A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford It pays to have friends in corporate media. NBC spared Hillary Clinton potentially catastrophic damage by releasing an old Donald Trump sex-talk tape at “precisely the right moment to suck the air out” of new Wikileaks documents that “reveal her as a methodical, cynical liar who wants to cut Social Security and send millions more jobs overseas.” Hillary and Big Media – the solidarity of the 1% -- now join in sliming Wikileaks as Russian agents.
Soft Porn Tape Trumps Wikileaks Truths: Hillary’s “Private” Lies Prevail A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford “ Even Santa Claus would get outsourced in Hillary’s vision of ‘free trade.’”
There was never any real doubt that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump. Indeed, from the Democrats’ standpoint, Trump was the ideal candidate. Wikileaks documents show that the Democratic National Committee wanted the Republicans to put forward as right-wing a candidate as possible, so that Clinton, who represents the right wing of the Democratic Party, would look good by comparison .
Clinton has long been the favorite of the corporate media, and her best TV friends are at NBC. The network had known for months about the 11-year-old tape in which its current employee, Billy Bush, a cousin and nephew of two presidents, joined with Trump in piggish banter degrading women. NBC chose to release the tape at precisely the right moment to suck the air out of a new batch of Wikileaks documents that could have been catastrophic for the Clinton campaign. As a result, everybody and their mother knows that Trump brags about grabbing women’s private parts, but far fewer folks learned what Clinton said to those bankers and other One Percenters that have paid her $26 million for private speeches. If the contents of her bankster speeches had been divulged at the height of her primary race against Bernie Sanders, Clinton would never have won the nomination, because they reveal her as a methodical, cynical liar who wants to cut Social Security and send millions more jobs overseas.
Clinton told the bankers at Morgan Stanley that she agreed with the co-chairs of President Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission, who proposed cutting Social Security and making Americans wait longer to collect their benefits. She called that “the right framework” to “restrain spending” and “incentivize growth”
To earn her $200,000-plus check, Clinton confided to Brazilian bankers that her “dream” is "a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders” -- that is, a kind of super-NAFTA agreement that stretches from the North Pole to the South Pole. Even Santa Claus would get outsourced in Hillary’s vision of “free trade.”
Inoculated Against Truth
Clinton told a bunch of real estate developers that rich folks like themselves shouldn’t take her public speeches to the Democratic masses too literally. Her years in politics have taught her, she said, that “you need both a public and a private position .” She is telling the rich and powerful not to worry, because she will protect their interests while lying to the people.
Had NBC not pushed the Wikileaks story to the side with their soft-porn Trump tape, Clinton’s candidacy would have been gravely wounded. But, the Democrats and their corporate media allies have convinced many Americans that everything from Wikileaks is a Russian trick, including documents that come straight from the desk of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, and which Podesta does not deny are his. Much of the public has been inoculated against any bombshells of truth from Wikileaks. And if any truth threatens to break through, then the media will find some other way to change the subject, because Big Media are a part of the filthy rich that hope to benefit from Hillary’s “private” positions and public lies.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
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(This article originally appeared in Truthout.)
