Bill Clinton: Accusation that foundation paid for daughter's wedding a 'personal insult'

[karynnj]

9. The Republicans have been calling for a criminal investigation of the Clinton Foundation

This is one of several claims that are being spread on right wing internet sites and then on twitter.

This gets to the insidiousness of the right wing smear machine. The lies start in the right wing sewer, then are spread by social media by like minded people. By the time they reach even Fox News, there might be about 10 to 30 percent of the population that have already heard (and believed) the lie. This makes it really hard to kill a lie once it surfaces in the mainstream - even at Fox.

In 2004, the right wing echo chamber was very strong using just the right wing internet sites, talk radio and Fox - all spreading the same lies at the same time. The latter creates the impression to people that "everybody" is reporting this or that they had multiple sources, not knowing all came from the same Heritage Foundation (or other rw) source. Kerry spoke of this echo chamber in early 2005 when he received the Distinguished American Award from the Kennedy Library and did an discussion/interview with Tom Oliphant. He spoke then of needing a better way to fight this - and the Obama campaign worked to do that with a web site called something like 'Truth strikes back'. However, the echo chamber actually became stronger over the Obama years. Adding social media makes this even more toxic as people (and bots) get these stories out to vulnerable people directly often through people they trust.

Bill Clinton is doing this to fight for his reputation. I suspect the difference on this story versus the completely fictional "pizzagate" which does not have even a scintilla of fact behind it, is this is a very distorted interpretation of something written by a former Clinton Foundation officer, who I think might have had some problems with Chelsea to Podesta. What he wrote could refer to making calls from work, making copies etc NOT paying the high price of a dream wedding that Bill and Hillary paid for their only daughter.

It is easy to say that history will be written based on important things done and not internet chatter, but I would imagine that for ANY of the people attacked it would take enormous discipline to NOT do exactly what Clinton did .. and by connecting the WP article he has an independent source countering the attack. It will be interesting to see if pulling the story into the light - with the facts to dispute it - will stop the story or promote it into a bigger story.