RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the post-debate analysis of Trump/s spot-on rebuttal of Team Clinton’s exploitation of the 2005 Trump “locker room” remarks, Megyn Kelly sparred with Trump manager Kelly Anne Conway over Trump’s trotting out of some of Bill’s “bimbo eruptions” in a pre-debate press conference. In what will undoubtedly be Team Clinton’s defense, Megyn Kelly claimed that Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick denied any rape in a 1998 affidavit.

Close, but no cigar, Megyn. The story is a little more complicated than that. It was not that her story was false as Megyn Kelly implied. Like many rape victims, Broaddrick felt no one would believe her and she simply wanted to put it behind her and not be forced to relive it, particularly in any legal setting: she resisted interviews, fearing no one would believe her charge against a popular President. As Breitbart reported in 2014:

In January of 1999, a month after Clinton’s impeachment by the House — and in the midst of the Senate trial grappling with whether Monica Lewinsky should testify — Broaddrick finally agreed to meet NBC’s Lisa Myers for an interview… Broaddrick’s decision to go forward with an interview came after “she contemplated all the layers of tawdry rumor about her that had multiplied in the wake of the other, larger scandal involving the president.”…

Broaddrick continued to refuse to cave to the media’s requests for interviews. In 1997, she was subpoenaed by Jones’ attorneys, yet she continued to deny the assault.

“I didn’t want to be forced to testify about one of the most horrific events in my life,” she told Myers. “I didn’t want to go through it again.”

Broaddrick still refused to come forward when Kathleen Willey accused the President of unwanted sexual advances, saying that she “wasn’t brave enough to do it.”

When Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s office approached her in April of 1998, however, Broaddrick finally agreed to provide the details of Clinton’s alleged sexual assault, saying she feared lying to a federal grand jury. Starr would also grant her immunity from prosecution for perjury….

Starr never pursued Broaddrick’s allegations, however, because he was investigating charges of obstruction of justice against Clinton. Since Broaddrick was not alleging that the President urged her to lie, her allegations of the assault never went forward.

Broaddrick feared the retaliation of Team Clinton as well as the glare of a disbelieving media. Res she signed an affidavit denying the rape, again trying to avoid being forced to relive the horrible experience. But she told Starr and his office the affidavit was false. Starr didn’t pursue the rape story not because it was false, but because it was not part of his obstruction of justice investigation.

At the Trump press conference, Broaddrick, tired of being accused of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, and afraid that her attacker would once again occupy the White House with the woman who orchestrated the attacks on Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions”, repeated her accusation:

MATTHEW TYRMAND IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN POLAND AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF OPEN THE BOOKS….RSK
To the Editorial Board of the Washington Post:

This past Friday evening you posted an editorial under “The Post’s View” entitled “Donald Trump is normalizing bigotry.” In this post you utilized my Breitbart column (“WaPo’s Anne Applebaum Embarks on Kremlin-Style Disinformation Offensive Vs. The Antii-Globalist Right”) to give credence to the thesis in your post’s title. The column I posted earlier in the week at Breitbart.com exposed some of the lesser known cross currents (for non-Poles) of recent Polish political history and your columnist’s (Anne Applebaum) connection to the previous government.

As I know the editorial board is aware, Mrs. Applebaum is married to the former Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, whose party was ejected from power in a clean democratic election in 2015. This election resulted in a diametric changing of the Polish political guard and delivered an unprecedented unilateral mandate to govern without coalition to the Law & Justice party for the first time in modern Polish history (I highlight this since your columnist has not). But well before the rotation of parties in government, Mr. Sikorski was dismissed from his ministerial position after it became apparent to all that he too was embroiled in the “Aferatosmowa” hidden tapes scandal that decimated many Civic Platform, Sikorski’s ruling party, careers and reputations and paved the way for the dramatic turnover in government. This is not something Mrs. Applebaum has ever disclosed despite the distinct pertinence this has with regard to covering Poland and especially in writing about the new government whose leading figures’ enmity with Mr. Sikorski’s turfed-out party is well known in political circles. This is in clear violation of this paper’s “Standards and Ethics” as defined in the described “Conflict of Interest,” Section A, opening lines: “This newspaper is pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible.” as well as by the final lines of Section A: “We avoid active involvement in any partisan causes- politics, community affairs, social action, demonstrations- that could compromise or seem to compromise our ability to report and edit fairly.” Any columns referencing Poland would need to have Mrs. Applebaum’s detailed marital disclosure to avoid a violation of these statutes. I have not seen any disclosures.

In utilizing my column as proof of bigotry you failed to link to the column but rather chose to link to a Mediate analysis of it (“Breitbart Attacks WaPo Columnist For Being A ‘Jewish, American Elitist’”),reducing the opportunity for your readership to ascertain for themselves if this highly charged allegation was accurate. You used the words “repeatedly” and “gratuitously” to describe the frequency of my reference to her “Jewish origin.” In a 1400 word essay the word “Jewish” appeared exactly twice and with no over or under tone attached (most who read would have to agree). Any such perceived “dog whistle” is resultant from a reader’s prejudices, NOT from the author’s intent. This supposedly “gratuitous” bigotry was a descriptor applied in one small section (two consecutive sentences) that was relevant to the debate for the primary reason that in her September 19th Washington Post column (“In Poland, a preview of what Trump could do to America”) she suggests the sitting defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz (a bitter rival of her husband’s, also glaringly undisclosed) is an anti-Semite by stating that he has “given credence to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

In his ongoing blindness towards the reasons for reluctance to allow mass immigration of Muslim refugees to the U.S., Nicholas Kristof inverts them in his article titled “Would You Hide A Jew From the Nazis?” (NYT 9/18/16) During the thirties, Jews were victims of increasingly harsh and restrictive laws imposed on them in Nazi Germany and once the war began, they became dead men walking throughout Europe until 6 million of them were finally exterminated. The comparison of this unique genocide with the situation of Syrian refugees is preposterous. Despite the epidemic of Muslim terrorism throughout the world, the current refugees have been accepted into many countries in Europe as well as the U.S. There are numerous refugee camps that have been created for them in Turkey as well as neighboring Arab countries which share their language, religion and culture. The outcome of this generous in-gathering as well as previous welcoming immigration, has proved profoundly problematic and tragic for European countries where the incidence of rape, assault, murder and massacre has altered the lives of all these populations. In post 9/11 America, we are experiencing similar outbreaks of terrorism and wholesale murder by stabbing, shooting and bombing innocent men, women and children. Today’s news reports several bombings in the tri-state area as well as serial stabbings in Minnesota; the bombs were similar to those used in the Boston Marathon.

It has frequently been argued that not all Germans were Nazis – estimates of how many actually were vary but hover around less than 10%. That low number didn’t prevent the killings of over 60 million people in WW II, the deadliest war in history. So the fact that their numbers were “tiny” didn’t impede Nazis from fomenting mass destruction, just as the “tiny” fraction of Muslims dedicated to the idea of dominion over a world caliphate is meaningless as protection against their determined war of aggression. They are most specifically intent on harming and killing Jews, despite the fact that Muslim Arabs live side by side with Jews in Israel, vote, serve in the Knesset and work as teachers, doctors, lawyers and judges at a higher compensation level than in any Muslim country. Similarly, in the United States, contrary to charges of our Islamophobia, we have a thriving Muslim population that enjoys exactly the same benefits as any American of any other religion.

So the issue is not lack of compassion for Muslim casualties of civil- war but whether it is in the best interest of our national security to invite tens of thousands of people who cannot be properly vetted with the unlikely hope of weeding out that “tiny” fraction who are radical Islamists. Do these refugees have other options? Absolutely. They are not fleeing to avoid death as the Jews were attempting immediately prior to and during World War II. Syrians have several other options for sanctuary though admission to the U.S. may be the most comfortable. In that respect, they are no different from illegal immigrants from Mexico or Central America, some of the other millions of people who would prefer to live freely here than in their own despotic countries. But Nicholas Kristof isn’t suggesting that failure to expand our quotas for legal admission to our country is the same as failure to hide a Jew from a Nazi.