alien hillary
© www.sacsmartdeal.comThose "dark forces." Conspiracy theory or the real Chillary?
It took just a few hours, after Donald J. Trump announced a major staff shake-up last week, for Hillary Clinton's campaign team to settle on a new buzzword. "He peddles conspiracy theories," her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said of Mr. Trump on MSNBC. "We hear rehashed conspiracy theories," he added moments later. "He doubled down on this today," Mr. Mook said, wrapping up, "by appointing someone to lead his campaign who makes these conspiracy theories basically his professional mission."

For the better part of two decades, the invocation of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" against the Clintons — as Mrs. Clinton famously called it when allegations of sexual misconduct engulfed her husband's administration — has elicited eye rolls even among some of the couple's allies.


Comment: Wow. Who knew Bill's 'misconduct' was a 'conspiracy theory,' and in comparison to other 'conspiracy theories,' a 'vast' one at that!


It was not worth amplifying such attacks by responding to them, advisers often reasoned. And any discussion of a secret plot to undercut the Clintons risked sounding like paranoia, peevishness or just an attempt to duck responsibility.


But with Mr. Trump's appointment of Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, as his new campaign chief, Mrs. Clinton and her extended orbit have sensed an unfamiliar opportunity: The so-called vast right-wing conspiracy might actually be lending her a hand.

For longtime Clinton allies, the elevation of Mr. Bannon has inspired competing emotions. There is a sense of vindication, bordering on the surreal — a we-told-you-so impulse that cannot be suppressed as purveyors of conspiracy theories seize the reins of an actual Republican presidential campaign.

"She was right, that there were these dark forces at work that were trained on her and her husband," said Lissa Muscatine, a friend of Mrs. Clinton's and longtime chief speechwriter. "The extent of it didn't really add up for people at the time, but maybe now it does."

Yet after more than two decades of attacks from conservatives — some seizing on Mrs. Clinton's own missteps, her former aides say, but most generally groundless — others worry that an even darker turn is possible, given the advisers now guiding Mr. Trump's campaign.


Comment: Now there's a spin! Are you dizzy yet?


In addition to Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump is also relying on the advice of Roger Ailes, the founder and recently ousted chairman of Fox News, and Roger J. Stone Jr., whose 2015 book, The Clintons' War on Women,accused Mrs. Clinton of being a lesbian, shaming her husband's sexual accusers and playing a role in the death of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993.

"This is beyond anything anyone even thought about in their worst nightmare," Mickey Kantor, a longtime Clinton family friend who was the United States trade representative and secretary of commerce under Mr. Clinton, said of the new conservative coterie around Mr. Trump.

David Brock, an ardent defender of Mrs. Clinton, said, "The conspirators of the '90s were a ragtag bunch operating in secrecy and as a fringe subset of the conservative movement." Mr. Brock, a charter member of that "ragtag bunch" before having a political conversion, added, "Today's equivalent is more a conglomerate than a conspiracy."

Indeed, Mr. Bannon's website — which had over 18.3 million unique visitors in July, according to data from comScore — has featured stories about the "radical-feminist code" in Mrs. Clinton's language; suggested that Khizr Khan, who criticized Mr. Trump at the Democratic National Convention and whose son, an Army captain, was killed in Iraq, should blame Mrs. Clinton for his son's death; and said Mrs. Clinton's team was straining to highlight "whatever scraps of humanity can be found in her soulless, ambition-laden heart."

And as Mr. Trump has raised questions about Mrs. Clinton's health, saying she "lacks the mental and physical stamina" to fight terrorism, Breitbart has amplified those claims. "Bizarre behavior, seizure allegations raise doubts about Hillary Clinton's health," read one headline last week. "Clinton crash," began another, with a video of her briefly stumbling while on stage with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

On Sunday, Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and a prominent and vocal Trump supporter, joined in, saying on Fox News that voters should "go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness,' take a look at the videos for yourself." The theme is familiar to veterans of the Clinton circle. "They've always had that 'Hillary's dying!'" said James Carville, Mr. Clinton's chief strategist in the 1992 election.

Clinton aides said their playbook called for a careful balancing act: ignoring or dismissing Mr. Trump's most outlandish attacks, while also encouraging independent fact-checkers at mainstream news outlets to debunk any that threaten to gain traction.


Comment: Now there's an oxymoron! Can we say, "no such thing?"


So as insinuations about Mrs. Clinton's health began to spread from conservative websites like the Drudge Report into Mr. Trump's own speeches and Twitter messages, her campaign released a statement from Mrs. Clinton's internist, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, vouching for her "excellent health" and providing a summary of her medical history.


Comment: What else could this poor doctor truthfully say and still be having breakfast the next morning?


With Mr. Trump replaying the 1990s, her friends and advisers say, Mrs. Clinton cannot help but revert to a war room mentality, making her eager to fight back aggressively at some of the allegations against her. "She can dismiss Fox News or Breitbart, but this is her opponent now," said Patti Solis Doyle, who worked for Mrs. Clinton from 1991 to 2008. "They're just going to have to weaponize, contrast with him, respond to attacks."

Not all attacks are equal.

Those close to Mrs. Clinton pointed to the so-called birther questions about President Obama's birth certificate, led by none other than Mr. Trump: Mr. Obama, they said, may have inadvertently fueled those questions by initially resisting a more forceful public rebuke. "It almost gave it credibility to respond, but at some point you have to," Paul Begala, a top strategist for Mr. Clinton's 1992 campaign, said of calls for Mr. Obama's birth certificate.

Theories aside, Mrs. Clinton must tread carefully in blaming Mr. Trump and his allies in the conservative news media for all of her political problems. After all, early questions about Mr. Clinton's relationship with a White House intern prompted Mrs. Clinton, then first lady, to suggest the existence of a "vast right-wing conspiracy," in a 1998 interview on the Today show.

But Mrs. Clinton's claim was not entirely baseless: Amid a congressional investigation, she and her husband learned of a small team of lawyers who had worked in secret to bolster a sexual misconduct lawsuit by Paula Jones, helping to push the case into the office of the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr. Mr. Starr later expanded his investigation to include the Monica Lewinsky affair.


Comment: And this is unreasonable because...??? Some things do not need bolstering. This is like being just a little bit pregnant. You are or you aren't. He was and he did.


Mrs. Clinton's aides evidently see an opening to dismiss Mr. Trump, and his more out-there attacks, as simply part of "a well-oiled network of conspiracy peddlers," as one news release put it last week.

Joel Benenson, Mrs. Clinton's chief strategist and pollster, observed that the most effective political attacks were always rooted in truth and delivered by credible sources. "Do his attacks start losing credibility, particularly the more outrageous ones?" Mr. Benenson asked. "They may have some trouble, considering the source."