This was initially written in response to an FT article by Gideon Rachman on 1st August 2016, entitled ‘Trump and Brexit feed off the same anger’. I have since edited it in two aspects:
1. I have included an extensive quote from the article to illustrate the mindset I am challenging
2. I have pared back some of my points to avoid too much repetition with my previous piece 'Start the week with a leak', and I have attempted to make it pithier – I.E. In hindsight I was not satisfied with my first effort
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc8eb27a-57c3-11e6-9f70-badea1b336d4.html#ixzz4G88ol5OB
“The problem for Mrs. Clinton — and it is a big one — is that she embodies the political establishment that a large majority of Americans now appears to despise. The Democrats make the obvious point that Mr. Trump’s life is a monument to his indifference to ordinary people. But the more the US elite and “mainstream media” unite against Mr. Trump, the more they underline his status as an anti-system candidate.
Some argue that Mr. Trump’s base in the white working class is too small to carry him to victory in November. But that problem may not apply if the Republicans can significantly increase voter turnout. Once again, the British experience is relevant. The victory for Brexit was secured by many working-class voters who had not bothered to turn out in recent general elections.
In the UK, the political elite’s disconnect with working-class opinion led most commentators to dismiss the many opinion polls that suggested Britain was going to vote Leave. In the US last week, I encountered a similar incredulity among many American pundits whose horror of Mr. Trump makes it almost impossible for them to countenance the idea that he might be their next president.
The similarities between the Brexit and the Trump campaigns are striking, but there are also important differences. Most obviously that while the Brexit campaign used a dog whistle to appeal to racist sentiment, Mr. Trump is using a foghorn.
The most prominent Brexit campaigners, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, strove to remain outwardly affable during the campaign. By contrast, Mr. Trump has specialised in the erratic and abusive.
It is possible that Mr. Trump’s behaviour will turn off enough voters to deliver victory to Mrs. Clinton in November. Having lived through Brexit, I would not count on it” – Gideon Rachman
I believe that Hillary Clinton will lose the election in November despite the fact that she is running against a man who defies every tenet of ‘political correctness’, who has a record of dubious deal making, and who makes no attempt to temper his words to avoid appealing to anger and intolerance.
She will lose the election because she stands for, and feeds off, a political and monetary system that was on the verge of bankruptcy 8 years ago; a system that was subsequently bailed out by ‘ordinary’ people, in order to save the skins of the politicians and bankers who had taken it there through decades of greed, ignorance and corruption. Since 2008 that same system has continued to reward the 'elites', whilst achieving virtually nothing for ‘ordinary’ people, except to further erode their livelihood and their future prospects.
Donald Trump will win because he is running against Hillary Clinton. Despite demonstrating the aggressive and often crude behavior described here, Mr. Trump has the advantage of running against a person who in 30 years of public life has consistently demonstrated behavior that would be best described as venal and vindictive. A person who 'tolerated' a philandering husband on one hand, whilst visciously ‘going after’ the women he was throwing himself at on the other. A person who in 'Travelgate', leveled charges against public servants subsequently found to be false, in order to replace them with her cronies - derailing their lives in the process; a person who has been party to more shady deals than a Las Vegas card table. Someone who is branded by dozens of people who know her well, many of them Democrats, as a liar and a cheat.
Hillary Clinton will lose the election in November because she is not fit to hold the office.
Many people say the same thing about Donald Trump – that he is not fit to be president…indeed the FT, the NYT and the WaPo never miss an opportunity to do just that…but here’s the thing…even if you are absolutely right about Trump…that does not change one single thing about the merits of Mrs. Clinton or the corruption that she represents. Neither does it change the fact that for nine months the FT has argued consistently for her election, without any serious mention or analysis of the accusations against her.
Mrs. Clinton is an old hand at using the five ‘D’s whenever faced with criticism – deny, diminish, defend, deflect, destroy. She has employed them all over the years. The latest strategy she is employing with regard to the email scandal is an attempt at deflection. According to Mrs. Clinton, the most important thing about the leaked DNC emails is not that the DNC is clearly in contempt of it’s own rules; not that the contest against Bernie Sanders was rigged all along; not that her cohorts have been lying to the American people for months – no, the important thing, according to Mrs. Clinton, is that the emails MAY have been leaked by the Russians and that Donald Trump is therefore in league with Vladimir Putin. Her 'proof' is his sarcastic remark that he hopes the Russians also have copies of the emails she deleted from her private server. Apparently this makes him a 'traitor'….and the majority of the mainstream media are buying it.
If Trump is a traitor, I have an announcement to make - I’m Spartacus. I want to see those emails too. I don’t care who’s got them - I want to see them. And I suspect that millions of Americans feel the same way. But I believe we will all get to see them, whether we want to or not.
The NSA has a vast e-archive in Utah. Everything that went to Hillary’s server will have touched a tapped cable somewhere I.E.: they will be in that archive. On Sunday this was given credence by William Binney in a radio interview with Aaron Klein on New York AM 970. Mr. Binney was an NSA code-breaker who resigned from the NSA after more than 30 years with the agency. In 2012 he publicly revealed details of an NSA programme code-named 'Stellar Wind', which resulted in the Utah archive.
In the interview on Sunday Mr. Binney suggested that the DNC hack may not have been done by the Russians, but by US Intelligence operative(s) alarmed by Hillary Clinton's disregard of national security whilst Secretary of State. During the course of the interview he referenced testimony given to the Senate in March 2011 by FBI Director Robert Mueller, who spoke about the FBI's ability to access a number of classified databases in order to track terrorists:
“Now what he (Mueller) is talking about is going into the NSA database, which is shown of course in the Snowden material released, which shows a direct access into the NSA database by the FBI and the CIA. Which there is no oversight of by the way. So that means that NSA and a number of agencies in the U.S. government also have those emails.”
When asked directly if he thought the NSA has copies of all of Mrs. Clinton's emails he replied:
“Yes, that would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right there”
If Mr. Binney is right, and the emails are in the NSA archive, that presents a disturbing question, one that demands an answer: Is the US government willing to bury the truth about Hillary Clinton in order to put her into the White House? I believe it is.
Finally, even if the FT is proven to be totally right about Donald Trump, the fact remains that the paper has given Hillary Clinton a free pass. I don’t know if this is ‘fear’ or if it is ‘favour’, or if it is both. But of one thing I am certain – the FT’s coverage of Hillary Clinton, and the events of this election, do not live up to the paper’s maxim - ‘without fear or favour’.