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.”

Hillary Clinton answers questions about her use of a private email server during a press conference in March, 2015.Ryan McBride/Zuma


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.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

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