Boston Globe: Clinton, Trump, and why the media are failing us

Decades of investigations have shown the Clintons are not corrupt.

Donald Trump is.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/09/06/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-and-why-media-are-failing/B6FDRApMzjVJ3NciRNPblK/story.html

There is a particular media narrative around the Clintons that has persisted for 25 years. They think the rules don’t apply to them. They are always pushing the envelope. They don’t consider the optics of what they do. They may not have engaged in illegal behavior, but they are still personally, even morally corrupt.

Of course, Republicans have taken this last one to a more sinister conclusion — namely that Hillary Clinton should be, as the chant goes, “locked up.”

What’s so strange about this narrative, however, is that even after being placed under the most intense media microscope in modern political history, we can say with some assuredness that the Clintons aren’t corrupt. Yet seemingly no amount of evidence can convince a jaded press corps and a skeptical electorate that this is true.

During the Bill Clinton years, it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Haircut-Gate, cattle futures, the Rose Law Firm, the death of Vince Foster. The list goes on. In none of these cases was there any evidence that Clintons had done anything illegal or improper. But the stink of impropriety remained and was transferred to Hillary Clinton.

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But it is unfair.

After all, real evidence has emerged of wrongdoing by a charitable foundation run by a presidential candidate this year. A $2,500 penalty was paid to the IRS after it was discovered that a candidate’s foundation gave a campaign contribution to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, who was at the time investigating the candidate. Bondi would eventually drop the case. A similar donation was given to the Texas attorney general right after his office ended an investigation of the candidate.

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