Throughout the months of discussion around the email controversy of Hillary Clinton, there is one word that continues to appear: “transparency”. FBI agents used it during the investigation, voters have used it as they try to understand the situation, and Hillary has used it consistently.

Why Transparency?

As a rhetorical strategy for a political campaign, the word transparency provides strong imagery of honesty and openness. The use of this word as a strategy to project trustworthiness through an image of openness appeals to the voters’ logic and emotions simultaneously. During an election, voters are looking for a candidate that is not only capable but also likable and trustworthy. Voters do not vote based solely upon logic. Instead, voters are swayed by their emotions which in part determine their voting preferences. While we all know it is important to trust a candidate, voters also are more inclined to trust someone they picture as not hiding secrets from the public. An article from The Washington Post stated, “We should keep demanding complete transparency from both of them”.

In the realm of the Clinton email controversy, the rhetoric of transparency was an important strategy during the primary stage of the election. The primary stage is the time when the party front-runners are determined and candidates focus on feedback from voters. The voters were not pleased with the way Hillary first handled the investigation, so she adapted to a new strategy focusing on transparency for the voters. By redefining her image as transparent, Hillary began to change public opinion in order to secure her spot as the Democratic nominee.

How Much Transparency?

During an election, voters believe they have the right to know the truth from all candidates. Voter preference has been strongly linked to a candidate’s character. The new junkyard-dog style of journalism has resulted in the media constantly trying to dig up stories that draw into question a politician’s character. While most voters can agree transparency is important for political figures, there can be disagreement upon where to draw the line between private and public lives. This issue appears in the ongoing email controversy in terms of the “private emails” that Hillary either did not turn over or deleted.

 

Overall, it seems that adopting a rhetoric of transparency was a smart political communication strategy for Hillary during this time and will continue to allow voters to visualize her as more presidential.

It seems in this presidential election cycle, fact-checking is at the forefront of traditional media’s digital and social campaigns. These short blurbs detailing what is ‘true’ and ‘false’ are easily sharable and bring traffic to the news sites.

The New York Times, NBC News, NPR, USA Today are just a few sources that published fact checks after the debate.

Although headlines said Trump hammered Clinton on her emails, the fact checks don’t reflect that.

The headlines show that people respond to rhetoric and not facts. NYT fact check only had two facts on Hillary’s emails, and the ‘facts’ from the debate weren’t new information presented.

NPR presented a full transcript with fact checks throughout. In the debate, Clinton’s emails were initially brought up by Trump and then Clinton was questioned by Martha Raddatz, one of the moderators, and Clinton took full responsibility and apologized immediately, something Trump has not done for any allegations.

Trump keeps calling Clinton a liar because of her emails, but he doesn’t present new information while she is presenting facts directly on her website. If rhetoric includes the situation, she is combating the untrustworthy argument by trying to make Trump look not only aggressive and dangerous, but also dishonest.

Trump then did not allow Clinton to respond, acting aggressive and although the emails were discussed briefly, the loud outbursts allowed for her emails to remain in the headlines. This works well for Trump because the email controversy is running out of newsworthiness and is subject to fall out of the public eye.

Trump should drop the email controversy and, to continue with the untrustworthy argument, present new examples of her untrustworthiness. Hillary is (arguably) using the best defense to email rhetoric by apologizing and trying to move on. However, Clinton’s defense doesn’t help moderate voters. Trying to move away from the emails could look like she is avoiding the subject, with her back and forth with Trump, but Trump’s aggressive position and interruptions looks more as if she was avoiding him and trying to follow Anderson Cooper’s instructions to take questions from the audience while trying to listen to the people. Trump looks aggressive and stuck on a single issue that has already been discussed and investigated extensively.

This email controversy looming behind Clinton seems pretty familiar, but I don’t recall what it reminds me of…

Republican Outrage to Clinton Email Controversy

When Hillary Clinton was found to have used a private server in handling confidential material, the outrage was swift and fierce. The media and especially the Republicans continuously brought up the issue in an attempt to stir controversy out of the situation and to defame Hillary Clinton. The Republicans mainly persisted that the situation was not being properly investigated, and that the situation should be further investigated. Trey Gowdy, the Republican U.S. Representative, who has a history of pushing for investigation on how Hillary Clinton handled the 2012 Benghazi attack , jumped onto the Clinton email situation and not only attacked her but also FBI director James Comey for the discretions in what Hillary Clinton said and the FBI’s investigation. Pushing the notion that the FBI did not thourougly investigate Hillary Clinton as well as they should have.

With Hillary Clinton being a prominent member of Barrack Obama’s candidate, and the democratic front runner for President it is no surprise that partisan politics came into play regarding the emails. At the Republican National Convention the email controversy was a major topic of discussion, with Christ Christie rousing the crowd into a frenzy over the possibility of her being guilty of putting the U.S. in danger. Two Republican Senator Committee heads Charles Grassley of the senate judiciary committee and Ron Johnson of the senate homeland security committee both stated that they will seek an independent review of the deleted emails. Of all the Republicans none have had as much to gain for doing so as Donald Trump.

 

Donald Trump’s Response to Hillary Clinton’s Emails

As the Republican party frontrunner he is her main challenger for president and the current leader of the Republican party. He is also in charge of riling up the republican party base, and turning any information he can against Hillary Clinton into public outrage. Trump has used Hilliary Clinton’s emails as proof that she is not only a danger to the United States, but is also unfit to be president. In a speech Donald Trump made the claim that Hilliary Clinton created a private email server with “premeditation” although he messed up the word and said “premedication” he still asserts that she knew that she was putting the United States at risk with her private server.

To the republicans, Hillary Clinton’s email are fodder to further increase the rhetorical narrative that we discussed in class, that she is untrustworthy.

A political controversy involving an FBI investigation, a potential national security breech, and the integrity of a Presidential candidate seems to be anything but funny, but this hasn’t stopped people from trying. Even Hillary Clinton herself has channeled her inner comedian on the subject of her private server. Regardless of the source, humor has effectively oversimplified Clinton’s email controversy to her complete disadvantage. Instead of gaining more insight into the complexities of the controversy (which you can find in articles like this), the general public is continually bombarded with jabs and jokes based on the oversimplified explanation.

When transforming a very complex situation into a joke or a funny sound bite or even a viral meme, the story has to be extremely simple. Something along the lines of “Clinton had a private server and deleted emails because she’s untrustworthy.” Take a look at a few examples of this “email humor.”

Clinton’s Snap Chat Joke

In August of 2015 at a Democratic fundraiser dinner, Clinton attempted to lighten up the controversy with a joke written into her speech. Clinton said, “You may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account. I love it. I love it… Those messages disappear all by themselves.” Although you can hear the crowd at the speech laughing, this joke sparked a lot of questions about whether Clinton was taking the FBI investigations seriously. You can read more here.

 

 

Jokes at the RNC

At the Republic National Convention this year, speakers loved to slip in email jokes wherever they could. This even sparked articles ranking “the best and the worst Hillary jokes” from the convention. You can read the entire list here. My personal favorite was delivered by Darryl Glenn, a Senatorial candidate for the state of Colorado. He laughed as he said, “And we all know she loves her pant suits — yes, you know it’s coming — but we should send her an email and tell her that she deserves a bright orange jump suit.” Watch Glenn’s full speech here, or skip to 5:30 for his joke.

 

Internet Jokes

Above all, the internet world has had a hay day with Clinton’s email controversy. With just a few words pasted on a picture of the candidate, users’ “creations” can circulate social media for weeks on end. New memes and internet jokes pop up every day, regardless of whether there is new information. Here’s a look at a few viral memes about Hillary’s emails:

 

Clearly, the oversimplification of her email controversy does not favor Clinton and the humor used by the candidate herself, the opposing party, and the internet world is only propagating this version of the story.

 

Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson. Two of Clinton’s staffers while she was Secretary of State. Also both the subject of a reported ‘side deal’ between them and the FBI. The deal states that the FBI could go through their laptops and collect information on all that was going on with the Clinton email controversy, but then the laptops would be destroyed and they would be provided immunity according to Fox News.

 

What people want to know is why? Why provide immunity AND destroy any evidence if nothing on there was going to be used against them? House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding an explanation to this question. The agreement also limited all of the information that was deemed usable to be only from before January 2015 the Washington Examiner reports.

All these stipulations don’t really add up unfortunately, but there’s nothing anyone can really do about it at this point. Mills, the former Chief of Staff under Clinton, and Samuelson, a former campaign staffer and now a lawyer to Clinton, are now protected, and according to Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman, told reporters that they complied with authorities on what was asked of them (although it is reported that Mills walked out on her first interview because she was upset by the questions that were put to her).

 

While all of this really just raises more questions than answers, it does bring about a certain thought that everyone should be asking themselves and that is what could have potentially been hiding behind all that data, no matter what side of the politics you’re on.

 

For those who are not caught up: If you don’t know, now you know. 

The rhetoric surrounding Hillary Clinton’s email controversy from the GOP, and especially candidate Donald Trump, has not changed much since the beginning, a controversy that proceeded her candidacy for president. The rhetoric has not changed much because there is a need to continue a simple narrative that can be followed easily.

Check out this lovely timeline by the WSJ detailing Secretary Clinton’s email troubles.

After several interviews and investigations with various federal agencies, the GOP, Trump and those opposed* to Hillary (Arguably, these are three separate groups with a common denominator: They aren’t with her.), choose to continue with the same, simple rhetoric and message even though the message should be losing ground. There should be new issues to discuss and the email controversy should not be used any longer because of the loss in relevance (from federal investigations not finding her responsible), and the amount of time that has passed (The FBI called Secretary Clinton “extremely careless,” but decided to not pursue criminal charges in July of 2016).

Those opposed to Secretary Clinton, especially the Republican party and their candidate, stick to the emails narrative because those opposed have the opportunity to talk about Sec. Clinton’s experience negatively without fleshing out difficult policies and using no more more than two syllables per word. Short concise messages from a well-known narrative make for decent enough rhetoric to drive home the message: do not trust her.

“Why did she delete 33,000 (emails)?” – Trump from the first presidential debate, Monday, Sept 26.

She lied. She is a liar. She cannot be trusted. She hid the emails from you. She deleted them but she is hiding something.

For the Republicans to continue to swing at this scandal and beat it to death seems illogical to some, the simple rhetoric and narrative drives home the message and makes great sound bites. It also creates a conversation of controversies that can involve other issues of untrustworthiness like white water and Goldman Sachs speeches.

 

 

 

 

*I personally did not find it fair to assume those against Hillary are necessary Trump voters or Republicans.