On Wednesday evening, 2016 presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a fundraiser in Manhattan. Among the guests: Beyonce and Jay Z, both of whom were major fundraisers for Barack Obama. Other guests included TV reality star Sharon Osbourne and singer Meghan Trainor. The price of admission: $2,700 per person. Hillary reportedly raised up to $1.1 million from the event.
Hillary’s “listening tour,” designed to show her down-to-earth, grassroots style, looks more like one of President Obama’s Hollywood tours at this point. She’s held 16 different fundraisers over the past month, most in swanky locales like Haim Saban’s yard in Beverly Hills.
She is still, however, avoiding questions. Thus far in her campaign, she has answered a grand total of 13 questions. These ranged from the blasé (“How do you win this time?”) to the mockable (“How are you liking Iowa?”), from the stupid (“Is it good to be back out here again?”) to the even more stupid (“What do you think the importance of the Iowa caucus will be in the upcoming election?”).
When asked specifically whether foreign entities received “any special treatment for making any kind of donations to the foundation or your husband,” Hillary answered by citing the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and calling such allegations “distractions.” She wouldn’t even answer a question about the controversial fast-track trade authority that has now become subject for debate between President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren, instead opting to jabber on about a local business.
Here are the top eight questions Hillary has not been asked, even as her media sycophants suggest that she should not be expected to answer questions:
Why Did You Specifically Set Up a Private Email Server As Secretary of State? Before launching her campaign, Hillary held a press conference regarding her private email server and the destruction of some 30,000 emails from that server. She suggested that she had a private email server for the sake of convenience, and that the emails destroyed were all about yoga and her daughter’s wedding. If that is the case, Clinton should be asked, why don’t you turn over the server itself so that we can simply confirm that the emails you deleted were unproblematic? Why did Hillary launch her email address just before becoming Secretary of State? Why did her aides similarly use a private server? Why didn’t the State Department review all emails before deciding which to preserve?
Why Didn’t You Comply With State Department Guidelines In Hiding Clinton Foundation Donations? In 2008, Hillary Clinton promised that she would publish all Clinton Foundation donors annually. She didn’t. As Reuters reported: “In a breach of the pledge, the charity’s flagship health program, which spends more than all of the other foundation initiatives put together, stopped making the annual disclosure in 2010, Reuters has found.” The Washington Post and Bloomberg have also reported that the Clinton Foundation did not report certain foreign donations from countries with business before the State Department.
What Relationships Do You Have With Particular Media Members? On Thursday, Politico revealed that ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton war room participant, had signed checks worth $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation from 2013 to 2014. Stephanopoulos said nothing about those checks, even as he interviewed Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer about alleged corrupt dealings within the Clinton Foundation. Stephanopoulos apologized via Politico, stating, “I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record.” Will Hillary reveal all the members of the media who have contributed to the Clinton Foundation or other Clinton-associated projects?
Should Women Be Permitted to Abort Full-Term Babies? In April, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) met with rage from the media after he declined to answer questions about abortion until Democrats were asked if it was “okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus.” Hillary has never been asked that question, but she certainly should be given today’s tweet on the subject:
We now know that babies can live outside the womb at 22 weeks.
Why Do You Think Religious Americans Should Be Re-Educated? Speaking at the 2015 Women in the World Summit, Hillary Clinton said, “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural code, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” She spoke specifically about such changes in the context of making access to abortion easier. How, exactly, does Hillary Clinton proposed to use law and “political will” to change “religious beliefs?” Given that Hillary has also radically shifted her position to say that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right, does she believe that religious institutions should be forced by government fiat to comply with same-sex marriage or lose their tax-exempt status?
Did You Make The Right Decision in Libya? Hillary Clinton was widely perceived to be the driving force behind the air war to oust Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Libya then turned into a terrorist hellhole, resulting in the death of four Americans in Benghazi. The Washington Times reported that Clinton “was the moving force inside the Obama administration to encourage US military intervention to unseat” Qaddafi. She reportedly said that the dictator would commit genocide if left alone during the civil war. She then ignored all available intelligence suggesting that terrorists played a large role in the anti-Qadaffi uprising. Does she regret her decisionmaking in Libya?
Did Your Russian Re-Set Work? As Secretary of State, Hillary infamously handed her Russian counterpart a button that read “overcharge.” It was supposed to say “re-set,” and the idea behind the button was a softening of American positions with regard to the Putin regime. Today, Putin’s Russia has annexed Crimea, fostered Iranian and Syrian weapons of mass destruction programs, and threatened America’s Eastern European allies. The good news: John Kerry has received a batch of Russian potatoes.
Why Didn’t You Label Boko Haram a Terrorist Group? When Hillary was Secretary of State, her department refused repeatedly to label the Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram a terrorist entity. As Josh Rogin of The Daily Beast reported:
The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.
The good news: Hillary Clinton has tweeted the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls.
There are plenty more questions where these came from. But so long as the media comply with Hillary’s attempts to avoid answering any of them, Americans will remain in the dark.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.