After a year of refusing to do so, left-wing CNN’s Jake Tapper finally asked Hillary Clinton a question – albeit a broad and open-ended one without any follow-up or specifics – about the ostensibly charitable Clinton Foundation.
In an interview aired on Sunday’s State of the Union, Tapper anticlimactically and tepidly broke new ground.
“When you were launching your criticism, your attack against Trump University – which is right now in the middle of a civil suit for fraud – The Trump campaign started hitting back by questioning donations to the Clinton Foundation and how the money is spent. There have been questions in the media about that – and I’m not equating Trump University with the Clinton Foundation – but do you think those questions undermined, at all, your argument against Trump University?” asked Tapper.
Clinton claimed that “millions of people” felt that their lives had been improved by the Clinton Foundation’s operations, quickly pivoting to describe Trump University as “a fraud.”
“Donald Trump has preyed on people, has taken them by asking them to max out their credit cards, to a point of financial despair, and walked away. So I will let the lawsuits go on. I think it’s very clear, even from the testimony we’ve already heard about from his close associates, that even people working in it call it fraudulent. And y’know, look, he has to answer to that,” said Clinton.
Tapper offered no challenges and offered no specific facts to point his question.
Tapper also refused to ask about allegations of impropriety with Laureate Education, a network of poorer quality universities and colleges allegedly operating as diploma mills. Bill Clinton received “just short of $16.5 million dollars for his role as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company.” Under Clinton’s tenure as its head, the State Department helped send tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to International Youth Foundation, run by Laureate’s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker.
More than a year has passed since the publication of Peter Schweizer’s investigatory book Clinton Cash, including a front page article from left-wing newspaper The New York Times. In a multitude of interviews across that period of time with Clinton, Tapper has refused to ask the former Secretary of State any questions about allegations of her and her husband’s peddling of political influence and use of her ostensibly charitable foundation as a money laundering mechanism for ill-gotten. All of Tapper’s colleagues at CNN have followed his pattern and refused to inquire about allegations of corruption regarding the Clinton Foundation, both in interviews with the Clintons and in their standard punditry.
CNN tags itself “The Most Trusted Name In News,” and Tapper presents himself as an objective journalist.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
