RUTHFULLY YOURS

The fabricated on-air debate claim of Hillary Clinton that Islamic State is showing videos of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump “to recruit more radical jihadists” has gone largely unchallenged in the mainstream media.

In fact it is the Benghazi bungler’s husband, not Trump, who is featured in an Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) recruiting video in which he is labeled a “fornicator” for his many sexual improprieties.

“No Respite,” a four-minute video published online by Islamic State in November, shows images of Bill Clinton, along with former President George W. Bush, who is called a “liar,” and President Obama. The propaganda piece makes the pitch that the U.S. military is no match for Muslim armies.

But you probably haven’t heard about the appropriation of Bill Clinton’s image for jihadist recruitment efforts.

It does not fit the media’s predetermined narrative. Left-wingers like Hillary are allowed to get away with lies. Anything that promotes the idea that so-called Islamophobia is sweeping America is promoted vigorously.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows American politics. Clinton, who should have been sent to prison years ago, is a pathological liar who gets away with lying more or less every day because she is left-wing. The media protects her because she’s one of them ideologically. Ever since the days of Whitewater and her invention of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to distract from then-President Bill Clinton’s endless sexual predations, Hillary has been perfecting the dark art of political deception.

Hillary, the frontrunner in the Democrats’ nominating process, herself knows a great deal about recruiting jihadists, long a pastime of hers.

Her Arab Spring mischief set the Middle East on fire when she was President Obama’s top diplomat. Huma Abedin, whose generational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have been exhaustively documented, has been influencing her by working as her senior aide for years. Clinton helped to engineer the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an anti-Islamist, and the subsequent installation of his Muslim Brotherhood-approved successor Mohamed Morsi. Clinton gave Libya to the jihadists when she supported the overthrow of chastened former U.S. adversary Muammar Qaddafi. She has no quarrel with the mullahs of Iran getting their hands on nuclear weapons. She sat idly by as Islamic State grew after the Obama administration abandoned Iraq. Hillary’s body count grows daily.

When asked during the Dec. 19 Democratic presidential contenders’ debate about Trump’s proposal to ban non-citizen Muslims from entering the U.S., she lied and smeared Trump.

He is becoming ISIS’ best recruiter. They are going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. So I want to explain why this is not in America’s interest to react with this kind of fear and respond to this sort of bigotry.

First, Trump has not insulted Islam or Muslims. He has criticized some Muslims. Second, those criticisms, focused on concerns about national security and violent crime, do not in themselves constitute bigotry. Third, although there are no doubt some Muslims somewhere seething at Trump’s remarks — it takes so little to upset adherents of the Religion of Peace — there is no evidence that Islamic State is using footage of Trump for recruiting purposes. There are only media reports quoting alleged experts who speculate that at some point Islamic State will use Trump to sign up new members.

Hillary took those experts’ fuzzy guesses and presented them as cold, hard facts. In short: she lied.

Strangely enough, it was “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski on DNC echo chamber MSNBC who challenged Clinton’s claim.

On the Dec. 22 show, Howard Dean, former DNC chairman and former Vermont governor, did what leftists do when they’ve been caught in a lie: parse and move the goalposts to confuse the issues at hand.

“The video of Donald Trump is all over the air, all over the Arab world,” Dean said responding to Brzezinski.

“The video of Donald Trump is all over the world, but it’s not being used by ISIS to recruit as far as anyone can confirm,” Brzezinski said. “Are you saying that she was saying something that was truthful?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Dean replied. “If you look at Twitter, you’ll see ISIS supporters saying, ‘This is what Americans believe about Muslims, we ought to get going and do some more damage,’ basically.”

Caught in his own lie, Dean then tried to backpedal. “I don’t think ISIS itself has made a video, but it’s all over the Arab world and ISIS is using the video of Donald Trump trashing Muslims to recruit. That is true,” he said without providing specifics.

“I’m sorry, where are you getting this?” she said. “Just look on Twitter,” Dean replied.

Efforts to discuss serious concerns about Clinton’s ethics and behavior are also routinely brushed off on TV. Anything that happened during her husband’s presidency is dismissed as old news.

Then there was the “schlonged” incident. The same day Howard Dean was spinning tall tales on MSNBC, CNN’s Don Lemon was in Hillary-protection mode.

It was noted on Lemon’s show that Trump had just described Clinton as having been “schlonged” by Obama in the 2008 primaries.

Hillary mouthpiece-in-chief Jennifer Palmieri played the victim card. She condemned Trump, accusing him of sexism. “[E]veryone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women should.”

Except it’s not degrading language.

Lemon, like many other journalists, apparently thought “schlonged” was a vulgar sexual reference but it’s not. Jeff Greenfield of CNN said Trump’s reference wasn’t sexual or demeaning. “I got schlonged” is a commonplace way of New Yorkers saying “I lost big time” without any sexual implications, Greenfield tweeted. Alex Burns of the New York Times said the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and the late New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R) also used the term the same way Trump used it.

But the conversation veered into her husband’s sex scandals, which Lemon said were out of bounds.

Lemon asked conservative writer Kurt Schlichter if he was offended by Trump’s remarks and became upset when his guest turned the tables on him. Schlichter said it will “take a lot more for me to get upset at a woman who enabled a guy who turned the Oval Office into a frat house and his intern into a humidor.”

Schlichter noted that Bill Clinton was a “serial sexual abuser” and that Hillary had steadfastly stood behind him. Trump is “running against Hillary Clinton,” Schlichter said. “He’s running against a sexual harasser and an abuser’s enabler, so, again, I don’t know why we’re not talking about that.”

Lemon countered that the Clintons’ behavior in the 1990s “has nothing to do with” politics today, especially since Hillary is “not her husband.” Lemon continued:

You’re talking about something that happened over a decade ago. The man has been impeached for it. She is not responsible for her husband’s actions. Yet, you’re bringing it into a campaign and it doesn’t seem fair.

Schlichter was undeterred.

“I would like to bring Hillary Clinton’s actions into it. When she was given the choice between standing with a serial sexual abuser and with women who are being violated by a serious sexual harasser … ” Schlichter said as CNN cut his microphone and sent the show to commercial.

A discussion about a slang term mistaken for a sexual vulgarism and the Clinton campaign’s attempt to use it as an opportunity for Hillary to pretend to be a victim of another candidate’s supposed sexism, seems like an appropriate time to discuss Hillary’s duplicitousness on matters related to sexual abuses.

Mrs. Clinton opened the door in September when she said, “To every survivor of sexual assault … You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.”

As David French noted at NRO, Clinton’s statement is “news to a number of women who Hillary not only refused to believe, she actively participated in campaigns to discredit them and destroy their reputations.”

Apart from former Clinton White House intern Monica Lewinsky, among the women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or inappropriate sexual behavior: Paula Jones who claimed he exposed himself and propositioned her; Juanita Broaddrick who claimed he raped her; and Kathleen Willey who claimed he groped her in the Oval Office the same day her husband died. Note that this is only a small partial list of President Clinton’s accusers.

French adds that “it’s an article of faith on the Left that only 2 to 8 percent of rape allegations are false.”

Which means that Hillary Clinton ought to have a lot of explaining to do.

But given the inclinations of the mainstream media, chances are the most important questions — about Hillary’s role in her husband’s affairs, about the Benghazi fiasco, about Huma Abedin, about how to deal with militant Islam, about her illegal unsecure private email system, and about the irredeemably corrupt Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation — will go unanswered.