Today’s quote comes to us from a very unlikely source: MSNBC’s 10PM host Lawrence O’Donnell. And, even more improbably, though his motivation is, I am certain, very different from mine, I agree with what he has to say.
Here is Mr. O’Donnell, making absolute mincemeat of fellow MSNBCer Alex Wagner’s attempt to exonerate Ms. Clinton’s treatment of Secretary Of State email as some kind of private preserve, by telling us that Jeb Bush, while Governor of Florida, did the same thing (bold print is mine):
“You know what’s funny to me about this is that a lot of people in liberal world today are using the Bush standard. Something they normally find to be evil on everything including what you order for dinner. They’re using the Bush standard as the defense of Hillary Clinton. Bush’s emails were legally available to everyone. Hillary Clinton’s system was designed to defy Freedom of Information Act requests which is designed to defy the law. The Freedom of Information Act in all its government transparency which we obviously care about a lot more than voters do. That was a decades long liberal crusade. It was liberals pushing on this from the Nixon administration forward to say there’s too much nasty stuff going on backstage, we got to find out how this is really working. The regulation that Hillary Clinton was defying is a liberal regulation. it is of a liberal spirit.”
Yes, Mr. O’Donnell. That is correct. There is no comparison between Bush and Clinton…other than the invented one Hillary Clinton is desperately trying to sell; a comparison which, this time – for once – mainstream media are not backing her up on.
I wonder if Ms. Clinton is aware of just how precipitous her situation is. If there are even a few emails about, say, Benghazi, that suggest things were happening there which a) reflect badly on her performance but b) keeping federal emails private enabled her to hide from the public, it is a good bet that she is finished.
And what do you think the chances are that such emails exist…or, more exactly, existed, since Clinton will have done everything she knows how to make them vanish?
Look, I have no illusions about Larry O’Donnell’s position here. Politically, he is much closer to Elizabeth Warren than he is to Hillary Clinton, and I strongly suspect that he would love a Warren candidacy (which, oddly enough, the Republicans O’Donnell never agrees with probably would love too, on the grounds that she would make a lousy candidate).
But the truth is the truth, and for stating the truth so well, Quote Of The Day honors are his.
