by Dick Morris
Reason Five: Which Hillary? She Flips, She Flops, and Then She Flips Again
It can be dizzying to watch the fast changing policy positions of Hillary Clinton. With no real convictions other than ambition, she changes her views with the rapidity and totality of a kaleidoscope. The only thing her shifting views have in common is that they are driven by her political needs at that moment. It is a wonder that anyone listens to her anymore. Her political views have a half-life of a few months . . . or until the wind changes. Here is just a sampling of some of the recent flip-flops. Just a sampling.
Gay Marriage
As she began her solo political career in 2000, she announced in White Plains, New York that she opposed gay marriage: “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.”45 Indeed, Hillary supported her husband’s decision to sign the now infamous (to the Left) Defense of Marriage Act, designed to make sure states without gay marriage did not have to give “full faith and credit” to gay marriages in other states.
In the 2008 campaign for president, she moved somewhat to the left as she turned to face a primary challenge from Barack Obama. At that time, during a debate sponsored by a gay-oriented television station, she was asked, “What is at the heart of your opposition to same-sex marriage?”46 She bobbed and weaved, but let her opposition stand saying, “Well, I prefer to think of it as being very positive about civil unions. You know, it’s a personal position. How we get to full equality is the debate we’re having, and I am absolutely in favor of civil unions with full equality of benefits, rights, and privileges.”47
By 2016, facing an all-out challenge from Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders, she abandoned all reservations in a full-throated defense of gay marriage, saying, “LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones. And they are full and equal citizens, and they deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage. That’s why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, embedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans.”48
Free Trade Agreements
The signature foreign policy achievement of the Clinton administration was the ratification, in 1993, of NAFTA, providing for free trade among the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In her memoir, Living History, published in 2003, Hillary strongly supported NAFTA: “Creating a free trade zone in North America—the largest free trade zone in the world—would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization. Although unpopular with labor unions, expanding trade opportunities was an important administration goal.”49
But when the Bush administration extended NAFTA to Central America in CAFTA in 2006, she voted against it. As public attitudes toward NAFTA soured (See our Chapter Four on how badly we have done under NAFTA), she began to criticize the accord and called for a moratorium on trade deals: At a debate hosted by CNN in November 2007, Clinton said, “NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would, and that’s why I call for a trade timeout.”50
But the mother of all trade flip-flops came in 2015, when Hillary Clinton opposed ratification of a trade deal she helped to negotiate and had strongly endorsed—the TPP. This trade deal, discussed later in this book, links the United States with Chile, Peru, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand. Not only does it eliminate tariffs, but it also limits our flexibility to adopt food and other regulations in our own country.
Hillary loved TPP before she started to run for president. In 2012, she praised it to the skies during a visit to Australia: “So it’s fair to say that our economies are entwined, and we need to keep upping our game both bilaterally and with partners across the region through agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. Australia is a critical partner. This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world’s total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.”51
As secretary of state, Hillary positively gushed about the benefits of the TPP, calling it “exciting,” “innovative,” “ambitious,” “groundbreaking,” “cutting-edge,” “high-quality,” and “high-standard.”52 Her support for TPP was fanned by her top advisors who held top positions with banks such as Morgan Stanley and other institutions deeply interested in selling the deal for their own profit.
Morgan Stanley spent $4 million in 2013 and $4.8 million in 2014 lobbying for TPP. Morgan’s former employees seeded the top ranks of Hillary’s State Department staff. Thomas Nides, Morgan’s chief operating and administrative officer, joined Hillary’s State Department as deputy secretary of state for management, a post from which he could advocate TPP at key junctures. When he left State, he was rewarded for his service by returning to Morgan as the bank’s vice president.53
Open Secrets reported that “Morgan Stanley’s role in the Clinton orbit” goes beyond Nides, noting that “two prominent alumni of former President Bill Clinton’s administration . . . serve on Morgan Stanley’s board of directors: Erskine Bowles (its lead director) and Laura Tyson.” Bowles served as Bill’s Chief of Staff and Tyson was the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors.54
Doubtless, Hillary expected to coast into the presidential race touting TPP as a major achievement of her tenure at the State Department. But enter Bernie Sanders, an inveterate opponent of the deal. Facing a challenge from the Left, she flipped and flopped and condemned TPP. Suddenly, it was not just short of the gold standard. It also fell short of her standards. Now, she told PBS, “I’m worried about currency manipulation not being part of the agreement . . . We’ve lost American jobs to the manipulations that countries, particularly in Asia, have engaged in.”55 (This from a former secretary of state who uttered not a peep when President Obama refused—several times—to certify China as a currency manipulator and invoke sanctions for doing so.) And, Hillary complained, drug companies may have gotten too much in TPP: “Pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients and consumers got fewer,” she commented.56
But if businesses got too much, Hillary got a piece of it in her campaign contributions. The Hill reported that “Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has received more campaign cash from drug companies than any candidate in either party, even as she proudly declares the industry is one of her biggest enemies. Clinton accepted $164,315 in the first six months of the campaign from drug companies, far more than the rest of the 2016 field . . .”57
What would she do as president with TPP? Oh, that’s easy. She’ll make a few minor changes and declare it fixed. It will be the gold standard again.
Second Amendment
Her positions on guns have oscillated back and forth with incredible speed and frequency. When she ran for the Senate from antigun New York State, she backed a national registry for guns.* But when she ran for president and was seeking votes in rural Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan—gun country—she was so pro-gun that Obama quipped that she seemed to want to be “Annie Oakley.”58 When Obama was quoted as saying that rural Pennsylvanians “cling to guns or religion,” she countered with a strong defense of guns. Suddenly, she was Hillary the Hunter and opposed a national registry for firearms.
She even brought her father into it. “You know,” she said, “my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl. Some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting becaus
e it’s an important part of who they are, not because they are bitter.” Hillary said that blanket federal rules weren’t the answer.59
Illegal Immigrants
In the 2008 presidential contest, Hillary distinguished herself as an opponent of illegal immigration, tangling with the rest of the Democratic field on the issue of driver’s licenses for the undocumented. She said, “As president, I will not support driver’s licenses for undocumented people and will press for comprehensive immigration reform that deals with all of the issues around illegal immigration, including border security and fixing our broken system.”60 But in 2016, she flip-flopped. Her spokesman told the Huffington Post that “Hillary supports state policies to provide driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.”61
As hundreds of thousands of children from Central America illegally sought to enter the United States over the porous Mexican border in the spring of 2014, Hillary wanted to send them back: “They should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are,” Clinton said. “There are concerns about whether all of them should be sent back, but I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families. We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” Hillary declared. “So we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws, or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”62
But when the time actually came to start deporting the children, Hillary changed her position once again. Her campaign spokesperson said, “Hillary Clinton has real concerns about these reports [of deportations], especially as families are coming together during this holiday season.” The campaign statement added, “She believes it is critical that everyone has a full and fair hearing, and that our country provides refuge to those that need it. And we should be guided by a spirit of humanity and generosity as we approach these issues.”63
These are just a selection of Hillary Clinton flip-flops. On virtually every major issue, she has taken one side and then the other, always shading her position so as to give herself maximum political advantage.
Reason Six: She Is Corrupt . . . Always Immersed in Scandal
If Hillary is elected, she will take her place along with Warren G. Harding and Richard M. Nixon as one of the most corrupt presidents in our history.
Corruption with Hillary is a way of life. She justifies her corruption by a personal narrative that suggests that she eschewed big bucks on Wall Street as a major corporate lawyer to serve the public in Arkansas. The narrative is, of course, fanciful. She failed the Washington, DC, bar exam, foreclosing most of the lucrative opportunities, and was glad to go to Arkansas, the only bar she had passed.
From the very beginning of her public life, she has always been corrupt. It started in small ways.
Cattle Futures Insider Trading
In 1978, Hillary invested $1,000 in cattle futures contracts. The all time best investment ever made, Hillary walked away with $100,000 the very next year. Having no experience in the futures markets, Hillary was guided in her investment by James Blair, a friend who was outside counsel to Tyson Foods. The editor of the Journal of Futures Markets said in April 1994 that Hillary’s gains in the cattle futures market were “like buying ice skates one day and entering the Olympics a day later.”64 Two economists from the University of North Florida and Auburn University calculated the odds of such winnings without outside fixing as 1 in 31 trillion.65
Blair and Tyson Foods were well compensated for their efforts on Hillary’s behalf. Not only did Governor Clinton waive environmental standards to help Tyson’s chicken industry in Arkansas, but as the Wall Street Journal reported, the firm also got special treatment in Washington after Clinton became president. The Journal wrote in 1994, “Over the past year, an Agriculture Department blitz against unsanitary slaughterhouse practices has bypassed Tyson’s 66 plants altogether. The department also has sided with the Tyson-dominated Arkansas Poultry Federation in a court fight over a California labeling law. And while it has imposed a ‘zero tolerance’ fecal-matter policy on meatpackers, it has yet to do the same for poultry, despite high rates of salmonella and other bacteria on chicken and turkey.”66
The White House Travel Office Firings
Hillary’s next close call with the law came when her husband fired the staff of the White House Travel Office shortly after taking office as president. The Travel Office, in charge of arranging presidential travel and lodgings, was staffed by career people and the Clintons wanted to put patronage employees in there instead.
Hillary was particularly anxious to steer travel business to her good friend Harry Thomason, who had produced many of the ads and videos during Bill’s 1992 run for the presidency. The Washington Post describes how Harry “had contacted the Clintons on behalf of a Cincinnati-based aviation consulting firm in which he had a minority interest, seeking a piece of the White House travel business. Within six weeks, [White House] officials had launched an investigation into alleged financial mismanagement of the travel office, ultimately firing seven employees—who were later cleared of wrong doing.”67
To cover their tracks and justify the dismissals, the Clinton people charged that Billy Dale, the head of the office, was guilty of misconduct.
After it turned out that Dale was not guilty of any impropriety, the special prosecutor interviewed Hillary to ask if she was the one who ordered the firing of Dale and his staff. Hillary lied (under oath) and said no. A memo surfaced from a top Clinton aide named Watkins contradicting Hillary’s sworn testimony saying that the First Lady had ordered the firings and that “there would be hell to pay if we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”68 The Watkins memo dramatically differed from Hillary’s sworn statement that she did not order the dismissals. Why was she not indicted for perjury? Because the special prosecutor could not prove that she was in the chain of command, and her statement that the staff must be fired was merely an opinion, not an order. She was, after all, First Lady, not the president. Whew! A close one.
Whitewater: Almost Indicted Again
Jim McDougal, the head of the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, had been convicted of fraud and ordered to stop doing real estate deals with his bank’s money. So he turned to Hillary’s law partner Web Hubbell and arranged for Seth Ward, Web’s father-in-law, to be a straw purchaser on a deal called both Castle Grande and IDC (Industrial Development Commission), putting the loan and sale in his name. And he hired Hillary to do the legal work for this illegal deal.
The special prosecutor subpoenaed the law firm’s billing records to determine if Hillary worked on the deal, but they had disappeared. When they finally surfaced two years later, they showed that she had, in fact, worked for 60 hours on IDC. But called before a grand jury, she denied doing any work for the “Castle Grande” project. Nobody asked her about an IDC deal.
Subsequently, Barbara Walters asked her about her denial of working on Castle Grande. She explained that she knew the project as “IDC” and did not know it was also called “Castle Grande.” Nonsense. Everyone knew both names. Hillary lied again saying, “The billing records show I did not do work for Castle Grande. I did work for something called IDC, which was not related to Castle Grande.”69 Another lie. It was not only related, it was a synonym.
The Clinton Foundation
The Clintons have their own language. The Clinton Library has no books. The Clinton Foundation makes no grants. Or at least very few.
The New York Post reported on April 26, 2015, that “the Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its ‘watch list’ of problematic nonprofits last month.”70 In 2013, the foundation took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges but gave only $9 million in grants for direct aid. The watchdog reported that the foundation spent most of its money on “administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, and p
ayouts going to family friends.”71
The New York Post reported, “On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on ‘conferences, conventions and meetings’; $8 million on fundraising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel.”72 While the foundation does not pay any of the three Clintons directly, it does pay for their first class airfare. Some of the “administrative cost” finances more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world. But still, the Charity watchdog finds that its expenditures fall short of the 75% spent-on-foundation-mission that is the basic standard in the field.
Charity Navigator, an NGO, put the foundation on its watch list, which warns potential donors about investing in problematic charities. So the Clinton Foundation now joins the Rev. Al Sharpton’s troubled National Action Network on the watch list. “It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group where progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout was once an organizing director.73
Responding to the negative Charity Navigator ratings, the Clinton Foundation made four years of tax returns available and a public memo describing its operations. The Navigator rescinded its watch list designation but still refused to rate the Clinton Foundation citing its “atypical business model” and noting that it could not be “accurately captured” by the group’s rating methodology.74