Our Vice President Mike Pence has gotten himself caught up in an email scandal. Some conservatives may try to brush this off as 'fake news'. But even Fox is reporting on it, and we all know that they're traditionally big supporters of all things Republican. So this must be pretty serious. Maybe even serious enough to cause some unexpected wave son the political scene.
Remember that time that Trump said that he wanted to put Hillary in jail for her email scandal? Because the internet sure does. To refresh your memory, let's review; Hillary Clinton, during her time as Secretary of State, used a private email server to send emails that in hindsight, the State Department would mark as classified. She used this private email in lieu of her federal email, which is supposed to be more secure than a private server. And this came up a lot in the 2016 election. Some may argue that the email scandal even cost her the election.
As aforementioned, Trump milked that scandal for all it was worth. He repeatedly said he wanted to put Clinton in prison for her breach on national security. One can only hope he will treat his vice president to similar standards. After all, Pence's accusations are eerily similar to Clinton's. During his time as governor of Indiana, he used a private email in lieu of his government one to discuss matters of state and national security. The emails allegedly discuss the "state response to terror attacks across the globe." These were clearly important emails regarding homeland security that Pence failed to protect. His personal email was hacked just last summer. So clearly this mistake did not go unnoticed.
Of course, it is important to look at both email scandals objectively. Clinton was dealing with matters that were far more sensitive and classified than anything that would have crossed Pence's desk at governor of Indiana. In fact, Pence was not breaking any state laws by using a private email (which may be a separate issue regarding security). One scandal is clearly at a larger scale than the other.
However, that doesn't make the matter any less disturbing. Again, Pence's emails hit a little too close to home given the attacks made on Clinton during the election. A lot of voters lost a lot of faith and trust in Clinton after the scandal broke. It would have been interesting to see how the election might have turned out if Pence's email scandal had gone public sooner. Our elected Vice President clearly isn't much different than the morally 'crooked' woman Americans chose to keep out of office. We elected almost the same scandal that we crucified another person for.
I'm not calling for Vice President Pence to be put in prison. We've established that he has not broken any laws. But this cannot be swept under the rug either. This needs to be discussed. The Trump administration has been riddled with controversy and scandal from the start, and it's not getting any better. Make those comparisons between Pence and Clinton, no matter if Pence's PR team rejects the comparison. Talk about one of the main bullets that killed Clinton's campaign, but likely will not tarnish Pence's name. Talk about why this might be happening. There are conclusions to be reached here, although even I'm not quite sure what they are yet. But there are conversations to be had about this scandal, and who we entrusted our government to. Start that conversation.
