September 2, 2016

If I had to pick one person who would be at the top of my list as the last human being on the planet who should ever say one word about someone else supposedly being a grifter, Newt Gingrich may very well be it. The talking heads over on Faux "news" are all in a tizzy over the latest drummed up fake Clinton non-scandal of the day, this time courtesy of Republico Politico.

As Laura Clawson discussed yesterday, this is another nothing-burger, where there were no laws broken, but of course the media has glommed onto it because of "optics" and it's the Clinton's, so they can't help themselves: Politico offers up the media-generated fake Clinton scandal of the day:

The AP’s turn is done and the latest spin of the “create a fake Clinton scandal” media chore wheel has landed on Politico. In a headline that Hillary Clinton’s press secretary has described as “egregiously false,” Politico implies that the private email server hosting her email was paid for with taxpayer money. If you read on (and on and on), though, you find that the headline is talking about a different email server and the article is trying to create scandal out of nothing.

According to the story’s opening paragraphs, though “the investigation does not reveal anything illegal”:

Taxpayer cash was used to buy IT equipment — including servers — housed at the Clinton Foundation, and also to supplement the pay and benefits of several aides now at the center of the email and cash-for-access scandals dogging Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Sounds scandalous, right? Mission accomplished for Politico, then. You have to read another 20 or so paragraphs to get to the explanation of what these arrangements actually entailed. As an ex-president, Clinton gets $96,600 for staffing: [...]

In short, Bill Clinton used the money available to former presidents to cover his expenses as a former president. Rather than having two separate staffs, he has one staff and pays them from government money when they do government work. It’s a legal arrangement subject to GSA oversight.

In really extra short, Politico went looking for a Clinton scandal, failed to find one, and decided to write it up as if there was a real scandal.

So of course the yappers over on Fox are tossing it out as the latest piece of red meat for their audience, and they invited grifter-in-chief Newt Gingrich to weigh in on it: Gingrich: ‘In Normal Society’, Clintons Would Be ‘Ostracized as Totally Unpatriotic Scammers’:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich discussed the state of the 2016 race, and a recent report that aides to former president Bill Clinton used taxpayer money for expenses at the Clinton Foundation. [...]

“I prefer the line where they used taxpayer money to get rid of bedbugs,” Gingrich, a former presidential candidate, replied.

“The only way to describe them is—they’re grifters. [They] show up in movies and lie to everybody, steal from everybody—if you think of them as grifters you sort of get it,” Gingrich said.

“In a normal, healthy society, they would be ostracized as totally unpatriotic scammers.”

Kilmeade responded by saying that “the person that hired them”, meaning Barack Obama, should therefore be upset with any insincerity on Hillary Clinton’s behalf.

“Obama has lied for his entire presidency…you cannot be a modern liberal and tell the truth,” Gingrich said.

On the Republican side, Gingrich lauded Donald Trump for meeting with Mexican President Pena Nieto.

In a "normal, healthy society" this guy would never be allowed within a mile of a television camera, but I digress.

This is the same Newt Gingrich that Rachel Maddow rightly described as a "direct mail scam artist," and that she also took a part a couple of months prior to that segment for his gimmick trying to sucker people into sending him $5000 for a "major award."

But he's got the brass you know what to go on Fox and call the Clinton's grifters. One of these days lightning is going to strike this guy right in the middle of one of these interviews.

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