Clinton's Mixing of 9/11 and Wall Street Raises Ire

[Cheese Sandwich]

Last edited Sun Nov 15, 2015, 11:08 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: ABC News

Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her campaign contributions from Wall Street by invoking her work to help the financial sector rebuild after the Sept. 11 attacks, raising eyebrows among her Democratic challengers and Republicans alike.

During Saturday's second Democratic debate, Clinton was put on the defensive by rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders when he said Wall Street had been the major contributor to her campaigns. "Now maybe they're dumb and they don't know what they're going to get, but I don't think so," he said.

Clinton responded that she was representing New York in the Senate when downtown Manhattan was attacked and noted that she helped the city's financial hub rebuild. "That was good for New York and it was good for the economy and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country," she said, her voice rising.

Her response drew an incredulous response on social media sites like Twitter, and the debate's moderators asked Clinton to respond to one Twitter user, who took issue with her mention of 9/11 to justify the contributions.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/clintons-mixing-911-wall-street-raises-ire-35213655

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Comment: Will Hillary apologize for deeply offensive comments invoking 9/11 to explain her Wall St. money?

[flamingdem]

1. Bernie finally landed a punch

He needed to do that, she wasn't prepared.

[OakCliffDem]

16. The media was unable to protect Hillary

In the next debate the moderators will not allow Bernie an opportunity to expose Hillary that way.

[paleotn]

22. With a gag and heavy sedation...

...if necessary. The Empress must not be challenged!

[mikehiggins]

2. We should be proud

Tonight three grown-ups talked about issues that matter. What a shining difference from those other guys and their CLown Cavalcade. You may support Clinton (I don't), or Bernie (my guy) or Martin O'Malley but whoever you want to see in the WHite House ANY ONE OF THEM are head and shoulders over the best the GOP has to offer. Good for us and too bad for them.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. Cenk said this was PLANNED....

If that's true than it's Hillary's first major self-inflicted wound of the campaign.

[grasswire]

4. CNN talking heads said the same -- it was planned.

And ill-advised.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. Now watch her continue to use it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. Planned?

Looked like she was looking for words and suddenly thought of 9/11

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. I'll have to watch it again.

[progree]

11. Here - here is the segment again: start at 0:45 for the set up question

[progree]

13. More seriously (perhaps),

It begins right at 0:00. Unfortunately doesn't include the setup question. Its over at 0:27 and the rest is all The Young Turks commentary.

The thread (perhaps one of several threads) where that came from:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251811040

[antigop]

33. Cenk:" ..as Republican a trick as I've seen in any debate." nt

[wordpix]

34. TYT pundits say, " it sounds like the terrorists attacked NYC to attack Wall St."

as if they didn't. Actually, that WAS one of their reasons, trying to bring the financial system of the US to its knees. TYT other points are well taken---mainly, that 9-11 had nothing to do with Wall St. reforms after the 2008 crash caused by banksters.

Not that I'm for Hillary right now---I'm for Bernie.

[passiveporcupine]

42. Wait a minute

Cenk is saying her reply was about helping wall street after the finanical collapse?

No...it was not. It was about helping wall street rebuild after the towers were brought down...you know, the twin towers that housed wall street.

Come on guys. I am as against Hillary as anyone for real reasons, but not made-up crap like this.

[progree]

43. Maybe he had her vote for the TARP bailout in mind.

Last edited Sun Nov 15, 2015, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)

[font color = red]ON Edit:[/font]That said, it is clear that Hillary's answer (right at the beginning of the tape) was about the rebuilding of Wall Street after the 9/11 attacks, and not about after the financial collapse. And though the Twin Towers are not literally Wall Street in the narrow sense -- the street and the stock exchanges -- the twin towers are definitely what we call part of Wall Street in the sense of NYC's financial district / infrastructure. (and very close by -- about 1/5 mile from the South Tower to the intersection of Wall St. and Broadway).

And TYT was definitely full of it when he said the terrorists didn't attack Wall Street (again in the more usually used broader sense)

[passiveporcupine]

44. Let's put it this way

if we have a valid candiate that we cn support for 'real" reasons, we do not need to participate in phony Hillary Hate tactics. We have real arguments for not wanting her as POTUS.

WE DON'T NEED TO MAKE SHIT UP!

I'm part of the Bernie crowd. Please don't embarrass me.

[progree]

45. I only included the clip for the Hillary quote in the debate

Not as an endorsement of TYT's commentary. I appreciate your clarification of the situation in #42.

Hopefully you saw my earlier edit of #43 where I am agreeing with you that Hillary (in the debate clip) was talking about rebuilding Wall St. after 9/11 (and not the bailouts later), and Cenk very incorrectly saying all this had nothing to do with 9/11.

[Stardust]

27. Lol!

[longship]

8. Unforced fault.

Or as Snagglepuss would put it, "Self inflicted Bar-B-Que. She cooked her own goose!"

Heavens to murgatroyd! Exit stage left.

[restorefreedom]

20. i miss snagglepuss...

thanks for the memory, longship!

[redwitch]

28. I love Snagglepuss!

"Heavens to Murgatroyd!" Who IS Murgatroyd anyway?

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

47. This is the best I could find.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/heavens-to-murgatroyd.html

[TiberiusB]

23. The Paris attacks definitely shifted her team's strategy

The 9/11 call out is clearly part of a plan to try and leverage the panic from 14 years ago into an election win. I suspect that any negative reaction will be brushed aside to win the "independent" voters who are busy crapping their drawers over Paris and waiting for another 9/11 here. Fear is the card in play, now, but will it hold long enough to even impact the first primary?

[Babel_17]

25. More like prepped, imo, though that could be a distinction without a difference

I'll guess that it was "only to be used in case of fire". It probably sounded great at the table reading. Anyone notice how a segment of the audience applauded at just the right moment? That kind of suggests it being a scripted comment, with Secretary Clinton having rehearsed how to hit the applause line.

Not to be tedious with that point, but if you notice how that one segment of the audience seemed to appreciate it, you can then see how Clinton's staff was led to believe it was a good response. It's all gold, to their ears.

[Depaysement]

9. Fuck Hillary

I was there, like thousands of others. I walked across the the Brooklyn Bridge with white dust all over my clothes. I remember it all too well.

After 9/11, I went to funerals, not fundraisers.

[Enthusiast]

10. +1!

[Major Hogwash]

12. [phone]

[Live and Learn]

14. +1 nt

[Plucketeer]

24. +1000 nt

[SoapBox]

30. [phone]

I think it was a planned comment...and how stupid could her lame campaign be to attempt such crap....never, EVER should the horror of 9/11 be used, especially for political gain.

I NEVER want to see her in the White House.

[bigwillq]

31. .....

[840high]

37. ...^ that

walking on the dead for her ambition

[Hepburn]

51. Amen! +1,000,000 n/t

[Democat]

15. Hillary's Existence Raises Ire of Right Wingers

That's not news.

[jalan48]

17. Wall Street funds both sides.

The empress has has no clothes on for this one.

[Geronimoe]

18. The workers of ground zero

It was so obvious that the air was harmful for those working at ground zero. And Hillary remained silent when EPA director Whitman claimed the air was safe. As a Senator of NY she should have protested and protected the workers.

[peacebird]

19. Exactly. But it seems the urge to go all Gulliani was too much for her

9-11 9-11 9-11!

[Beacool]

41. That's not so.

Hillary was quite vocal about questioning the EPA's claim that the air quality at Ground Zero was within acceptable bounds.

Senator Clinton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
especially thank you for holding today's hearing on this very
important topic. I am grateful that we are going to focus on it
because it has been a subject of great concern to me and to my
colleague, Congressman Nadler, who I am delighted is here to
testify on behalf of the tens of thousands of residents of
Lower Manhattan. Congressman Nadler has been a staunch and
unrelenting advocate on behalf of our constituents at and
around Ground Zero who experienced the unthinkable on September
11 and who to this day continue to be faced with issues and
concerns regarding the quality of the air they breathe and the
health and safety of the environment that they and their
families live in.
In the case of the World Trade Center, like so many other
sites around the country, people are faced with very
complicated environmental questions. They are trying to
understand technical and scientific issues that really only
experts can explain to us and get to the bottom of. What we all
want is simply to understand what is going on; to learn what we
need to do to protect our health and to protect our
environment.
It should not be complicated, and I do not think it should
be that difficult. It should be the Federal Government's job
not only to carry out the laws, but also to help the public
understand what is going on, and to provide us with the
information we need to make the right decisions about the
health and safety of our children and ourselves. It seems more
often than not that communities are left confused, even empty-
handed, without the information and without the actions that
they need and deserve from their government.
Senator Lieberman and I, with the great support of Chairman
Jeffords, went to New York to hold a hearing on air quality at
Ground Zero back in February, to try to clear the air, so to
speak--to get some real information that we then could act on
and legislate about. Again, Congressman Nadler, who has been a
leader on these issues, was there to lend his expertise and
support.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-107shrg83699/html/CHRG-107shrg83699.htm

[NCjack]

21. Hillary should rid herself of the odor of Wall Street campaign contributions by

donating that money to the charities helping the ailing firemen and police who responded to the Twin Towers on 9/11.

[Stardust]

29. Excellent suggestion

[JudyM]

39. +1. Nt

[Omaha Steve]

26. I missed this

Sorry for the dupe.

K&R!

OS

[Stardust]

32. Is it just my faulty memory, or is this not the first time she's used that lame excuse for her Wall

Street donors? I'm as disgusted by her assertion as much as the next guy, but it sounded very familiar to me. And it piqued my ire when she said it before, too.

[EndElectoral]

35. I believe she'll "evolve" on that comment.

[chapdrum]

36. Way to go, Hillary!

Petulant when claiming her integrity was impugned (o the gravitas), desperate, kneejerk invocation of 9/11, AND
a favorable reference to GW Bush?

Even if Bernie pulls of a miracle, he will still have the fight ahead of him.

Luckily for HRC, she has the ludicrous GOP to make her look better.

Bernie should eventually say that his not taking SuperPAC money (as opposed to HRC) SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.

[Beacool]

38. I wasn't offended by her comment because I remember what went down in the aftermath of 9/11.

I too was there, and not a few blocks away or watching it on TV. I was in the next to last PATH train that made it to the WTC that morning (I worked four blocks away). The PATH station was underneath the North Tower. The first plane had already crashed into the building. I saw several people jump out of windows. Furthermore, I was across the street from the South Tower when the second plane hit that building. I thought that we were all going to die, debris flew everywhere.

Still, I didn't take offense. Why? Because reopening the Downtown area (we didn't get back to work for almost two weeks) was a priority second only to the work being done at Ground Zero. Wall Street is at the heart of the financial operations in the U.S. It was important that the local and U.S. economy were not overly affected during this time. Hillary worked very hard to aide the city in any way she could and, along with Schumer, lobbied the federal government to obtain billions of dollars to help NY. When Christine Whitman's EPA declared the air safe to breath, she argued the contrary. She was correct, as we all know. She worked to expand health care to all who worked in clearing the site. That's why the firefighter's union endorsed her in 2008.

I understand the Pavlovian urge from her detractors from the Right and Left to automatically attack her, but nothing is ever as simplistic as some people want to make it out to be, she was just stating facts.

[JudyM]

40. Seems the point she was looking to make is that the contributions are retroactive gratitude

As opposed to Bernie's suggestion that they're looking for favors in the future. If she had made that point and explained it by mentioning 911 recovery only in passing as one of the reasons they support her, it would've been a different conversation now. But it seems like she got caught up in the moment and overplayed the "OMG 9/11 happened and I was there and in charge" angle instead. I think it was an emotion blunder that she made on the stage.

[billhicks76]

46. Disgusting

And you know what? Clintonites bear responsibility too. I got comment removed for deceiving Hillary as a Neocon. She has the same foreign policy and only a dimwit would think you have to be a republican to be a Neocon. Tony Blair IS A NEOCON! He is Britains version of a democrat. He's a supposed liberal. A fake really. And that's what I was getting at. Clinton supporters rely on censorship to argue their message. How pathetic is that. And how stupid too because they have no hope of winning a general election that way. They seem to be under some kind of spell that Hillary will automatically win because she is a woman.

[Jarqui]

48. Elizabeth Warren gives example of Hillary Clinton being beholden to Wall Street

Great and timely DKos diary
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/15/1450448/-Elizabeth-Warren-gives-example-of-Hillary-Clinton-being-beholden-to-Wall-Street

I don't know how Clinton supporters can defend that one. That's part of the the thing with Hillary as a candidate - there's a lot of this stuff out there for the GOP to cherry pick over and twist.

[Attorney in Texas]

49. This was pretty much the only take away from the debate that got any amount of coverage on the news

shows in the 36 hours after the debate (Sanders' line about Ike got the next most coverage, but not even 20% of the coverage received by Clinton's 9/11-Wall Street line).

Seemed to me that O'Malley did well in the debate but you wouldn't know that unless you watched it. I thought Sanders did well, too, but that will be lost on those who did not watch the debate. I also thought Clinton did a very good job aside from her unfortunate 9/11-Wall Street comment, but almost all of America won't know that either.

The only widely repeated story from the debate was the Clinton gaffe and so -- whoever won the debate -- it wasn't Clinton.

[yurbud]

50. that's what I'd expect a Republican to say