Kaine Says Clinton Wasn't Lying About Her Emails—Just 'Talking Past' Her Interviewer
The transcript clearly shows otherwise.
Appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine suggested that "Chris Wallace and Hillary were sort of talking past each other last week," when Clinton falsely told the Fox News Sunday host that FBI Director James Comey had confirmed she was "truthful" in her statements about her use of a private email server as secretary of state. Instead of mitigating Clinton's whopper, Kaine's defense suggests he aspires to be just as slippery as his running mate.
Wallace began his question to Clinton by playing video of her making three public statements about her State Department emails that the FBI found to be false: 1) that there was no classified information in them, 2) that there was no information in them that was classified at the time, and 3) that none of the email was marked as classified. Wallace prefaced the video by saying he was asking her about "what you told the American people." After playing the video, he noted that "FBI Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American public were true." Even though Wallace was clearly asking Clinton whether she had been truthful with the American public, she chose to answer a different question: whether she had lied in her interview with the FBI. "Director Comey said my answers were truthful," she said, "and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails."
What Comey actually said was that he did not have any basis to charge Clinton with deliberately misleading the FBI, which is a felony that hinges on intent. Comey's statement does not mean everything Clinton told the FBI was accurate, since she could have said false things she believed were true. It certainly does not mean that everything she told the public about the emails was true, which we know is not the case. Clinton nevertheless implied that escaping a charge of lying to federal agents was tantamount to demonstrating that her public statements about the emails were true, since "what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people." Then she repeated one of her false statements, suggesting that anything secret in the emails was classified retroactively, even though Comey said "110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received [emphasis added]."
Kaine wants us to believe these missatements resulted from some sort of misunderstanding:
I think Chris Wallace and Hillary were sort of talking past each other last week. She was saying what Director Comey acknowledged to be true, that, when she spoke to the FBI, when she was talking to the FBI, the FBI thought her answers in that setting were truthful. Chris might have been asking her a different question.
It is crystal clear what question Wallace was asking Clinton, and it's not his fault she deliberately chose to answer a different one. But even in doing that, she was too clever by half, since she ended up saying that 1) everything she told the FBI was true, 2) what she told the FBI was the same as what she said in her public statements, and 3) everything she said in her public statements therefore must have been true. Comey, for his part, has repeatedly and pointedly declined to express a judgment about the truth of Clinton's public statements. But his investigation clearly showed they were not true. The only defense left to Clinton is that she thought they were true at the time. Yet she persists in saying, contrary to all the evidence, that the statements were "truthful," meaning not just sincere but accurate.
Even last Friday, when Clinton allowed that she may have "short-circuited" in her response to Wallace, she repeated the very same claim that earned her Four Pinocchios from Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler:
Director Comey had said that my answers in my FBI interview were truthful. That's really the bottom line here. And I have said, during the interview and in many other occasions over the past months, that what I told the FBI, which he said was truthful, is consistent with what I have said publicly.
Clinton also suggested that "Chris Wallace and I were probably talking past each other"—the same demonstrably false defense that Kaine offered yesterday. As Peter Suderman noted on Friday, the exchange with Wallace "was typical of Clinton: Not only were her initial statements misleading, so was her attempt to explain those statements." Likewise her attempts to explain those explanations, although I think misleading is too kind a description at this point. It is possible that Clinton, in her initial public statements about her emails, was merely reckless with the facts, saying what she hoped was true, rather than deliberately deceptive. But now that it's clear those statements were not true, insisting they were is simply a lie. Saying it's not is also a lie, as is denying the falsity of that claim. Although Clinton does not prevaricate with the same panache as her Republican opponent, her meta-meta-meta-lies are a thing to behold.
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She wasn’t lying when she said she never sent classified info (which makes no sense at all) or she wasn’t lying when she said that wasn’t a lie, or when she said Director Comey said she wasn’t lying?
Oh, what a tangled web….
I did a little research and discovered that this woman has been a known liar her entire life. She is pathological.
*Does anyone else find this Kaine character a little creepy? He smiles too much and has the mannerisms and body language of the church youth counsellor who likes to take the yunguns on camping trips.
A Iranian scientist was executed .Seems he gave information to the U.S. and was in this country for a while. He was talked about in emails sent and received on the ‘closet ‘ server. Hmmm.
I expect the MSM to be all over that today.
I am sure Suderman will have at least one article on it.
Yea but if the nosey Republicans hadn’t requested her emails we would never have known about Hillary’s involvement so its the Republicans fault. get with the program since what difference does it make.
The open corruption is 10x worse than the lies IMHO.
I know she is a liar.
I expected her to at least hide the corruption.
I never dreamed my prediction would be this far over the true line: She is the only person who can do for Obumbles what Obumbles did for Carter.
The open corruption is what is truly frightening. It’s one thing, say, take quid pro quo money as Sec of State, but do it in the shadows where no one ever finds out (or, if found out, your political aspirations are over) but to do it and to have a sizable part of the media and electorate just shrug their shoulders means the system has been hollowed out and that unbelievable corruption is now happening in the shadows.
Still waiting for that open-mic slip-up where Hillary gets recorded saying something like “Can you believe all these stupid fucks think I’m fighting for them? Allah akbar, baby!”
Media response: “Mrs. Clinton is a big Return of The Jedi fan.”
That is the real tragedy here; the fact that she is a woman or a progressive and says what her constituents want to hear [that they are victims of the oppressors and she is somehow or other on their side] “trumps” any and all issues of integrity or competence.
Our fourth estate is little more than a propaganda spin machine.
His name is “Kaine?” All this time I thought it was Kang. In a meat suit.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Good for you — at least you didn’t waste your vote.
And the context was that, in the last scene, they’d enslaved Homer and the gang and forced them to build a death ray.
So what’s the death ray here?
“So what’s the death ray here?”
Hillary Clinton’s droning voice, broadcast across every speaker in existence?
The Executioner?
When I heard she picked Kane as her running mate, I was pretty thrilled. Talk about a let-down…
Does anyone else find this Kaine character a little creepy?
Yep. Perhaps Trump will dub him “Creepy Tim”.
It seems Kaine’s purpose is to be Hillary’s beta male.
‘Creepy Tim’
I laughed.
‘Shitweasel’, which should be the alt-text for that picture.
Does anyone else find this Kaine character a little creepy? He smiles too much…
That sort of plastic, insincere smile is a hall mark of politicians, bureaucrats, used car salesmen, and miscellaneous other sociopaths.
Kaine’s like one of those Mormon missionaries who is just so sincere and earnest it starts setting off all your con detectors because your shriveled cynical hearts refuses to believe anyone could actually be that nice.
Prevaricated Panache is going to be the name of the band I form to play at Trump’s inauguration.
I call drums!
her meta-meta-meta-lies are a thing to behold.
It’s lies all the way down!
New Yorker cartoon. I may have to get a print of this one.
http://www.newyorker.com/carto…..ibertarian
So the two dogs represent people belonging to the two major political parties, both beholden to the same over-lord with the leashes, who I can only assume to represent the lizard people, and the cat is the libertarian who just struts about without a care…
Given that it’s the New Yorker, they probably think that cartoon is insulting to libertarians
They’re so vain.
+ 1 Lear jets and Nova Scotia
+1 gavotte
I bet they think that piece is about them.
I bet they think that piece is about them.
The smaller female dog are the Democrats, I assume.
This is the sort of cartoon where I’d just say, “OH, I get it,” even though I don’t actually get it just so the conversation would move on. That’s basically everything in the New Yorker for me, though.
“It’s a Jeep thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
The pig should say, “My wife is a slut.”
+1 Vorshtein
Ziggy says, “I see the New Yorker is stealing my ideas again.”
The lies on top of lies as far as the eye can see are one thing, but to go back to what OneOut and Adans brought up earlier, it is a lot worse than that.
It’s pretty clear that Cankles is responsible for the deaths in Benghazi and now it seems at least one person who was spying for us as a result of her attempts to cover her ass. How many others?
As POTUS will we be able to recruit more spies? Will the CIA/FBI/Homeland security agents be will ing to take personal risks? To trust her? How about the military? She is going to send people into harms way and they will do so confident that she has their back?
Then there is the corruption. She took money from foreign governments while she was Secretary of State. Just let that sink in. She is for sale and every crooked despot in the world knows it. Apparently they also have all of her emails from her tenure there. We seem to be the only ones who don’t have those emails.
She is compromised. The likes of Putin and the ayatollah own her. Our enemies own her and she doesnt give a shit. She makes jokes about it.
The more I think about it the more I think Trump may just be the best guy for the job. You cant have a boy scout for that job. Maybe the Senate is the best place for Paul. You want a rattlesnake for the job, but it has to be our rattlesnake. Cankles is a rattlesnake alright, just not ours. Trump is a rattlesnake too, but he does appear to love this country. I am pretty sure he would be our rattlesnake.
She makes jokes about it.
This may be what is most disturbing about H.
Her “like with a cloth” cavalier attitude and constant smirking expression will be a hundred times worse if she’s elected.
That was exactly the joke I had in mind when I wrote that.
I remember an interview she did where taking out Qaddafi came up. She laughed as she described it – that sort of nervous laughter that makes you feel someone is being dishonest or at minimum disingenuous. I remember thinking, “she’s describing the active overthrow of a government and laughing about it – even if it is Libya.” What a sociopath.
Also, Qaddafi was dragged through the streets, horrifically beaten and sodomized with a pole before he died. His female bodyguards were gang raped and tortured, some of their bodies left naked with the word ‘whore’ carved into them.
This is what Clinton thinks is so funny.
The word “ironic” is over-used, but I can’t help pointing out that it would be ironic if the cyber actions of our next President resulted in the death of a friendly spy, while Snowden’s did not (AFAIK) and he’s accused of treason.
Well, did she *intend* that he be executed? No irony here.
You don’t get mad at your wife for needing help with the VCR. Why can’t you show Hillary the same courtesy?
At least Hillary *tries*, unlike Obama’s justice department.
And what more can you ask from a woman? Buncha misogenists.
Remember, during the first Clinton presidency, when the favorite Lefty adjective to describe Hillary was “smart?”
Has she EVER made a good decision? Has she ever acted or said anything that was proved correct? Has she ever been right? Other than her unparalleled ability to survive scandal (I’ll give her that!) I cannot think of a single act or thought in which she could be viewed as smart or honest.
I haven’t heard anyone else talk about this, but I remember when Bill and Cankles left the Whitehouse they stole a bunch of housewares; curtains, dishes, etc. to furnish their new home and that was a big scandal. It does show their character alright, but more importantly the incoming staff complained that a lot of communiques and communication equipment had been destroyed, computers wiped etc.
At the time it was seen as spite towards the incoming R administration but now, in light of Cankles current email scandal, I am thinking it was something else entirely.
Given how many people know just how dirty the Clinton’s are going back to their days in Arkansas, I have to wonder what combination of carrots and sticks have been used to keep (almost) everyone quiet.
I had always figured that whatever she had on John Roberts she shared with Obama so he could get that Obamacare ruling and the gay marriage ruling.
She’s been pretty accurate about the US’s tolerance for corruption and lies, so there’s that.
She’s made a lot of great decisions FOR HER.
Like: I think I’ll invest in cattle for a few months, and I’ll take money from them, and I’ll take money from them and….
We need this article edited by Suderman to substitute alternative phrases for the L word. “Para-truth” “meta fantasy” “alternative recounting” “advertent misstatement,” that sort of thing.
“talking past each other”
I’ll bet the long-dead Chamberlain wishes he had used this excuse when it became obvious his little discussion with you-know-who at Munich came unraveled.
It’s sickening to think this whore might be president.
She’s many things, but a whore she’s not. Also, I can respect a slutty woman, I can’t respect a serial liar who’s naked ambition is sickening to watch.
any one who takes money for any purpose can be called a whore and she’s a whore for political gains for her own betterment not the countries
I think he meant that a whore is at least honest about it.
Any shadow of integrity he may have brought to this ticket is now gone.
that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails
If that actually happened, there should be some sort of documentation to back that up. The State Department should have no trouble producing said documentation.
I’m not an expert, but I thought that there were classes of info that were automatically classified due to content or source, so that it makes no diff whether somebody hit them with a “Classified” stamp.
She has been harping on retroactive classification to obfuscate that there are “classified materials, marked and unmarked” and that in her position she is expected to know, just by the subject matter, what is classified. She argues that we should ignore this issue and make her president because she’s too unsophisticated to understand how things are classified.
Jacob, you forgot to include a line or two about how awful Trump is whenever you mention Hillary being awful. You must have missed the memo.
It’s short but it’s there.
“Although Clinton does not prevaricate with the same panache as her Republican opponent”
But she certainly prevaricates more.
Something like “Resist Hillary Clinton’s Trade Protectionism: New at Reason
She may not be as bad as Trump, but her positions are still dangerous.”
For example.
Years ago I watch as Gerald Ford took a stroke live on C-Span. He was answering call-in questions, and then one one gave an answer to a totally different question than the one asked. It was announced later in the day that he had been taken to the hospital.
Is it possible that Hillary is taking seizures that cause her to blink out, or whatever the term was that she used.
my best friend’s mom makes $74 an hour on the computer . She has been without work for five months but last month her payment was $19746 just working on the computer for a few hours. find more information …
?????????? http://www.factoryofincome.com
my best friend’s mom makes $74 an hour on the computer . She has been without work for five months but last month her payment was $19746 just working on the computer for a few hours. find more information …
?????????? http://www.factoryofincome.com
So, she’s dense and not a criminal? How is THAT supposed to be an improvement?
she can say anything she wants FYTY
I’m glad I’m not Tim Kaine. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go on TV and profess that utter nonsense. That’s humiliating right there.
‘Talking past’ for a politician means evasion, so the word ‘slippery’ is right. A fish evades capture by slipping out of your hand.
RE: Kaine Says Clinton Wasn’t Lying About Her Emails?Just ‘Talking Past’ Her Interviewer
The transcript clearly shows otherwise.
Heil Hitlary has never lied.
Ever.
She has said so.
The transcripts have lied.
Again.
We all know what liars transcripts have proven to be.
I really don’t know where people get off saying our ruling elitists are liars.
I really don’t.
Could be accurate. Maybe Hillary has lied so often, and for so long, that she no longer knows the difference between truth, lies, reality, and fantasy. The only thing real to her is the paranoid delusion that some nefarious vast right wing conspiracy is out to get her?or something.
Does that mean that some sort of shadowy Left Wing mob is boosting her? Could one so interpret the thing?
That’s my current theory. She’s so far gone into narcissistic delusion and megalomania that she either thinks anything she says is true just because it’s her saying it, or else she thinks she can make it true just by saying it.
I imagine that at some point in his past, Tim Kaine learned how to speak plain English, though his political career might have dulled his recollection.That being said, in PLAIN ENGLISH, what the hell does his reference to “Hillary and Chris Wallace were sort of talking past each other last week ….” is a question that looms large.
This is a form of fraud, play-acting a short term derangement whereby she pretends she heard something else other than what was said.
Then their flunkies show up and claim it was all just a big misunderstanding.
This happens far too often.
John Stewart on the Daily Show skewered Gretchen Carlson, a FOX anchor over something similar to that; acting dumb on purpose.
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