Elections

Podesta Email: It Would Have Been ‘Better’ If San Bernardino Shooter Had A Stereotypical White Name

REUTERS/US Customs and Border Protection/Handout via Reuters

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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After Syed Farook was identified as one of the San Bernardino terrorists, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman expressed dismay that Farook had an ethnic-sounding name rather than a stereotypical white one, newly released emails show.

“Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk [sic] was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter,” Podesta wrote in a Dec. 2, 2015 email to Karen Finney, a Clinton campaign spokeswoman.

He was referring to white MSNBC host Christopher Hayes, who had reported on Twitter that Farook was identified as one of the San Bernardino shooters.

“Damn,” was Finney’s response to the tweet, which she forwarded to Podesta.

Earlier that day, Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, had killed 14 people in a terrorist attack at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The husband and wife were devout Sunni Muslims. Farook, who was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents, traveled multiple times to Saudi Arabia.

The San Bernardino massacre created a political problem for Clinton and other Democrats. Republicans gained traction by accusing Democrats of being soft on terrorism in general and Islamic terrorism in particular.

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