Here is a timeline of events for your consideration. All of these events took place in 2013:
Mid-late August: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi “personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump” “several weeks” before Bondi’s “office publicly announced it was deliberating whether to join a multi-state lawsuit proposed by New York’s Democratic attorney general.”
September 10: In an unusual show of interest in a down-ballot race in Florida, Ivanka Trump donates $500 to Bondi. Apparently that’s insultingly small.
September 13: Bondi tells theOrlando Sentinel that her office is “currently reviewing the allegations” that Trump University has defrauded its students.
September 17: The Trump Foundation makes a $25,000 contribution to a PAC backing Bondi.
October 15: The Florida Attorney General’s office backtracks, telling the Orlando Sentinel there was never any consideration of joining the lawsuit against Trump U because they had received only one complaint during the time Bondi was in office. This was untrue: the AG’s office had received a couple dozen complaints, but had weeded them out so they could say there was only one.
Now, if we are to apply the same journalistic standard that gets applied to Hillary Clinton, her emails, and the Clinton Foundation — that standard being “does this RAISE QUESTIONS” — then you would think the pay-for-sway by Trump to Bondi would be the hot story. It isn’t.
There is no smoking gun in the Clinton scandals, but we talk about them ad nauseum. There is no smoking gun here either, although this is about as close as you can get to one.
So yesterday, finally, the media — well, some of it — lightly broached the subject. Like the Washington Post:
Donald Trump on Monday dismissed questions about his failure to disclose an improper $25,000 contribution to a political group connected to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was at the time considering whether to open a fraud investigation against Trump University.
“I never spoke to her, first of all; she’s a fine person beyond reproach. I never even spoke to her about it at all. She’s a fine person. Never spoken to her about it. Never,” Trump said Monday while speaking to reporters in Ohio. “Many of the attorney generals turned that case down because I’ll win that case in court. Many turned that down. I never spoke to her.”
The $25,000 gift, paid by the Donald J. Trump Foundation, violated federal rules that prohibit charities from making donations to political candidates. Trump and his team also failed to disclose the large gift to the Internal Revenue Service, instead reporting that the donation was given to an unrelated group with a similar name — effectively obscuring the contribution.
Okay then. I mean SHE says she talked to him, and he says he never spoke to her, but…. whatever. [UPDATE: Trump campaign clarified things this afternoon: “His comments were in reference to any discussion about Trump University — not the donation,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told POLITICO Florida. So he did apparently speak to Bondi… about the donation, not about Trump U… if you can believe that.]
Mind you, this is the same Trump who boasted in debates a year ago that when politicians call, he gives, and when he wants, he gets. They have no choice, he declared. Because he gave. He knows about corruption because he’s seen it.
YES!
So why aren’t we discussing it? It’s the same double standard that Hillary keeps talking about.
For Clinton, it’s a can’t-win proposition. If the press says the story looks bad, even if there’s nothing to suggest it actually is bad, she gets tagged with an optics problem. And because journalists are the only ones handing out the grades, they get to decide how bad it looks.
Frustrating? Sure is says Paul Weldman:
At this point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps Bondi didn’t realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the fact that Trump’s foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from his personal account, he didn’t realize that’s not how the law works (the foundation would have to get its money back from Bondi’s PAC; he could then make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondi’s decision not to pursue the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable.
But here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them.
For instance, there was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on “Face the Nation“ (Christie took great umbrage: “I can’t believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way”). And the comparison with stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage — every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about her integrity.
When will the press finally stop “raising questions” for which the only answer is more innuendo and quit fixating on the “optics” of whatever it is alleged Hillary Clinton didn’t do (that she should have known better not to look like she did when she didn’t) and actually squeeze out some balance with their balance?
Or better yet…. just write the what things ARE and not what they COULD be.