I guess we don't need to worry about Killary lying.Before debate, Clinton works refs, asks for special treatment
By BYRON YORK (@BYRONYORK) • 9/25/16 11:48 PM
For several days, Democrats and their supporters in the press have demanded that presidential debate moderator Lester Holt factcheck Donald Trump in Monday night's showdown at Hofstra University. Those demands turned to pleading Sunday when Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, appearing on ABC's "This Week," asked for special treatment for Clinton in the event that Trump tells lies from the debate stage.
"All that we're asking is that, if Donald Trump lies, that it's pointed out," Mook said. "It's unfair to ask for Hillary both to play traffic cop while with Trump, make sure that his lies are corrected, and also to present her vision for what she wants to do for the American people."
"But isn't that what a debater is supposed to do?" asked host George Stephanopoulos.
"Well, I think Donald Trump's special," Mook said. "We haven't seen anything like this…So we're saying this is a special circumstance, a special debate, and Hillary should be given some time to actually talk about what she wants to do to make a difference in people's lives. She shouldn't have to spend the whole debate correcting the record."
Other Clinton officials made a similar case in the days leading up to the debate. On Friday, Team Clinton held a conference call for reporters, urging Holt to factcheck Trump on the fly. "This is the role of the moderator…to call out those lies, and do it in real time," top campaign official Jennifer Palmieri said. "To not do that is to give Donald Trump a very unfair advantage."
And what kind of lies should Holt factcheck? In its email announcing the conference call, the Clinton campaign provided a handy list of "Trump's Seven Deadly Lies." Number one on the list was the Trump claim that seems to anger Democrats most — that he opposed the war in Iraq.
It would not be a surprise to hear Trump repeat that claim at Hofstra. But a factcheck might not lead to the cathartic, true-false, black-white "You lie!" moment Democrats would like. Sometimes facts yield a murky picture, and that's the story with Trump and Iraq.
In its email, the Clinton campaign included a passage from a Washington Post factcheck of Trump and Iraq, under the heading "Trump: 'I was totally against the war in Iraq.' // Four Pinocchios":
As our timeline shows, Trump was not "totally" against the Iraq War. Trump expressed lukewarm support the first time he was asked about it on Sept. 11, 2002, and was not clearly against it until he was quoted in the August 2004 Esquire cover story. (We even made a video documenting how this is a bogus claim.) Yet he repeatedly claims he opposed the war from the beginning — and thus, earns Four Pinocchios.
That, apparently, is the case the Clinton campaign would like Lester Holt to make against Trump should Trump say at the debate that he opposed the war.
But look at the Post's conclusion. The sum total of evidence that Trump supported the war before the March 20, 2003 invasion is a few seconds of an episode of the Howard Stern show more than six months earlier, on September 11, 2002. "Are you for invading Iraq?" Stern asked. "Yeah, I guess so," Trump answered haltingly. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."
That's it.
The only other public statement Trump made before the war was an appearance with Fox News' Neil Cavuto on January 28, 2003. "If you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired," Trump said. "I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned."
What did that mean? It certainly didn't explicitly support or oppose the war. Put it down as an inconclusive statement. (That and other quotations in this piece are taken from a FactCheck.org article from February of this year.)
From the day of the invasion on, Trump made a series of statements about Iraq, none definitive, and most expressing some sort of misgiving about the conflict.
On the first day of the war, Trump said of Wall Street: 'Even before the fact, they're obviously taking it a little bit for granted that it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint." Trump did not characterize that in one way or the other.
The next day, Trump called the war "depressing." Two days after that, he called it "a mess."
A few months later, on July 1, 2003, Trump said, "I would love to see New York City and some of the cities and some of the states get some of the money that's going toward Iraq and other places, because you know, they really need and they need it badly."
On September 11, 2003, one year after his "Yeah, I guess so," remark on Howard Stern, Trump said, "It wasn't a mistake to fight terrorism and fight it hard, and I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq."
And on and on. By 2004, with the war an increasingly troubled enterprise, Trump became more openly negative.
Whatever all that adds up to, it is not a record of supporting the Iraq war before, during, and after the invasion.
So back to the Washington Post factcheck. The statement that prompted the factcheck was Trump saying he was "totally" against the war, and the Post proved that Trump was not "totally" against the war. He was somewhat against the war, or partially against the war, or mostly against the war, or mildly against the war, or kinda against the war.
So is that the point the Clinton campaign would like Lester Holt to make? If Trump repeats his claim that he was totally against the war, should Holt remind him that he was only somewhat against the war? It's hard to imagine voters would take such a distinction very seriously.
The most far reaching indictment of Trump's stance on the war came from none other than Hillary Clinton, at NBC's "Commander in Chief Forum" on September 7. "My opponent was for the war in Iraq," Clinton said. "He says he wasn't. You can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it. So he supported it before it happened, he supported it as it was happening, and he is on record as supporting it after it happened."
That's not really an accurate reflection of events. It's the kind of thing political candidates can say about their opponents. But it's just not the job of a debate moderator.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2602810
