Bernie Sanders Just Explained Why Hillary’s Email Scandal Is Such a Sideshow

“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”


Anderson Cooper did not lead off with a question for Hillary Clinton about her email problem. But it didn’t take long for the CNN host to get to this topic during the first debate for Democratic presidential candidates.

“I’ve taken responsibility for it, I did say it was a mistake,” Clinton told Cooper, before pivoting to a political defense. “This [Benghazi] committee is basically an arm of the Republican National Committee.” She pointed to the recent remark by almost-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who foolishly boasted publicly that the Benghazi investigation had driven down Clinton’s poll numbers.

When Cooper pointed out that there’s an FBI investigation into the matter, Clinton responded: “I never said it wasn’t legitimate. I’ve said I’ve answered all the questions. I think it would be really unfair not to look at the entire picture.”

After the New York Times broke a story about Clinton’s use of the private email server in March, she dismissed the email story as a distraction. In September, she acknowledged it but refused to apologize. After finally apologizing later that month, the Clinton campaign is now going on the offense. Recently, the campaign has been connecting the email story revelations to the politicized House subcommittee on Benghazi. That’s gotten even easier in recent days after a New York Times story featured claims from a former committee staffer that the committee is merely an orchestrated political attack on Clinton and overly fixated on the Clinton email issue at the expense of probing other aspects of the Benghazi attack.

Still, there has been a steady stream of email-related revelations, the most recent being an Associated Press story suggesting that Clinton’s private email server was connected to the internet in ways that made it easy for hackers to access. The story didn’t say that the server was accessed, but other recent reports have alleged that hackers in several other countries did attempt to break in. President Barack Obama told 60 Minutes‘ Steve Croft on Sunday that he didn’t think the server posed national security concerns. He did say that it was a mistake.

But at the debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, unprovoked, jumped in to defend Clinton. “The American people are sick and tired hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders said. “Enough of the emails.” And the obviously Democratic crowd cheered loudly.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate