On Sunday, the New York Times ran an exposé digging into Hillary Clinton‘s past — namely, the way she reacted to her husband’s affairs and dealt with the women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
Since the first presidential debate, the Donald Trump campaign has been falling back on attacks about Bill Clinton’s infidelity. The Republican presidential nominee has even gone as far as to suggest that Hillary is cheating on Bill. His son Eric has repeatedly insisted that it took “courage” for his father to not bring up Bill Clinton’s affairs, and called the former president the “worst sexist that’s ever lived.”
According to the Times, the most troubling thing about this story is how Bill’s campaign handled his unfaithfulness with an “aggressive strategy of counterattack” against the women he’d slept with. Hillary is said to have privately accepted these tactics:
“Outwardly, she remained stoic and defiant, defending her husband while a progression of women and well-funded conservative operatives accused Mr. Clinton of behavior unbecoming the leader of the free world
But privately, she embraced the Clinton campaign’s aggressive strategy of counterattack: Women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Mr. Clinton would become targets of digging and discrediting — tactics that women’s rights advocates frequently denounce.”
For example, the Democratic presidential nominee may have been involved in a smear campaign against Gennifer Flowers that her husband’s presidential campaign orchestrated in 1992. However, her level of involvement in these strategies is the subject of debate. According to the Times, “By some accounts, she gave the green light and was a motivating force; by others, her support was no more than tacit assent.”
The Times report goes on to discuss the extent to which private investigators hired by the Clinton campaign went to dig up incriminating information about Flowers. Hillary Clinton’s campaign declined to comment for the story.
(Via New York Times)
