Jeff Greenfield: What Was Stephanopoulos Buying for $75,000? Access.

When it comes to the Clintons and money, the question is always the same: what’s the quid pro quo? The idea that George Stephanopoulos, the face of ABC News, donated $75,000 and much of his time to the Clinton Foundation for altruistic reasons is of course preposterous. While Stephanopoulos probably does care about the causes he laid out in his dual apologies on Friday’s “Good Morning America” and Sunday’s “This Week,” only a fool would believe the Clinton Foundation was the best way to serve those causes.

George Stephanopoulos is many things, but he is no fool.

So why did the chief anchor and chief political correspondent for ABC News not only throw $75,000 at the Clintons between 2012 and 2015, but also regularly present himself as a featured attendee at Clinton Foundation events?

The answer was glaringly obvious to me as soon as the scandal broke late last week:

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So it was heartening Sunday to see veteran newsman Jeff Greenfield (who worked at ABC News as a media analyst for 14 years) verbalize the same answer to the biggest no-brainer question of this entire mess:

Daily Beast contributor Greenfield, a former speechwriter for New York Mayor John Lindsay and Sen. Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, was hardly more charitable.

He speculated that Stephanopoulos might have donated to the Clinton Foundation in order to repair a frayed relationship with his former employers—who felt betrayed by his best-selling White House memoir, All Too Human, and by his early prediction on ABC that the Monica Lewinsky scandal could lead to impeachment.

Other than empowering the central government, what our media wants more than anything else is access — access to the powerful, especially in Washington DC. Access to a sitting president is the true brass ring.

Especially a Democrat president.

Other than effectively pushing a left-wing, big government agenda, the currency of the DC media elite is information and scoops. That all comes from access, and what better way for Stephanopoulos to slither back into the good graces of a likely future president than by doing so through the  slush fund of her Foundation.

You got your quid.

You got your pro.

You got your quo.

Any other questions?

Stephanopoulos has been caught red-handed, not only using Big Money to seek favor with a presidential candidate, but also lying about it to his employers and viewers.

Stephanopoulos has always been tainted, now he is exposed.

 

John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC