One of the biggest claims Republican candidate Donald Trump has been making this election cycle is that the media has been on the whole unfairly biased against him, with supporters like Newt Gingrich claiming that even right-leaning outlets like Fox News were refusing to cover the plethora of Bill Clinton’s sexual assault accusations and instead just focusing on his own transgressions (although one could make the salient argument that Bill Clinton is in fact not on the ticket running for office again, while Trump is attempting to be elected president and would naturally deserve greater media scrutiny). But if Trump was ever worried about lack of media coverage on Bill Clinton, that was quickly dispelled this week when a particular email released by Wikileaks showed a less than favorable side to the 42nd president.
Politico ran an article a couple of days back about a memo which had been released in one of the latest Clinton email dumps, from a long time Clinton advisor accusing him of taking profits from companies that were also donating to the Clinton Foundation (a practice he cleverly titled ‘Bill Clinton Inc.’). Supposedly the aide, Doug Band, was being criticized about conflicts of interest regarding the foundation and in response he created a 12 page document which detailed among other things at least one case where Bill Clinton was being paid by an organization for his services whilst simultaneously encouraging that organization to invest in the Clinton Foundation, which would appear to be a conflict of interest for the already scandal-embroiled charity foundation.
In another article from the Washington Post, they mentioned how such fruitful business partnerships from companies like Coca Cola which were on the surface based on the commitment to the charity’s work, in fact were based more on the promise of an “entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee.” Through an in depth analysis of the memo and what it revealed, it seems that once again the Clinton Foundation is coming under serious fire for possibly less than charitable engagements.
Of course the question at the end of these Wikileaks discoveries is always ‘what impact will this have?’ In this instance, while this revelation is definitely troubling and seems to reinforce some of negative views of the Clinton family (their deep establishment corporation ties), it seems highly unlikely that this story will overshadow the damage that has already been inflicted against the Trump campaign in the form of the sexual assault allegations, and even less likely that it will significantly affect poll outcomes so close to election day. But it still raises a very important issue to consider and that is how the Clinton Foundation will operate, and what role the Clinton’s longstanding ties to corporate interests will serve, should Hillary Clinton be nominated president on November 8.
The 2016 Presidential Election 