It wasn’t surprising to hear that in mid-Oct she called Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein russian assets, without citing any evidence.
“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said on a podcast with a former Obama staffer.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
She also took a moment to flatly say that Jill Stein is “also a Russian asset.”
What was truly astounding was the tepid media coverage of the claim and Gabbard’s subsequent response.
{"preview_thumbnail":"https://cdn.flowplayer.com/6684a05f-6468-4ecd-87d5-a748773282a3/i/v-i-e…","video_id":"ebaf2d7b-b30b-4a68-b852-d46a06c25229","player_id":"8ca46225-42a2-4245-9c20-7850ae937431","provider":"flowplayer","video":"ISIS Leader Abu Baker Al Baghdadi Killed in US Air Strikes"}
CNN decided to call the situation “Crazy” and “Weird” while making sure to note that Gabbard does have suspicious qualities that could lend her to being “groomed” by Russians or other foreign actors.
NBC and MSNBC commentators alike actually defend Clinton and suggested she may be right. Kimberly Atkins of NPR and MSNBC thought it right to point out that Gabbard “never denied being a Russian asset,” and left others on the panel to speculate as to why that may be.
Absent from these major outlets are calls for Clinton to be held accountable for the salacious claims or for her to step away from the national stage. She is not ostracized as an untethered conspiracy theorist: the danger of her baseless assertion is buried under headlines laundering it as an equal “spat” that has two credible sides and can explained politically.
Clinton, whose entire politics nowadays appears to orbit around calling various politicians she doesn’t like Russian assets, gets to remain an untouchable member of a de facto American royalty.
As long as major media outlets circulate or even defend her conspiracies, they will steadily lose credibility.
The Russian Scapegoat
(AFP/FILE)
Clinton and her allies love calling people Russian assets.
For her, Trump is unquestionably Putin’s baby boy representing the Kremlin's interests in the White House. But Bernie Sanders is also an unwitting ally of Russia, as is former FBI director James Comey.
Jill Stein, whose Green Party run for President in 2016 was seen as a spoiler for Clinton, is also unquestionably serving the interests of Vladimir Putin in trying to destroy American democracy.
Basically anyone who stood in Clinton’s way in 2016 is a Russian asset.
To take these beliefs seriously is to view the U.S. political system as a broken, dystopian landscape of Russian assets who collectively scheme of new ways to subordinate America. It’s a world where the giant of American empire has been brought to its knees by a small, coordinated effort by Russian trolls. In this world, there are no real political differences, disparate visions, no elite to dethrone, no substantive debate to be had. There is just the ultimate question: are you working for the enemy?
It’s preposterous.
In this world, there are no real political differences, disparate visions, no elite to dethrone, no substantive debate to be had. There is just the ultimate question: are you working for the enemy?
What’s far more likely is that Clinton is trying to pin the blame of her 2016 loss on others without reflecting on her own weaknesses as a candidate. For 2019, blame is directed at people, like Gabbard and Stein, who challenge her establishment orthodoxy.
It’s a transparent attempt to keep control of the Democratic party, even as candidates like Warren, Sanders and Gabbard are pulling it leftward while challenging the oligarchical political system that Clinton benefited from herself.
Labeling political opponents assets of foreign regimes is a thinly veiled attempt to punish ideological deviance from the Clintonism.
Labeling political opponents assets of foreign regimes is a thinly veiled attempt to punish ideological deviance from the Clintonism.
In the context of the 2020 presidential race, Clinton’s comment reveals that the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party is heating up.
Warren is surging in the polls, Sanders is still raking in tens of millions in small-dollar donations, while Joe Biden—a member of the obsolete old guard—is hemorrhaging cash and had to revise his position on taking Super PAC money just to stay afloat.
The claim itself, that someone is a Russian ‘asset,’ conveniently doesn’t need any real evidence to be made. Anyone can be an ‘asset’ if they serve the Putin’s agenda, knowingly or not.
Oddly enough, if Russia’s aim is to sew chaos and infighting in American politics, then any partisan is in fact a Russian agent: Clinton herself would be included as one.
It’s intended to be used a trump card; a convenient way to disparage political opponents without engaging in their positions or reflecting on one’s own. In the Clinton world of American politics, candidates for office would spend most of their time accusing each other of being tools for foreign regimes, and almost no time laying out a comprehensive political platform or constructing a compelling narrative about the quality of life Americans deserve.
To her credit, Gabbard responded to Clinton’s conspiracy by tweeting “Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
Complicity from Major Media Outlets
(CNN)
Even if Clinton’s comments are imminently condemnable, media outlets have largely refused to do so.
CNN, NBC and MSNBC offered tepid responses, while some commentators actively sought to defend Clinton.
The LA Times published an op-en insinuating that Clinton is right, arguing, "Tulsi Gabbard may not be a Russian asset. But she sure talks like one."
The New York Times published an op-ed by Tim Wu, decided to treat Clinton’s claim as “a sign of the times,” to be taken seriously, despite the fact that virtually no Americans outside the Twitter-echo chamber are engaged in this Russian asset-or-not discourse.
(LA Times)
Indeed, it seems to belong exclusively to elite technocrats, who are less concerned with decaying infrastructure, starvation wages, income inequality and political marginalization many Americans face, and more with far-fetched theories on who could be a friend to Russia.
If they genuinely wish to accurately depict Americans’ concerns and hold power to account, Clinton’s conspiracies would be rejected and she would never be taken seriously again.
In fueling Clinton’s conspiracies, these media outlets are disconnecting themselves even further from the lived experience of most Americans, who are more worried about their spiraling student and medical debt. By continuing to portray Clinton’s outlandish claims as credible, they are willingly serving her nihilistic political agenda.
They do this without guilt or serious reflection, even while they boisterously protest Trump’s various lies and conspiracies.
If they genuinely wish to accurately depict Americans’ concerns and hold power to account, Clinton’s conspiracies would be rejected and she would never be taken seriously again. Her style of dynastic politics would be deemed antidemocratic.
But as it stands, she’s made a pattern of calling opponents assets of the Russians, and most major media outlets that pride themselves on being progressive truth-bears have contented themselves to faithfully reproduce her conspiracy in newspapers, panels, segments and columns for Americans to digest and consider.
It’s a surefire way to simultaneously preserve the plutocratic structure Clinton thrives within while pushing Americans away from mainstream outlets, which are already some of the least trusted institutions in the country.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Al Bawaba News.
