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" (The post usually seen at this time will not be shown so we can bring you the following special program on NBC.) It was quite a week for The Clinton Rules among the elite political press. Tiger Beat On The Potomac was especially exercised. Here, they were able to put the words &amp;quot;Hillary,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Huma Abedin&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;special status&amp;quot; in the lede of a story that otherwise says nothing. But, at this point, all you have to do is say &amp;quot;Huma Abedin&amp;quot; three times fast and both Mark Levin and Pamela Gellar will appear dressed in Trey Gowdy drag. To wit: Republicans and outside groups have openly wondered if the post presented a conflict of interest for Abedin, who is now vice chair of Clinton&amp;#039;s presidential campaign, or if Abedin&amp;#039;s outside work influenced actions at State. Of course, those people &amp;quot;openly wonder&amp;quot; about that. Time was then people &amp;quot;openly wondered&amp;quot; if HRC had offed Vince Foster in a Washington pied a terre. (That nonsense occupied the time of three special prosecutors and a handful of congressional committees.) \u00A0Then there was this little tidbit, about how the NSA &amp;quot;was dragged&amp;quot; into the controversy because gobble-necked rookie senator Tom Cotton dove for the spotlight again: Cotton asked for Rogers&amp;#039; &amp;quot;professional opinion&amp;quot; about the hypothetical scenario of Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov or Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif setting up a private server. &amp;quot;From a foreign intelligence perspective, that represents opportunity,&amp;quot; Rogers said. Initially, Rogers had tried to duck the subject when Cotton asked what he would do if the U.S. secretary of state had asked him about setting up a private server. &amp;quot;You really want to drag me into this?&amp;quot; Rogers answered. Then he said he would advise the secretary to comply with any applicable regulations. (I would have paid cash money if a Democrat on that committee had asked Rogers whether he would have seen a &amp;quot;opportunity&amp;quot; if a first-term member of the Iranian maljis had undermined the government by writing a letter to the president of the United States assuring him that Iran could tear up the nuclear deal any time it wanted.) And then there&amp;#039;s poor Jack Shafer, whose confusion on this issue seems only to deepen, but who is clinging for a lifeline to a\u00A0fundamentalist interpretation of The Clinton Rules,\u00A0especially the one that dictates that anything that every politician since Pericles\u00A0has done becomes dubious when done by a Clinton. Here is a remarkably stupid sentence that I attribute to the lingering effect of Shafer&amp;#039;s emergence from the carbon-freeze in which he apparently was held from 1990-2000. Genuine political distractions must exist, although I&amp;#039;ll be damned if I can find a good example. Because, here at the shebeen, we live to serve, why don&amp;#039;t we help Jack sort this all out. Basically, all modern political ratfcking involves creating distractions, also called knocking Candidate X &amp;quot;off-message.&amp;quot; It can be argued that every Red Scare was in part a distraction used to discredit organized labor and destroy political liberalism. When Donald Segretti put out fake letters about Scoop Jackson&amp;#039;s bastard child, that was creating a distraction. Ask Al Gore sometime about the political utility of &amp;quot;genuine distractions. Love Canal. Inventing the Internet. Where he grew up. Naomi Wolf. The fcking buttons on his fcking pants. Examples are not hard to find. Oops, look. Here&amp;#039;s another.\u00A0 The &amp;quot;questions&amp;quot; about where the current president was born. \u00A0To use a more relevant, example, TravelGate was a distraction. FileGate was a distraction. The disgusting use of Vince Foster&amp;#039;s suicide was a distraction. Castle Grande was a distraction. The cattle futures were a distraction. The billing records were a distraction. Webster Hubbell&amp;#039;s billing practices were a distraction. Hell, the entire Whitewater part of the Whitewater affair was basically a distraction, as was the pursuit of Bill Clinton&amp;#039;s extracurricular love life. Kathleen Willey was a distraction.\u00A0The monkeywrenching of a settlement in the Paula Jones case\u00A0was to make sure that the distraction that was that case survived.\u00A0All of these were distractions created to make it difficult for a Democratic president to govern, and the reason I know that is because the people creating distractions were not shy about admitting what they were all about to each other. An outspoken enemy of the Clintons who consulted on political strategy with Conway, Coulter admitted that they had given various journalists the story of the &amp;quot;distinguishing characteristic&amp;quot; of Clinton&amp;#039;s penis, supposedly observed by Jones when he exposed himself to her in 1991. The reason, as she eventually explained to Isikoff: &amp;quot;We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the President.&amp;quot; (Later still, in confirming that leak to the Hartford Courant, she remarked that her work with Conway and his colleagues had amounted to &amp;quot;a small, intricately knit right-wing conspiracy \u2014 and I&amp;#039;d like that clarified.&amp;quot;) I&amp;#039;m glad to have been of service. Anyway, then came my man Chuck Todd, who always has been the caretaker, and who invited both HRC and the publicly truthless Carly Fiorina over to the Overlook Hotel for Sunday brunch. His interview with the former consisted of two subjects \u2013 the e-mail &amp;quot;scandal&amp;quot; and some horse-race stuff about new polls and Bernie Sanders. Here is a representative sample of the former, which came after my man Chuck Todd assured his viewers that, &amp;quot;And a reminder, and I know there&amp;#039;s always conspiracy theories out there, there are no limitations to this interview. You know?&amp;quot; Say what? This is a self-aggrandizing rhetorical cheap shot, and the shebeen has a free pint for anyone who can find an example of my man Chuck Todd&amp;#039;s having prefaced an interview with any other politician that way. \u00A0We continue. TODD: All right. I want to unpack a couple of things here. But let me start with just the news of this week. You had said in a written statement under oath that you had turned over everything that you believed you had for the federal records with those 55,000 emails. But we have now discovered an email chain between then General Petraeus and yourself that took place a couple of months before these records started. Can you explain the discrepancy there? Because it was the same email address that you used while at State that you were using with General Petraeus just two months before you had said everything was out there. CLINTON: Well, everything that we had access to was certainly out there. And the reason we know about the email chain with General Petraeus is because it was on a government server. And so from my perspective, we have a very thorough review process that we conducted. And my attorneys supervised it, they went through everything. And what we had available at the time was turned over. TODD: But I guess what I&amp;#039;m trying to figure out is, if you&amp;#039;d said in March that the email system began in March of &amp;#039;09, and yet we have this same email address popping up in January, explain that discrepancy. Why? Please explain to me why this &amp;quot;discrepancy&amp;quot; is relevant to a campaign for the presidency. (And, no, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s relevant because we&amp;#039;ve ginned it up sufficiently so that it will have an effect on the polls,&amp;quot; is not enough.) And then, this morning, my man Chuck Todd, who will be opening the Overlook Hotel for business five days a week now, talked with the crew from Squint and the Meat Puppet about how HRC&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;tone&amp;quot; in that interview was different, and my man Chuck Todd actually said, &amp;quot;I had a critic of hers actually e-mail me yesterday and say, &amp;#039;Gee, if she had used that tone three months ago, we might not be here.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; \u00A0This is another Clinton Rule in play that states that, if the Clinton in question &amp;quot;just comes clean,&amp;quot; then the distraction manufacturing machine will cease operations. If my man Chuck Todd, or his source, actually believe that this would have gone away in June had HRC been less &amp;quot;defiant,&amp;quot; neither one of them should be allowed to handle their own money. Then, on came the truthless Carly Fiorina. My man Chuck Todd did not feel it necessary to remind us that there were no limitations on this interview. This is quite accurate. There were no limitations on this interview, including the truth. TODD: You got it. Let me start right in with the Planned Parenthood situation. At the debate, the most recent debate, you described the following scene, claiming it was on a tape: &amp;quot;A fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, &amp;#039;We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Since then, when asked about the claim, your campaign has attacked Planned Parenthood, but there is no tape. There is no evidence that the scene you described exists. Are you willing now to concede that you exaggerated that scene? CARLY FIORINA: No, not at all. That scene absolutely does exist. And that voice saying what I said they were saying, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to keep it alive to harvest its brain&amp;quot; exists as well. This, it seems to me, is the point where you dismiss the interviewee, at least as far as future appearances go. \u00A0(Imagine my man Chuck Todd&amp;#039;s reaction if HRC had maintained that the private e-mail server was a figment of the national imagination.) If you have established that the scene described does not exist, and the interviewee says that it does, then there simply is nowhere to go on the subject. FIORINA: Yes. And I would challenge Planned Parenthood. Here&amp;#039;s the deal. Yesterday, I was protested by Planned Parenthood people who were throwing condoms at me. I don&amp;#039;t know what that has to do with this. They&amp;#039;re trying to distract the American people from the hideous reality that Planned Parenthood is aborting fetuses alive to harvest their brains and other body parts. That is a fact. Planned Parenthood will not and cannot deny this because it is happening. It is happening in this nation. And taxpayers are paying for it. Planned Parenthood desperately wants everyone to think this isn&amp;#039;t going on. Because when Americans realize it is going on, whether they are pro-life or pro-choice, they are horrified. This goes to the character of our nation and it must be stopped. Let us count the lies, shall we? PP is not aborting fetuses alive to harvest their brains and other body parts. This is exactly the same as listening to a candidate argue that aliens from Alpha Centauri are conspiring to fix the Kentucky Derby. And, in any case, Planned Parenthood not only can deny it, but it has denied it, over and over again. And taxpayers are not paying for it because it isn&amp;#039;t happening, and because PP doesn&amp;#039;t use federal money to pay for any of the three percent of its services that include abortion. TODD: Well, the footage you describe at best is a reenactment. The people even-- the people that made the videos admit it&amp;#039;s stock footage. Yet, you went right along and said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s Planned Parenthood.&amp;quot; FIORINA: Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Do you think this is not happening? Does Hillary Clinton think this is not happening? So sad that you missed the opportunity to ask Mrs. Clinton why she said, &amp;quot;Late-term abortions were only performed for medical purposes.&amp;quot; That is patently false. This is happening in America today. And taxpayers are paying for it. That is a fact. It is a reality. And no one can run away from it. TODD: But you are sort of ducking the video, the specific of this question. And I guess I&amp;#039;m trying, because let me tell you what a Washington Post\u2014 And this is where things go badly wrong. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter what The Washington Post editorial page says. (I&amp;#039;ve found that, if you accept this as a general rule in all things, you won&amp;#039;t go wrong. You also won&amp;#039;t invade Iraq.) The only thing that matters is that a prominent presidential candidate is dealing in demonstrable, damnable lies. (Brother Driftglass refers to Fiorina&amp;#039;s stubborn prevarication as a &amp;quot;blood libel&amp;quot; in the classic sense, and he&amp;#039;s not wrong.) And, in case Jack Shafer missed it, this blood libel has been concocted purely as an evil distraction. This is what one looks like. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38332/chuck-todd-beltway-journalism-masterclass/>