Last night, as I watched the Republican presidential debate on CNN, I made notes in between rolling my eyes at how stiltifyingly boring it all was. But then, toward the end, something caught my ear.
A man stood up and asked a question about gays in the military. Fair enough. Until he went on the say that he had served in the Army, rose to the rank of Brigadier General, and had stayed closeted as a gay man until he retired from the military.
I made the following note at that very moment (I swear this is the verbatim thing I wrote): “Close to the end, we had the gay General, who said he came out as a gay man after he left the Army, and he said he thought gays should be able to serve openly.
“Guess who’s position THAT is?! HRC.
“The gay General a Hillary plant? Up to you!”
Even as the General was still speaking, I knew he must have been placed there either on the orders of Hillary Clinton’s campaign or on his own accord, but certainly with the idea of helping her in mind. Turns out, he was named co-chairman of Hillary’s National Military Veteran’s group THIS MONTH.
She, of course, says she doesn’t know anything about it. (For the “smartest woman in America,” she doesn’t seem to know much of anything.) Her campaign denies putting him in the audience(!). And CNN denies knowing he was part of her campaign. (How a major international newsgathering operation running a debate with prescreened questions doesn’t know that a questioner who also happens to be a Brigadier General is working on behalf of a candidate is beyond me.)
All of the criticism this morning seems to be leveled at CNN, and that criticism is justified. They ran the previous Democratic debate like discount night at a brothel. Last night’s spectacle was almost as bad.
But the real criticism should be directed to the Junior Senator from New York, whose campaign is getting away with murder out there. Peppering the audiences with her supporters (who last night booed everyone EXCEPT the only guy she can beat: Huckabee), planting questions, denying knowledge, stonewalling to the death. These are classic Clintonian tactics. She should be called out on them rather than have CNN take all of the slings and arrows. CNN was at fault, but the Clinton Ladies Intervention Team also played CNN—-and us—-like a Stradivarius.
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