Donald Trump’s nickname for Hillary Clinton – Crooked Hillary – works because it builds off her well-deserved reputation with the public for skirting the law and bending the rules. But it’s missing a key component of what should trouble the public about Mrs. Clinton. It’s not just that she has a habit of bending the rules and breaking the laws. The bigger problem is that she doesn’t think the rules should apply to her in the first place. HRC – or Her Royal Crookness – sees herself as a Queen, existing in a realm above the minions who work for her, and even higher above her lowly subjects. Queens don’t have to bother with the system meant for ordinary schlubs. She doesn’t have to accept facts or findings; we peons are expected to accept her version of events, rather than trust our own lyin’ eyes.
That’s the big takeaway from the State Department’s Inspector General Report examining Secretary Clinton’s email practice during her tenure leading the State Department. In contrast to Clinton’s public assurances, her practice of exclusively using a private email system for her official work in spite of knowledge of the extreme security risks and record keeping requirements was unique; it wasn’t approved by State Department lawyers; and, no surprise, was inconsistent with security protocols and put sensitive information at risk.
Yes, Colin Powell also used a private email address and didn’t follow record-keeping policies properly. But, as the report notes, that was when the rules for preserving email records were less detailed, and the security risks less understood. Mrs. Clinton shouldn’t be able to get away with an “everybody does it” defense.
In fact, the report describes what happens when lesser mortals break the rules. When an Ambassador to Kenya used a private server in spite of guidance that this practice was against the rules, disciplinary hearings were initiated and the Ambassador resigned his post. Yes, the rules apply even to ambassadors, just not to Queen Hillary.
Clinton and her top aides wouldn’t even deign to be interviewed by the Inspector General’s office. That’s for the little people, apparently. Her campaign is now trying to rip the report as a partisan hatchet job, trusting that the media and the public will overlook that the Inspector General was appointed by President Obama.
Her Royal Crookness assumes she can get away with it just as she expects the American people will buy her campaign speeches about cracking down on Wall Street, and ignore the millions of dollars showered on her family personally by bankers and corporate heads. She’s not planning to answer questions about millions of dollars flowing from Chinese donors into the Clinton Foundation (that’s the latest scandal brewing as a part of an inquiry into Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe — it’s so hard to keep track) either. And she’s not going to tell you why dozens of other countries, including many with dubious human rights records, gave her family’s nonprofit millions. How dare you ask such a question of the Queen!
Americans should not accept a Queen for President. We’ve had enough of a ruling class that thinks it’s above the rest of us. In fact, that’s one of the few areas where there is a bipartisan consensus. Overwhelming majorities of Democrats, as well as Republicans and Independents, said they thought it was wrong that there are separate rules for Washington elites, when surveyed about Congress’s special exemption from Obamacare. Both parties’ primaries have since revealed an intense dissatisfaction with a system that seems rigged to benefit the political-connected.
Americans recall that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, after all, and those laws are meant to apply to everyone, even those with titles like Secretary or Senator.
That’s bad news for Her Royal Crookness, Hillary Clinton, who epitomizes the elitism that Americans resoundingly reject.