CNN’s Tapper: Trump’s Vince Foster Remarks ‘Shameful’

Tuesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” host Jake Tapper called presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “shameful” for saying the circumstances surrounding the death of former President Bill Clinton aide Vince Foster were”very fishy.”

Tapper said, “Once again, journalists are in the unhappy predicament of trying to decide whether and how to cover false allegations raised by a candidate for president of the United States. A candidate for the president of—in the midst of the attacks of scandals and accusations from 1990s, Mr. Trump has repeated an outrageous and long-ago debunked falsehood about Vince Foster, a friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s until his tragic suicide in July 1993. Foster, who suffered from depression, walked into the park with an old revolver and shot himself in the mouth. The park service police concluded that year that Foster committed suicide. But that did not stop conspiracy theorists at time from concocting unfounded allegations. Now that first investigation was followed by an investigation by CNN in 1994 concluding Foster’s death was due to suicide and alternative scenarios had no credibility.”

“Other investigations reached the same conclusion, one by independent counsel Robert Fiske in 1994, two by congressional reviews, another by independent council Ken Starr in 1997,” Tapper continued. “One would think case closed, right? Wrong. Donald Trump, in an interview appearing in “The Washington Post,” called circumstances surrounding the death very fishy and said, ‘I don’t bring Foster’s death up because I don’t know enough to discuss it, I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.’ Right. Except, of course, you just did that, Mr. Trump. You lend credence to a bizarre and unfounded conspiracy theory. You’re right, it’s not fair you did that, certainly not to Mr. Foster’s widow or their three children. The notion that this was a murder is a fiction borne of delusion and untethered to reality and contradicted by evidence reviewed in six investigations. One of them by Ken Starr, hardly a Bill Clinton defender. So to say otherwise is ridiculous and, frankly, shameful. Again, this is not a pro-Clinton position or an anti-Trump position. It is a pro-truth position.”

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