Make HuffPost Your HomePage
Get Email Alerts
Papers Expose Lies of Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen On NAFTA
Finally, the dishonesty is being unmasked. Finally, we see just how much we're being lied to when it comes to economic policy. Finally, we see it hasn't just been Hillary Clinton lying about her role in championing NAFTA, but we see it is the entire Clinton machine.
For the last few weeks, Hillary Clinton has been claiming that she never supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has explicitly claimed "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."
Clinton's record of speeches over the last decade, of course, tells a much different story. In 1996, she toured Texas to promote NAFTA. In 1998, she visited Davos, Switzerland to thank corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." In her memoir a few years ago, she touted NAFTA as one of her husband's big successes. And in 2004, she told reporters that "NAFTA has been good for New York and America."
And yet, despite all of this evidence, Clinton has worked to confuse voters by insisting that she has always been fighting against NAFTA. As I've written in another post, it is a tactic reminiscent of Joe Lieberman denying he supported the Iraq War in the lead up to his 2006 election contest with Ned Lamont. And it is a tactic that Establishment shills have tried to embolden. As just one example, the esteemed David Gergen has used his television platform to back up Clinton's historical revisionism - and Gergen has been cited by others as "proof" Clinton's claims are true - despite, of course, her very own words.
But now with the release of Clinton's White House schedules, the veneer has been torn off, and the brazen dishonesty is finally on display for everyone to see. As Reuters reports:
"Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage...Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a 'NAFTA Briefing drop-by,' in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media. Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program."
ABC's Jake Tapper digs even deeper, noting that at one of the meetings, Gergen "served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA." In other words, Gergen has been on television deliberately lying for the Clinton campaign, as he was actually running these NAFTA-promoting events with Clinton. Tapper goes on to interview people who were in the room.
This revelation comes just as the other appendages of the Clinton machine attempts to revise history even further. This week, Rahm Emanuel -- the chief White House lobbyist who rammed NAFTA through Congress -- authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed praising candidates for indicting NAFTA and claiming "I share their concern for Americans who have lost their jobs to global competition." To quote my book Hostile Takeover, this is "the same Rahm Emanuel who penned an op-ed in the conservative Wall Street Journal pressuring Democrats to capitulate and pass the 2000 China trade deal - a move perfectly timed to help secure the critical votes that ultimately passed the deal."
The facts are clear: The Clinton machine joined with K Street to manufacture the very international economic policies that are destroying the economy. And yet, this same machine now claims to have had nothing to do with those economic policies -- at the very moment, the machine is pushing a NAFTA-style Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Congress. We are, in short, experiencing the renaissance of "Clintonism" -- an ideology that treats Americans like we are stupid and treats basic undebatable facts as commodities to be manipulated and perverted for personal gain. And that renaissance should make everyone question all the recent promises by Clinton about changing NAFTA.
Had she simply acknowledged she was for NAFTA and that now she's not for NAFTA, that might give her some credibility. But, then, this is a candidate who just a few months ago laughed at a serious question about NAFTA, claiming "all I can remember are a bunch of charts." In other words, this is a candidate and a campaign machine that is absolutely uninterested in how these policies have devastated the middle class -- and hostile to an honest discussion about those policies. So the question now is simple: Can a Wall Street-backed candidate who denies the undeniable past be trusted with the future?
UPDATE: Just to show you how complacent the media is in the face of lies, the New York Times' headline about the papers is "The Early Word: Clinton Papers Reveal Little." Yes -- the fact that the papers directly refute the very claims about NAFTA she used to win Ohio is not news to the New York Times.
UPDATE II: Jake Tapper has more on how the "schedules show her holding at least five meetings in 1993 aimed at helping to win congressional approval of the deal." Clinton's official defense is now that "numerous contemporary accounts make clear that Hillary Clinton was personally opposed to NAFTA, and her position on NAFTA was and remains consistent." That's nice "contemporary accounts" as a euphemism for "historical revisionism" -- and, of course, those accounts come from people like David Gergen, who we now know is lying.
UPDATE III: The Obama campaign held a conference call with reporters on the NAFTA issue and just issued this memo.
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
David I love you dearly and I always read your posts but this one seems to be a bit of a stretch to me. You don't seem to recognize that NAFTA is a mixed bag.
First of all there are regions of this country that have benefited from this treaty. do we just throw them under the bus?
Secondly Obama hasn't exactly been a straight shooter on this issue either. Austan Goosbee Obama's senior economic advisor maintains that world trade is not large enough to cause our country any economic distress as, in his estimation, it only accounts for 16 percent of it. If Obama accepts his advise, then he at least listens to this opinion.
Not news : Hillary has no qualms about lying.
More to the point : 16 yrs have passed, and NAFTA is such a toxic subject with the voters , that they are running from it. So much for the service economy line.
I'm really surprised by this post.
Dave Sirota is, of course, a STRONG supporter of Sen. Obama...and not a fan of Sen. Clinton...to say the least.....but he is HIGHLY knowlegable about politics and history....and I would assume he is AWARE of the FACTS here......
Frankly, those that assert that Mrs. Clinton was PERSONALLY an ethusiastic NAFTA supporter in 1993....and that Mr. Gergen is for some reason LYING about his personal recollections of internal administation debates about it .......are themselves engaging in the revisionism they so vociferously accuse others of.
All of this was well-known at the time and has been confirmed by literally a DOZEN or more Clinton aministration figures.
Moreover, this question has little current relevance. A debate about what additions or revisions the candidates propose regarding NAFTA.......and the larger one regarding ALL trade agreements and policies could be illuminating and constructive.
A debate about Sen. Clinton's personal beliefs circa 1993 does not serve the interests of Sen. Obama well at all, to my mind........it seems transparently aimed at finding a negative talking point to bash her with in Pennsylvania and it smacks of desperation, and the grubby politics of old that Sen. Obama frequently suggests we need to overcome.
The same can be said about claims that people like Gergen, Riech, Carville, Rubin, Meyers, and many others are LYING...when few Americans are likely to believe that they are.
A campaign whose central themes are unity, hope, and inspiration focused on the FUTURE.....looks disingenous and hypocritical when it engages in these kinds of debates about the PAST...... and Sen. Obama is ill-served by advisers and surrogates who engage in it. Regards.........................tm
Odd interpretation of her appointment book.........but then, Hillary-Haters always strike me as a bit irrational.
New term now for me pops into my head......He's WRIGHT!
New on You Tube re: this subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFuA0z4kKD4
Good one! Hearing her talk make me gag.
I saw Tapper's article yesterday and the quick appendage by the Clinton campaign about Gergen refuting it. Shameless, when you see the papers in black in white. While I continue to believe Hillary would make a fine enough President, I am disturbed by her inability to admit she was wrong. She handled the Iraq armed forces authorization decision the same way...she simply cannot admit she made the wrong vote. John Edwards did, and that particular issue was then off the table for him. So did the others. We're seeing the same pattern here with the NAFTA issue. I don't fault her for getting behind it so much then, as how did anyone really know how it was going to play out. But as in the Iraq war, we know how NAFTA has been playing out, much a Ross Perot said years ago with that "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the country. All Hillary needed to do was to say that we know better now, NAFTA was a mistake, and move on.
Now here she is, claiming her years as first lady as part of her resume. She now wants to have it both ways by saying she "personally" opposed NAFTA in spite of her speeches in support on numerous occasions. If you're going to claim experience, you also need to own up to the results.
Oh we forgot hilbot, if voters don't support more of the same sh*t on a different day, We the People are insane.
Don't try to foist these shady dishonest crooks on us again. We've had enough of what they think is good for us. They don't even know us, unless scripted introductions divided up in sects.
Her campaign is not about US, it's all about them again!
It hasn't been a good 24/7 cycle for Clinton truth-telling. In addition to having her account of her past views about NAFTA contradicted by her own White House records, Senator Clinton appears to have not told the truth about why she was late to an event yesterday with West Virginia veterans. See The Washington Post's article, "Clinton Presses Obama on Efforts for Revotes in Florida and Michigan" (link below). The Post reporters write at length about Hillary's "last-minute visit" to Detroit, to challenge Senator Obama's willingness to stand up for democracy (read: to support her scheme for a Michigan revote). Note in particular this last paragraph: "Clinton's stop in Detroit pushed back her schedule in West Virginia. A stop in Huntington was moved to late afternoon. When she finally arrived, Clinton offered a different explanation for her tardiness: 'We got off to a bit of a slow start this morning due to some weather delays,' she told a group of veterans."
If you can't tell the truth about the big stuff, and can't tell the truth about the small stuff, what can you be trusted to tell the truth about?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031903258.html
Did you actually read the NYT article?
They make the exact same complaints as you do about NAFTA, and go one further: they assert that a great deal of information is being withheld, purposefully, to prevent a Rezko level scandal for Clinton.
They aren't saying that they reports reveal little.
They are saying that they are not revealing enough.
Rezko is not a scandal, unless you know of the Clinton's having some shaddy involvement with him. Barack has come clean on what little connection they have, so that's now a past non-issue.
NAFTA isn't a scandal either. Just a bald face lie, distortion of the truth and tantrum to turn it around on Barack. Unfortunately for Hill, four and ahalf weeks for Pennsylvania voters to find out.
You must not have read the article either.
They discuss that Clinton had a lot of shady looking deals with people whose names are withheld for "privacy purposes". Just like they claim that Obama had with Rezko.
You're right, NAFTA is not a scandal. Where the scandal comes in is when you say you were against it to an audience in Ohio who have reaped the disastrous results of that policy in order to win votes and appear to be on their side.
Do you actually know your beans?
NAFTA is good in a lot of ways. There are some problems with it that needs to be tended to and that is what Hillary says.
Hillary did say she supported her husband. That is OLD news. Really old news.
Look, look up how NAFTA has been good and the bad. See how it hurts the ecoomony in what locations. And remember Hillary said that she did do it, but saw how it was hurting some of our jobs and relationships. This is OLD. Just because it's in print doesnt make it new.
Do your homework blogger. Go back to way back when. You don't like your candidate being smeared?
Well, it was going to happen and now you can see that it goes both ways...Including you.
You're so smart--you do the work and share it here! We're waiting...
NAFTA has been a DISASTER for every community it has touched, enviromentally, economically, and Humanitarily, both FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC. I'll await your PROOF of the incorrectness of my statement.
So NAFTA works? huh, I'll be damned. I thought that I had a BETTER paying job, with healthcare before it got shipped to Mexico. I thought that MOST people had good paying jobs, which have almost all been sent overseas!
Perhaps you really ought to get off of your cloud before you post comments about how wonderful things are going right now!
As the cerburii at the gates have seen fit to discard my earlier comment, I will make this one shorter---
Declarations are not proof, accusations are not proof and namecalling does not mean the object of such juvenility is what she has been called. Bias dressed in high dudgeon remains apparently itself.
In sub-Saharan Africa, cattle dung is used for fuel. If the "Clinton machine" ran on it, those who tended it would have to look no farther than here for enough to run the damn thing for a week, or to be fair, possibly two.
Mr Sirota,
How clever of you to leave this portion of Jake Tapper's report out of your post
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: The Clinton campaign has asked that I post this recent quote on CNN from Mr. Gergen, referenced above, saying, "I was actually there in the Clinton White House during the NAFTA fight and I must tell you Hillary Clinton was extremely unenthusiastic about NAFTA. And I think that"s putting it mildly. I"m not sure she objected to all the provisions of it but she just didn"t see why her husband and that White House had to go and do that fight. She was very unhappy about it and wanted to move on to health care. So I do think there"s some justification for her camp saying, you know, she"s never been a great backer for NAFTA."
NoGoodNamesLeft, I saw when Gergen made this statement. It doesn't back up what she has done. You cannot blame people for being skeptical of her intentions. Let's say for sake of argument she did not think this was a good idea and just participated in it as a way of supporting her husband. Then why go on and write a book a decade later and claim that it was one of her husband's biggest accomplishments? The key point in Gergen's statement was not really that she didn't approve of NAFTA per say she wanted her health care initiative to take the front seat. We can play word games all day long but shit will always smell like shit!
" How clever of you to leave this portion of Jake Tapper's report out of your post "
- He didn't leave it out. It is in fact a rebuttal which had no place in the original story. David Gergen is a dyed in the wool Clitonite as anyone in the establishment would confirm. He can spin it as good as the rest of them. Facts, however, speak for themselves.
The Clintons were AND ARE for free trade (or for whatever else filled would fill the pockets of themselves and their corporate crony buddies).
SAY NO TO MONARCHY IN THE GREAT REPUBLIC. VOTE OBAMA.
Obama's core economic advisory group are all free market, liberalised economic hawks. Hillary proposed two years ago that NAFTA must be revisited in order to protect American jobs, ensure stricter labor standards in Mexico (and Canada), and develop environmentally friendly regulations.
Furthermore, Gergen is no partisan. He's worked for Democratic AND Republican administrations as far back as Ford, and has been openly critical of every president he ever worked for. His position on NAFTA has been entirely consistent, as has his forthrightness and honesty. I don't always agree with his analysis, but I know for a fact (having been at the Kennedy School of Government for several years) that he has no political agenda, and definitely no dog in this particular fight.
Her statements on NAFTA are completely consistent with this. She said she had serious question s about NAFTA while First Lady. And, that has been confirmed by others who were there at te time. She also has said that she publically supported NAFTA because that was the administration's position. She has also said during the debates that her position has been that NAFTA has been good in some areas and bad in others. And, her current position is that it needs to be renegotiated.
Obama's current position on NAFTA is the same as Clintons. And, in te same debate the moderator also gave quotes from Obama where he had said NAFTA was good in some places and bad in others.
It is perfectly logical to say she had personal misgivings about NAFTA while in the White House. But, if the president asks you to support it publically, you do so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Clinton] also has said that she publically supported NAFTA because that was the administration's position.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please provide a link. If Clinton is now claiming she publicly supported Nafta then why did she say "shame on you Barack Obama" for his fliers that said she publicly supported it?
I can't keep her story straight. I know she said Obama was lying when he said she publicly supported Nafta. Now you are telling me see is admitting she supported it. Does this mean she will retract her claims that Obama was lying?
because Obama's fliers attributed a quote to her that she NEVER said. His fliers contained a direct LIE and he knew it. He used those same fliers in Wisc and was told they were wrong at the time. But, he still used them again in Ohio knowing they were wrong.
Those flirs quoted Hillary as saying "NAFTA has been a boon". And, she has never said that. They took that quote from a magazine article. But, it was what the magazine said, not Hillary. IN fact the publisher of the magazine came out and said Obama was wrong. But, he still continued to use it at attribute it to Hilllary.
Do you understand LIE? That's why she said Shame on You.
So what you're saying is that if she has to choose between supporting a flawed policy for political expediency versus doing what is right, she'll support the policy every time? I will take her at her word that she had misgivings about NAFTA back then, but if those misgivings were that serious, couldn't she simply tell Bill to get another surrogate to pump it up? Another way of looking at it is if she is president and promotes bad policy, does she expect those in her administration to support her in spite of any misgivings they may have?
You are right in that NAFTA has helped some states while hurting others, but keep in mind how Hillary pandered to the Ohioans for votes by voicing her problems with NAFTA. They were obviously one of the states who got hammered by it.
"....and treats basic undebatable facts as commodities to be manipulated and perverted for personal gain."
And HRC supporters seem to be incapable of realizing how much this attitude pisses thinking Democrats off.
You folks really think you have a big issue with this NAFTA thing. You found out in Ohio that people ain't buying it. Maybe you'll be convinced you got nothing after Hil creams Obama in PA too.
Obama has a HUGE problem that won't be quelled by making a too long 40 min speech that hardly anyone except his supporters actually watched. The bloom is off the rose, folks. When he tries to walk on water Obama sinks like a rock just like the rest of us.
I, frankly, don't give a damn whether they 'buy it' or not.
All I care about is putting the truth out there.
Let there be no 'Ohhhhh, I didn't know', not this time.
Go on elect McHillary, or McCrazy if you will.
Only Obama supporters, then, reserve the right to complain.
Loading comments…
(AP) TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Ousted President Manuel...
The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups...
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! The American flag has been painted on bathing...
If it's a rainy weekend and you want to channel that summer feeling, you can rent...
***SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO OF PALIN'S RESIGNATION SPEECH...
I wish Hunter S. Thompson had lived to see this. As Hunter said, "When the going gets weird, the...
Anyone who is in any way surprised by Sarah Palin's announcement today that she will...
Reporters are beginning to piece together an explanation for Sarah Palin's...
The first lady's garb is a great way to gauge what's hot for summer style. Michelle...
As Jon Stewart pointed out last night, Mark Sanford is the luckiest man in the world:...
I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, or follow me...
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has...
During his interview with ABC's This Week on Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden made...
The Cruise family is down under at the moment, and Sunday Tom, Katie and Suri went to the stage production...
A long weekend, parties, crazy hats, fireworks, and fun...
DENVER — Casket makers catering to natural burials have offered biodegradable coffins made of...
Posted March 20, 2008 | 11:06 AM (EST)