Hilary Clinton emails - Explain please

[hollyisalovelyname]

I have no idea what the Hilary Clinton emails 'scandal' is all about.
Could wiser Mumsnetters please explain it to me.
Thank you.

Yes Math, in a normal election, Hillary should not stand a chance of becoming president.

However, given that there are only two candidates and one of them has to win, how can America function with Donald Trump as president? It's not just the scandals, it's the fact that he doesn't seem to know what he is talking about when it comes to basics like foreign policy and health care.

I've really tried to understand this and I have listened to Newt Gingrich call him a 'gifted amateur'. However, as far as I can see he is just a gifted salesman. He really, really doesn't seem to know what he is talking about. A few year's ago he was selling Trump University or a multilevel marketing scheme based on dubious vitamins, now he is selling the idea of himself as president. It's not even as though either of the things he was selling were successful - the vitamin company went bust and Trump University seems to have fallen apart under the weight of lawsuits.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/perspective-on-the-flaws-of-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/506042/

(PBS video won't screen in UK).

Honestly, Trump becomes president and what happens next?

I think this is it- will go away and have a look.

I just read this and it made me think of this thread!

Clinton or Trump?, It's like being asked "what do you want for Christmas, a lump of coal or a lump of shit?"

I really don't understand people who seem to think Clinton and Trump are equally as awful.

You are perhaps in a minority Mitzy.

And perhaps you are.

^ou are perhaps in a minority Mitzy.

Amongst Americans, I think Mitzy is in the minority. Outside, perhaps not.

Here's an interesting article on Clinton.

www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/10/20/realists-view-us-presidential-contest.html

She has lied repeatedly about the email/FBI issue, her campaign illegally suppressed Sander's chances at getting the Democratic nomination, (which would have changed everything), Wikileaks seems to implicate her in steering State Dept business in favour of Clinton Foundation donors, she is in very deep with Wall St, etc.

Here is a blurb from a website which I will admit is Christian and pro-Trump (I'm neither) - despite its source, it is a good summary of why Americans and conservatives in particular fear HC:

Likewise, a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for a transformed America, a quasi-police state where the government intervenes in business and forces some out of business while subsidizing other businesses that could not possibly sustain themselves without massive graft and media brainwashing. All of those businesses would be held hostage to a criminal organization originating from the White House. It would be a vote to end forever the concept of individual rights. Hillary Clinton would do no less than continue the work of the Obama Administration to destroy individual rights and nearly half of the nation is in favor of just that. It would be a continued replacement of the voters who value the principles of the founding of this nation with those who have no like expectation. It is a vote for the sudden disappearance of websites like this one.

Lastly, HC is a hawk of the highest order. From the link I posted above:

“She has consistently endorsed starting new wars and expanding others.” He closed by saying: “Those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises with a long track record of being generally supportive of initiating US military interventions and expanding them.”

I'm with you Mitzy. I know she's misused an email server but that doesn't make her as bad as Trump. He is racist, xenophobic and has committed sexual assaults. He also appears to have very little knowledge about any topic of importance.

In answer to being offered a "lump of coal or a lump of shit", I'd take the coal every single time. At least it's useful!

If it's a choice between a rapist and a hawk, what exactly is it about Trump that would make anybody think either that he is some kind of pacifist or that he has any clue how to deal with terrorists or any concept of how to handle international relations?

His big ideas are to 'bomb the shit out of ISIS' and to stop Muslims from coming to America.

It would be a continued replacement of the voters who value the principles of the founding of this nation with those who have no like expectation.

Or in other words, don't take our guns.

I have to admit from outside it is hard to see why people in America think "they're as bad as each other" - Trump wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico (no suggestion of how this will be funded), ban Muslims from entering the country, overturn Roe vs Wade, reverse gay marriage - and he's a self-avowed sex offender, and top of the list- do you really want a mad narcissist in charge of nuclear weapons (yes, I do realise he doesn't get a big red button to push without any checks and balances, but he is commander in chief).

Hilary is hawkish, probably dishonest, somewhere round about the centre to right of our conservative party in terms of political beliefs - but she is at least a sane pragmatist.

I realise that nothing is going to stop a certain subset of republicans from voting for him - what I can't get over, given the closeness of the race, is the number of democrats intending to abstain because they can't bear the thought of getting their hands dirty voting for Clinton. Because an abstention in a race this close might as well be a vote for Trump, frankly.

I am not a gun supporter and I do not think individual liberty is at stake in the US any more than it ever was since the end of WW1.

However, I disagree that Trump is an ignoramus when it comes to foreign affairs, and I agree that HRC is not just a hawk but a dangerous hawk. Trump has spoken some sense about NATO and has not hopped aboard the HRC anti Russian bandwagon. I do not see a problem with bombing the shit out of ISIS. ISIS must be destroyed. ISIS wouldn't exist if not for the destabilisation caused by hawks and (by definition unsuitable for office) idealogues, including but not limited to HRC.

I don't think she is a sane pragmatist. I think she is an ideologue and someone who starts but does not finish projects, also someone who underestimates or ignores completely factors that may work against her. This was obvious as early as her stint as healthcare wonk during Bill Clinton's presidency.

For the same reasons, I think she represents a grave danger in foreign policy. I think she is as much of a narcissist as Trump is, but her problem is expressed in ways that are not as visible as his and it has been easier for her to blame 'vast right wing conspiracies'* and the like for her failures. But I think after much reflection that her failures spring very much from personality defects that are all her own.

(* I realise the 'vast right wing' quote came in a different context, but I do not think she makes an honest and clear eyed appraisal of projects in which she seeks to identify and remedy her own contribution to her failures.)

Wrt her track record in high office, HRC's tenure at the State Department saw disaster following disaster in the middle east and in Ukraine there was an unwarranted and completely illegal intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state in which a democratically elected president was deposed in favour of an individual hand picked by the State Department. Does she delegate too much? Does she simply not see complexity?

The Clintons are one of the most corrupt law breaking families in the United States. He is a sex offender and should be in fucking prison

His big ideas are to 'bomb the shit out of ISIS' and to stop Muslims from coming to America.

Well, she has said that she would 'obliterate' Iran if neccessary. She's capable of jingoistic silly-speak too.

If it's a choice between a rapist and a hawk, what exactly is it about Trump that would make anybody think either that he is some kind of pacifist or that he has any clue how to deal with terrorists or any concept of how to handle international relations?

I suspect Trump is a hawk; I know Clinton is a hawk.

mathanxiety have a read around Bill Clinton's violent crime bill, the US private prison industry (CCA as an example) and campaign donors. I think Hilary has recently said she will no longer accept donations from CCA but this follows intense pressure from campaigners following a statement released by Sanders at the start of his campaign.

I agree though, Trump can't help but spill out vitriolic attacks on just about everything and everyone, but it isn't hidden behind government policy, law or national security policies.

Before this campaign started I always though HRC would make a fantastic president but the more I read the less I want to know. I think this extends to pretty much all politics!

I suspect Trump is a hawk - and I know him to be terminally stupid. I know Clinton is a hawk, but I think she's bright enough not to take us into WW3. For me, that's the difference. Trump could do something so terminally stupid that he caused WW3 without even realising that this was the likely consequence of his actions. Totally agree that the proximate cause of the current round of shit in the ME is the hawkishness of the last few American presidencies (longer term most of the countries in the west have played a role, including Britain, whose colonial misadventures continue to have terrible after effects even now).

I have personally become more and more gloomy as the campaign has ground on. I would love to find a reason to be optimistic about a HRC win, but I honestly feel she is not fit for the office she is seeking.

Deep down I wish so much that Bernie had won the nomination.

If Clinton wins, I could actually see her being impeached eventually - I suspect there is stuff in the emails which is a sufficiently serious security breach from her time as secretary of state. I still think that Trump's combination of extreme narcism bordering on madness and extreme stupidity is actually more dangerous for the rest of us.

Maybe time to start digging that bunker in the back yard!

Trump has spoken some sense about NATO

When? Please quote.

How do you bomb the shit out of ISIS? Russia appear to be trying to do that and they are bombing hospitals on behalf of a president who used chemical weapons against his own people.

Meanwhile we know the terrorism that occurs in the US and Europe is very often carried out by people who were born in those places - second generation immigrants just like Trump.

He wants to register Muslims - how do you even begin to do that?

Trump can barely talk to people in his own party - how would somebody like that have moderately friendly relations with the heads of state of friendly countries, never mind negotiate with anyone else?

He has been offensive to so many Americans - what happens when he starts on the rest of the world?

Yes some people find Hillary offensive, although outside the US many struggle to understand what is so offensive about universal healthcare. However, atleast she isn't offensive in incoherent middle of the night Twitter storms.

'Obliterate Iran' is in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. It's not a general policy to combat terrorism.

Trump has spoken some sense about NATO

When? Please quote.

Surely you don't need a quote to know that he's called out NATO members for not pulling their weight (financially). I gather that's what the PP meant when she said he's spoken some sense about NATO.

Yes some people find Hillary offensive, although outside the US many struggle to understand what is so offensive about universal healthcare.

I think the biggest objection to Obamacare is that he did nothing to stand up to the various monopolies that are currently fucking up the American health care system. It's the epitome of big-government big-business establishment politics.

No, I would like a quote from Trump.

So much of what he says is later rephrased by somebody else to give it some sense of legitimacy. However, Trump is running for president.

NATO works on the premise that an attack on one is an attack on all. When Trump and Corbyn decide that for whatever reason they want to pick and choose who to support, NATO doesn't work.

That is fine, but then they need to explain what they are gong to do instead. There is no option where you just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. Does anyone honestly think Trump is the person to negotiate an alternative to NATO??

As much as anything, the point of NATO is to create stability. As America found out in 1941, there are many ways to pull a country into a 'foreign' conflict.

Mathanxiety
I recognise you from other threads and value your opinion- an Irish woman in the US.
If I could vote I think I'd vote for the woman standing for the Green Party.
I just couldn't vote for Trump or Hilary.
I think I would have preferred Bernie Saunders to Hilary , but not sure as I don't know enough about his policies.
I think Hilary is a Marmite politician which is a pity because it would be amazing to have a woman president. Just not Hilary.
And again I will reiterate my thanks to Hilary and Bill for working to gain peace in Northern Ireland.

When people say that Clinton and Trump are just as bad as each other, I want to grab them by the shoulders and give them a good shake. What is wrong with you all? For me it's a bit like having to choose between Hitler and David Cameron. I despise David Cameron but at least he isn't planning genocide. (Yeah, yeah, Godwin's law and all that but I don't care.)

No, I would like a quote from Trump.

Why don't you run off and google it then, merrymouse? We're not your designated lackeys.