Earlier last week, Wikileaks uncovered and shared over 1,100 emails exchanged between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta. Podesta has had long standing relations with Clinton family, and he served as President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1998 until 2001. Extensively, the leaked emails revealed examples of Clinton’s staff coordinating with the DNC committee and some major media personnel discussing strategies to boost Clinton, and to break down former democratic candidate Bernie Sanders. The emails also uncovered the campaign positions viewpoint on the republican primary here. The Podesta emails would have been an early Christmas present for GOP supporters if not for the “Trump Tapes” being leaked at coincidentally at the same time. Although the emails do not reveal any criminal activity it does affirm the shady the stigma surrounding the Clinton campaign. Unfortunately, the Podesta emails have not received very much coverage in the media this week. So here we highlight some of the hottest #Podesta Emails.
1. Clinton Knew ISIL Was Gaining Funds from Allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Clinton has been criticized for her personal relations the Middle East. It is known that officials from Qatar donated 1 million dollars to Clinton foundation. This email states that Qatar officials donated a million dollars to the foundation for Clinton's birthday. The email can be found here. The email reveals the Clinton foundation's fundamental process of operation. This does not reflect well on the foundation and Hilary Clinton. The situation only gets worse when Clinton discovers that her big contributor also is one of the main contributors to ISIS here. This should be a hot topic moving forward in this election. In the email, Clinton urges action; "While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region." This should be an issue that needs to be pressed over the final weeks of the election.
2. Clinton Mocks Catholics
The podesta emails revealed an exchange between Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri and Center For American Progress fellow John Halpin that includes condescending comments about religious conviction.
The full email can be found here The conversation between them were discussed a quote from a magazine article that mentioning how conservative media titan Rupert Murdoch raised his children as Catholics. Essentially, Halpin mocked Newsgroup CEO Rupert Murdoch for being catholic. In the email, Halpin wrote; "Ken Auletta's latest piece on Murdoch in the New Yorker starts off with the aside that both Murdoch and Robert Thompson, managing editor of the WSJ, are raising their kids Catholic. Friggin' Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, " Halpin added to his criticism, "Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups. It's an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy," This excerpt affirms the GOP accusations Clinton's anti-Christian and anti-religious agenda. Palmierie's view on Catholics is not far off base compared to others in the campaign . Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine, is a devote Catholic who poorly tried to use scripture justify his pro-choice views on abortion. Evangelicals and Catholics don't have anybody to support during this year's election. Can read the whole Clinton perspective on Catholicism here.
3. Taking Down Sanders
When Sanders campaign began to pick up steam, Clinton recieved some help to take down the Senator from Vermott. In this email, Clinton researcher emailed his former media colleagues of talking points to use against Bernie Sanders. The email has a subject line titled "PLS Review" and mentions strategies of attacking Sanders on labor and the environment, a 1994 crime bill, gun control, gay marriage, and the environment. The Clinton's used some of this attacks, and we can only hope that the information was directed solely to the Clinton campaign. This a very disappointing reality for the journalism community. The whole email can be seen here.
In conclusion, WikiLeaks has displayed Clinton's corruption for everyone to see. A question mark surrounding the emails are the fact that it is almost impossible to prove the authenticity of them at this time. However, the Clinton campaign has not fully denied the content contained in the emails. The media covers the Podesta emais to the point where people will be inspired to look for them on their own. .
