GROSS: So I have to ask you about the kerfuffle over the People magazine cover that you were on. You were standing with your hands resting on the back of a chair, apparently a patio chair. But the photo was cropped, so all we saw of the chair was the bar across the top of the chair. And your good friend, Matt Drudge, tweeted, "Is Clinton holding a walker?" Now, you know, obviously it wasn't a walker but -- and he didn't lie. He didn't say you were holding a walker. He just asked a question in the tweet. Is that a technique that you've become used to, like...Clinton is correct about the right-wing not wanting to engage in public debate about those important issues (and others) and instead offering false issues and information. But she's wrong to write that strategy off as ineffective because "the people" don't want it. The American public is easily distracted by stupid stuff, and it doesn't matter whether it's true or false. Once it gets said publicly by Rove or Drudge or the like, it gets picked up by right-wing talk radio and Fox News, which can couch it in "we didn't make this up, it's a quote from a public figure."
CLINTON: Yes, it is to me. (Laughing).
GROSS: Planting ideas in people's heads, not by making a statement, but just by "I'm just asking a question."
CLINTON: Right, well...
GROSS: "Is that a walker?"
CLINTON: Yeah, Karl Rove tried that with my health and got totally, you know, shot down. I am so used to these people. They're like a bunch of, you know, gamers. They are trying constantly to, you know, raise false canards, you know, plant, you know, false information, and that's what they do.
They don't want to have a real debate about what the tax policy of this country should be. They don't want to have a real debate about how we begin growing the economy again and putting more people to work. They don't want to have a real debate about climate change and clean energy. They want people to get diverted and totally off subject, and that is their modus operandi.
But I have to say, Terry, that if that's the best they have to offer, let them do it because that is not the debate that I think the American people want to have.
AARON: I know you care about him. I've never seen you like this about anyone, so please don't take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the devil.I am not a Hillary Clinton fan. I didn't vote for her in 2008, when the Conventional Wisdom pundits were proclaiming her Madame President before a single vote was cast, a process that's being repeated now in speculation about 2016. But she was right on the money in 1998 when she talked about a vast right-wing conspiracy. Since then, it has grown exponentially, and she is wrong to dismiss its impact -- on her and all of us -- little by little.
JANE: This isn't friendship.
AARON: What do you think the devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great god-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing...he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance...just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.
Labels: politics