We’ve known about Clinton’s email scandal for a long time now. It’s something that’s been held over her head pretty much this whole campaign, so calling it a “surprise” that its being used against her now isn’t exactly accurate. What really was the October Surprise that’s come up against her was the WikiLeaks release of emails that came out over the past few weeks. A Wall Street Journal article reviews the information that we’ve received so far about the Podesta leaks. There are a lot of emails that present contradictory information than the stances Clinton has taken in her campaign.

 

There is also evidence there were some disagreements between her consultants on how to handle this information getting leaked. The problem arises from having to face the media after something like this comes out. Do you attack it head on? Do you cave and apologize immediately? Is there some middle ground that should be taken instead? This is a lot to consider for people who’s job it is to craft Clinton’s public image. Their career success depends on successfully doing this.

 

Obviously we all know how this turned out. She apologized and things have pretty much played themselves out on the legal side. It’s still good to come back to it and look over all this. It’s a responsibility of the people to be informed.

One factor surrounding the Clinton email scandal is none other than Donald Trump himself. You cannot analyze the rhetoric of this issue without analyzing Trump and his campaign’s role. In political campaigns, it is important to keep the focus off your own wrongdoing. The more accusations or bad press that come out about Trump, the more he seems to bash Hillary on the email scandal. His jabs have seemed to get rougher and rougher as he has gotten in deeper water. For example, Trump recently said:

“Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of corruption. She’s a corrupt person. What she’s done with her e-mails, what she’s done with so many things,” Trump said recently.

By portraying Hillary as corrupt, or as he has also been known to say “a nasty woman”, Trump is trying to switch the attention off of him and onto her. He continues to attack her on the issue. However, this strategy can only work for so long. Trump appeared to have over-used this attack-defense, until he came out in the second debate claiming:

“If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies so much deception” (see the full video here)

Trump took his counter-attack strategy one step further by claiming he will look further into having her held accountable for the issues intertwined in this email scandal and claiming that she has completely rigged the election. The main downside of his rhetorical strategy is that it also can turn people away from him because of his hateful words.

Whether you’re with her or with him, the rhetoric from both campaigns should be analyzed when addressing this issue. Just as often as Hillary has tried to pivot away from answering the tough email questions, Trump has continued to fuel the fire surrounding it. He will not let this go because it is his best strategy to distract the public from his own issues.

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal: Russian scapegoat

Ever since the DNC was hacked by what is suspected to have been the Russians, the media has been scrutinizing Hillary Clinton for her lack of safety and questioning if they can trust her in a position to handle sensitive material. Her Campaign has begun to bring up the fact that the serious issue is Russian hackers trying to influence the American elections. In the article I will I will discuss how the Clinton campaign has used the Russians as a scapegoat to draw attention away from her using a private email server.  This stems from a long history and animosity between Hillary Clinton and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Russian Animosity

As secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a well-known figure in international politics. This influence has made her a lot of enemies, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin is one of them .They have publicly criticized each other along with hindered each other’s international goals. The Clinton campaign usually puts up a more negative view of Russia , as opposed to the Donald trump campaign which has been seen as a little too friendly to Putin. This makes sense considering the Democratic party is the incumbent party, and as we discussed in class the challenger(Republican party) tries to make anything the incumbent do look terrible. So any issues with Russia will cause the Republican Trump campaign to blame the incumbent party, and offer a better solution to Russia. This shows that Russia is already trigger term used in politics by the Republicans. The democrats are turning Russia into a dangerous entity, and saying it is dangerous for them to be so close to the Republicans.

 

Russian Scapegoat

Hillary Clinton turned the issue off of herself in dealing with the email controversy, by making it seem like this was a plot by Russian Higher ups . This plays to a fear of outsiders attacking the U.S.  and urges the listener to focus more on the fact that Russian hackers attacked her survey and not that she mishandled confidential material. Another fact that she uses to her benefit is that Donald Trump is suspected of getting aid from Russia. The Vladimir Putin and Trump have said positive things each other , and Donald Trump does dealings in Russia. She has effectively turned this issue against Republicans and shown their party leader as being too friendly with an enemy.

Whether the Russians hacked Hillary Clinton’s email server or not, her campaign has found its scapegoat, and as Donald Trump continues to propose his positive view of Russian leader Vladimir Putin t will only push this back onto Republicans. In the last debate Hillary challenged Donald directly about his links to Russia as soon as her email link was brought up calling him a puppet. She claims that Trump urged Putin to do this hack, and is trying to interfere in our elections. This further makes Trump look untrustworthy and takes the eyes off her for this scandal. This has become a very effective rhetorical strategy for her campaign, and shall continue to be utilized as long as her “hacked” emails are still being questioned.

One of the big issues facing Hillary with these new leaks really could be potentially straining her own internal relations with the Democratic Party as a whole. In an article published by RT, emails from columnist Brent Budowsky sent to campaign chair John Podesta in September of last year call out the Clinton campaign’s surrogate attacks on Bernie Sanders. While using the surrogates would allow her to push some of the repercussions off of herself, this revalation, as he puts it is “stupid and self-destructive” in its strategy when she has “dangerously low levels of public trust,” and Sanders being based on “cleaning up politics.”

 

People wrote a piece outlining the five biggest things to come from this leak. If you want to read about all of them, follow the link, but I’ll discuss some of them here. The first they wrote about, and one that really stands out is that they show an apparently close friendship between her and Wall Street executives. This goes against a lot of what she has said that she really stands for and hurts a lot of her legitimacy on quite a few of her claims. Its really harmful in that it basically puts her on the same level of Wall Street underground politics that people that oppose Trump believe he is a part of. At least she’s consistent on one fact though, and that’s that politicians should have “both public and private positions.” How do you trust someone that’s saying one thing and believing the polar opposite?

 

Another tidbit this article gives us is that she received advanced notice of a Town Hall debate question back in March, which is a huge advantage for a situation like that where its supposed to be devised of questions by the people to put candidates on the spot, not prepare for.

Oftentimes in political campaign communication, a candidate will use a pivot strategy to diffuse situations that reflect poorly on them. This communicative strategy is most often seen in debates when a candidate will avoid a topic they do not wish to talk about by pivoting the conversation to a topic they want to speak on. Hillary Clinton and her campaign used a similar strategy in an initial response to WikiLeak exposing thousands more emails from the Clinton staff.

According to a CNN article, the Clinton campaign responded to the issue by deflecting:

“It is absolutely disgraceful that the Trump campaign is cheering on a release today engineered by Vladimir Putin to interfere in this election, and this comes after Donald Trump encouraged more espionage over the summer and continued to deny the hack even happened at Sunday’s debate,” said Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin. “The timing shows you that even Putin knows Trump had a bad weekend and a bad debate.”

Instead of addressing any of the issues that came out in the emails, the response immediately attacks the opposing campaign. By using deflection as a rhetorical tactic, they attempt to shift the focus off Hillary’s emails by claiming that foreign nations should not play a role in our election and blaming Trump for encouraging Russia’s involvement. Although it is clear this pivot will not successfully work for everyone, it does provide a narrative for Hillary supporters to adopt. This response seems most effective as an immediate response, as opposed to later on, because it puts out a different controversy for voters to digest and gives the campaign time to gather all of the information needed to make further statements addressing the issue (likely at tomorrow’s debate).

Surrogates

Another important communication tactic employed through this response is the use of surrogates. Surrogate speakers are important during all stages of an election. There are certain things that candidates cannot outright say themselves, and I believe this response falls into that category. In order for an attack response to be most effective, it must come from a supporter of the candidate instead of straight from the candidate. This response is an example of a very appropriate and effective way to utilize a candidate’s surrogates.

 

Overall, the initial rhetoric used by the Clinton campaign fits with the current mood of this election. At this point the election seems to be a lot of mudslinging from both sides, therefore, in this case the response is more effective than usual.

 

 

WikiLeaks Email Leak

WikiLeaks the journalistic organization that focuses on exposing secret information to the public, launched a searchable email archive of over 30,000 emails sent from Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Recently during the current presidential campaign on October 7, 2016 Wikileaks released 2,060 emails sent between her and her campaign manager John Podesta . This Wikileaks leak happened amongst the controversy of Hillary Clinton’s private server already being hacked by what is to be suspected to be the Russians. In this article I will discuss the rhetorical implications of the wikileaks hacks and how they affect the overlying situation of the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Email Contents

The contents of the emails varied from detailing Clinton’s scripted jokes, statements, private views, and general campaign strategies. The most damning contents of the email leak were that they displayed a series of transcripts which recorded private statements she made when giving private speeches to Wall Street . Hillary has long faced scrutiny from progressives that she attempts to garner support from, and has frequently stated that she would be hard on Wall Street. The contents of the Wall Street transcripts show a different story as it shows her pandering to the Wall Street audience and telling them things that are the opposite of what she frequently said in public.

This was very damning to her public image and frustrating to progressives who feel that big business is destroying our economy. Politicians often try to pain themselves as men and women of the people, but this confirms an image of Hillary Clinton that she has long held. She is in bed with the same big businesses that she claims, that she will keep under control. This makes Hillary lose a lot of rhetorical face, as now their worst fears have been confirmed. She has a public face and private face.

Hillary Clinton’s Personality

Another issue that came from this email leak is that it shows how scripted how many of her mannerisms are. Hillary Clinton has always been viewed as being very charismatic and unrelatable and this shows even more that her personality is very forced. This will only further show her as far from the average American which is a fundamental characteristic for campaigning politicians, and add more points to her opponent Donald Trump who has far more gas on the personality bus then she does. Also her laugh is disturbing….

 

The Clinton campaign can still bounce back from the Wikileaks email leak, but this further adds fuel to the fire of making Hillary appear more untrustworthy. It also seriously adds a level of uncertainty about the character of her and the Democratic Party as a whole. Although the emails may not be evidence of heinous illegal activity, they have still been very damning of her campaign.

The Leak

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Over the past week, Wikileaks has been releasing thousands of new emails from the Clinton campaign, mostly from campaign chairman, John Podesta. Most of the prominent email chains merely reveal “how the sausage is made” during any presidential campaign. This includes subjects like how to humanize the candidate, ways to respond to attacks about the Clinton Foundation, and the announcement of her position on the Keystone pipeline. Other emails reveal shadier yet fairly predictable subjects, including a town hall question hint from a DNC official and Clinton’s aides attacking Catholicism and Evangelism.

 

The Clinton Campaign’s Response

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While there are literally tens of thousands of new emails for everyone to pore over and pick through and use to either incriminate or defend Hillary, the reality is that overall this email leak is… well, boring. The subjects highlighted in the emails simply reveal what we already know about the candidate, based on the campaign she’s been running and from the previous email dumps. The relatively tame leak gives the Clinton campaign a huge advantage to what could’ve been its demise. The campaign is taking a boring story and making it interesting again, by questioning Russia’s involvement with the Wikileaks hack and Trump’s ties to Russia. Trump’s deeply rooted ties to Russia seems to be the stuff of conspiracy theories, but the timing of the recent email leak seems, at the very least, convenient when considering Trump’s recent debacle. One of Trump’s communication advisor Jason Miller tweeted “And here… we… go” with a link to the new Wikileaks emails, clearly giddy about what the hacking would reveal. CNN reported that Clinton’s senior spokesman Glen Caplin responded:

“It is absolutely disgraceful that the Trump campaign is cheering on a release today engineered by Vladimir Putin to interfere in this election, and this comes after Donald Trump encouraged more espionage over the summer and continued to deny the hack even happened at Sunday’s debate. The timing shows you that even Putin knows Trump had a bad weekend and a bad debate.”

This response single handedly spins the email dump to reflect more poorly on Trump than it does on Clinton. From Caplin’s response, the audience is forced to question 1) Trump’s comments about Russian hacking, 2) Trump’s suspicious ties to Russia, and 3) Trump’s recent track record and polling. This communicative tactic successfully avoided addressing Clinton’s shortcomings and instead focused on the shortcomings of a presidential candidate who encourages and eggs on espionage against our nation. If future email dumps continue to report similar (boring) findings, the Clinton campaign should continue to use this tactic in order to detract attention away from the emails themselves and onto the way in which the emails were obtained.