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Since Donna Brazile is trending, can we maybe end this idiotic "stolen debate questions!!" bullshit once and for all?
The press did not cover itself in glory in 2016, and this was hardly their worst fumble, but it's embarrassingly shoddy all the same. 1/
The press did not cover itself in glory in 2016, and this was hardly their worst fumble, but it's embarrassingly shoddy all the same. 1/
Donna Brazile began 2016 as a Vice-Chair of the DNC. After Tusli quit, she had the best relations at the DNC with the surging Sanders campaign, and she had TV relationships. So when the DNC had to add Bernie-Hillary TV events in light of his surge, she was the point person. 2/
When people think of primary events with candidates, you think debates. Debates are a big deal. Candidates talk to each other live in public. Voters get to compare their answers to the same question. On a campaign, debate prep takes up hours. It's a high-stakes competition. 3/
But a lot of these TV events weren't debates, they were "town halls." Sometimes the audience asks questions, sometimes it's just an interview with an audience. Put 2 candidates back-to-back, it feels sorta like a debate. But for the candidate, it's just another interview. 4/
It's hard to get campaigns to sign on to debates, but town halls are easy. And since she was talking to all the people involved in setting them up, she had a chance to push issues that weren't getting much airtime then. Specifically, issues of concern to the black community. 5/
There were some tough questions. There was one about the death penalty. There was one about racism in unions - an issue many politicos had never even heard of, literally pitting two core Democratic constituencies against each other. Answered by the top candidates, on live TV. 6/
Now, not every interviewee you see on TV gets the questions or topics in advance. But it happens. It's not unethical, it's just a matter of what makes the best TV. (Newsmakers mostly don't get questions, experts often do.) It's a like an open-book test instead of a pop quiz. 7/
So Donna Brazile wanted hard questions important to the black community to get national attention. And as a DNC Vice Chair, she didn't want Democratic standard-bearers blindsided on live TV. You see where this is going. And there's nothing wrong with it. 8/
How do I know all of this? It's all public. The questions she sent in the emails Russia hacked were for spring town halls. And she explained herself in 2017, in this piece. 9/ https://time.com/4705515/donna-brazile-russia-emails-clinton/
But by then, she was already shunned for her alleged sins. That piece was heard by DC elites as her confession, as she called the emails a "mistake" she'd "forever regret." Nevermind she said her regret was for giving the Russians means to dupe those same elites. 10/
And the Russians were clever. Just like they blurred Podesta's leaked emails and HRC's State Department emails in the public mind, they blurred Brazile's town hall topic heads-ups with another email she sent about a rumor she heard before the Detroit debate - a real debate. 11/
She apparently heard a rumor that a woman with a rash would ask about Flint's drinking water, and she shared it with a friend in HRC's camp. It wasn't true. Hillary was asked about Flint's water situation - but that's hardly inside intel, that's why the debate was in Detroit. 12/
By leaking the town hall question emails and the debate rumor, the Russians spun a narrative about leaked debate questions, cheating, a corrupt Democratic establishment rigging it for crooked Hillary. All bullshit. She wanted tough questions addressed on the national stage. 13/
But the Russkies could not have done it without home-grown American journalists' help. Totally bought in to the "Corrupt HRC/DNC!" narrative, they didn't bother to read the documents. National political journalists forgot the difference between a debate and an interview. 14/
Donna Brazile does not want to talk about 2016, and I can't say I blame her. She tried then to get people to believe or care that the Russians were attacking us, and they didn't. She explained all this in her Time piece, and wrote a book about the rest. She's done. 15/
But to all the know-it-all's of DC and Twitter who look down smugly on Donna Brazile as a fallen woman, hoo boy. Y'all have been had. It's all right there, the Russians made it all public. You just have to actually read it, instead of assuming it is what you'd like it to be. END
