:
RON KLAIN: Well, how I see it is, again, the conversation with the President was troubling. What made it potentially criminal is when the President then fired the FBI director and acknowledged that it was for the purpose of obstructing the Russian investigation. That is, Jim Comey was proceeding with the investigation, notwithstanding the comments from President Trump, until the President took one additional step, which was to fire the FBI director.
MATT SCHLAPP: Let me counter that quickly. The only thing I would say back to that, Ron, is that you now have the person running the FBI who is saying that the White House has done nothing to impede any of these investigations.
KLAIN: Yeah, that's not what he said.
CAMEROTA: You're talking about McCabe and he was answering a specific question, I believe from Jason Chaffetz. So you have to look at it in context, he also may not have known about the Comey memos. The one thing --
SCHLAPP: That doesn't matter.
CAMEROTA: Hold on one second.
SCHLAPP: No, but let me just finish. The FBI did not - it didn't impact any of the operations in the FBI with all of these officers and these field agents who were doing a good job.
KLAIN: That’s an odd defense.
CAMEROTA: Right. It doesn't work. But if the President tried to do that, that is notable. I just want to say one thing. [being interrupted] Matt. Does it trouble you if the President divulged classified information to the Russians?
SCHLAPP: I'm with John Negroponte on this, who was on your show earlier. Um, you know, there is nothing in this that I think that is beyond a sloppy process. I think they should be a better process. I think giving Israel a heads up would be a good thing to do. Look, I think, Ron and I were talking about this, I think the sloppiness of not knowing who was going to have a recording device or a smartphone in the oval office, having those photos come out. Now we have Vladimir Putin with a recording, I think that's general sloppiness at the NSC and that needs to stop.
CAMEROTA: So Matt, it's general sloppiness when the President divulges classified information, but not when Hillary Clinton has three e-mails that she sends that are mislabeled with a “C” and she sends to her own staff? How is that possible?
SCHLAPP: Well the difference is that the President of the United States has the legal ability to share this classified information. Yes, it is better politically and for relationships if there is a process. Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state. She lied dozens of times about her mishandling of information. And the fact is that the whole system including the server was never cleared. So they are completely apples and Oranges.
CAMEROTA: Ron, last word.
KLAIN: Yeah, so I think they are apples and Oranges in that what Trump did was much worse. There is no evidence that anything Secretary Clinton did ever led to the release of classified information to adversaries.
SCHLAPP: That’s not true
CAMEROTA: Absolutely. This was to her staff.
KLAIN: Donald Trump handed Israeli intelligence to the patron of its arch enemy, Iran, a Russian client state. There could be nothing more damaging to Israeli security than giving Israeli intelligence to Iran’s principal client.
SCHLAPP: To defeat ISIS. To defeat ISIS.
CAMEROTA: We've got to leave it there. We heard your side, Matt. Ron, thank you very much. We're following a lot of news this morning, including one of the few Republicans speaking out today. Senator Suzanne Collins is going to join us this hour, so let's get right to it.
