Thread: WikiLeaks: Powerpoint Shows Clinton Allies Polling Obama’s Muslim Heritage, Cocaine U

This is how they operate. Then they try to smear Donald Trump.

WikiLeaks: Powerpoint Shows Clinton Allies Polling Obama’s Muslim Heritage, Cocaine Use

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

by CHARLIE SPIERING
14 Oct 2016


In 2008, Clinton family allies polled opposition talking points featuring Barack Obama’s possible use of cocaine and Muslim heritage.

In an email on January 18, 2008, Kristi Fuksa of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner research company shared a power point presentation with John Podesta and several advisers.

“Obama is not patriotic enough to be our president. His father was a Muslim and he grew up in the world’s most populated Islamic country,” read the question for voters. “At a recent public event he didn’t cover his heart during the national anthem and he has also recently stopped wearing an American flag pin.”


Obama announced his run for president in January 2007, but ran against Hillary Clinton until he claimed the nomination in June 2008.



The powerpoint was attached to an email sent to Podesta, publicly released by WikiLeaks.

In a statement to the New York Post on Thursday, Begala said that the polling was part of his work in the Progressive Media USA Super PAC.

“That was a draft poll questionnaire that tested potential right-wing attacks on Obama, to help prepare to defend him,” he explained, adding that “I had no role in the 2008 Clinton campaign.”

Begala is a long time Clinton ally after serving as the chief strategist for the 1992 presidential campaign and worked with Podesta, the former Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton.

Prior to the poll, the group discussed adding negative Obama points into the survey.

“We’ve reworked the Obama message into the survey, as requested. But on the list of negative facts we need to cut ONE since we separated out gay adoption and his use of cocaine,” wrote Fuksa.

Begala insisted that Obama’s cocaine use needed to be isolated.

“I think gay adoption belongs with the ‘liberal’ hit on Obama, but ‘a little blow’ does not,” he wrote. “‘A little blow’ needs to be tested on its own.”

Hillary Clinton’s campaign used the cocaine attack against Obama in December of 2007, as Clinton strategist Mark Penn spoke about in on MSNBC. Clinton herself, apologized to Obama to reduce the damage to her campaign.

In February 2008, the photo of Obama dressed in Muslim garb was published by the Drudge Report. Obama campaign officials blamed the Clinton campaign.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...e-cocaine-use/

Above mentioned article.


Obama campaign hits Drudge report on circulated photo of senator dressed as Somali elder.
Obama slams smear photo

By MIKE ALLEN
02/25/08 09:50 AM EST

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya," the Drudge Report said. The photo created huge buzz in political circles and immediately became known as "the 'dressed' photo," reflecting the Drudge terminology.

Plouffe said in a statement: “On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world," said Plouffe.

The Clinton campaign issued an official response to the growing tempest - but the statement from campaign manager Maggie Williams did not respond to the central question of whether staffers circulated the photo.

“Enough,” Williams said in the statement. “If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.

“This is nothing more than an obvious and transparent attempt to distract from the serious issues confronting our country today and to attempt to create the very divisions they claim to decry. We will not be distracted.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2008/0...r-photo-008667