Nina Burleigh’s Bad Propaganda

When I was a kid growing up in the 1980’s I would occasionally read the soviet propaganda paper Pravda. The English edition of course, I don’t read a word of Russian. I have always enjoyed reading propaganda and spotting the lies and deceit. It is like game, and I think I am quite good at it.

Well, the Soviet Union is dead, but fortunately I have a liberal friend that every couple weeks gives me a stack of liberal newspaper articles and magazines. The other day I got my latest stack and I glanced at a piece, I can’t call it an article, and while it was a commentary it expressed assertions as an article would. It took me about five seconds to realize that the story was garbage.

The author, Nina Burleigh, makes three charges, one, George W. Bush had a private email account, second, W lost millions of emails on purpose, and three Hillary’s email policies, or as the author claims “habits”, are more prudential and transparent then Bush’s. All of these charges are false.

The piece was titled “George W. Bush’s “lost” 22 million emails.” posted on the Newsweek site on September 12th. I’d give you the link, but I hate going on the site. Whenever I do it slows down my computer.

From very title I could tell it was a bogus story. A tip for you in spotting propaganda. Whenever an author puts a word in a quote you know something is up, especially if it is in the title. Burleigh put the word “lost” in quotes because she knew it was not true, she may have assumed no one would read through her drivel. They would see the title and assumed Bush lost or deleted emails like Hillary. But, if like me the reader soldiered on he would read in the 17th paragraph that acknowledges there are no lost emails. They were archived, as they were supposed to be.

Burleigh does not claim George W. Bush emailed classified material. Burleigh does not claim Bush deleted emails. Hillary’s emails were destroyed by her. She admitted it! Yet Burleigh thinks Hillary’s email habits were better than Bush’s. Ok, a tip on propaganda. Be specific in your charges. Vagueness hurts your case.

Burleigh claims that “no evidence of a crime (committed by Hillary) has been found.” Actually FBI Director James Comey testified that Clinton both sent and received emails that were classified at the “Top Secret/Special Access Program level” and were classified at the time. That is a crime. If Burleigh or myself were to email classified materials on our personal email account we would be committing a crime under the espionage act. We would not be running for President we’d be trying to cop a plea to stay out of jail.

In her post Burleigh does not say that George W. Bush had a personal email account, but she implies he did. She never uses the words “personal email”, but she accuses Bush of using a “private server”. What Burleigh describes is a campaign account which was set up by the Republican National committee for Bush’s re-election.

The President is the titular head of the party and as such he has a political role. The RNC email accounts were created to facilitate the political role of the President. There is nothing illegal about that.

During the 2004 Presidential campaign I used to get mass emails from the RNC urging political action. The senders name was “George W. Bush.” Burleigh compares those mass campaign emails to Hillary’s emails as Secretary of State. This is absurd.

Burleigh quotes a liberal activist and no doubt Hillary voter, as saying “If you look at the Bush emails when he was a sitting(as opposed to standing) President, and 95% of his chief advisor’s emails were on private email system set up RNC. “ Well, I don’t understand the complaint. Conceivably all his advisors could have an email account on the RNC’s server if they use it to discuss politics.

Hillary was given an email by the state department, but she decided to use her husband’s server in the basement of their New York house. When the state department asked for the emails she said she had deleted them. When the justice department asked for the server she said she didn’t know where it was. They found it in a computer shop in New Jersey. The guy who set up the server took the 5th Amendment. And what did George W. Bush do that was worse? I read Nina’s post three times and I still don’t know what he did wrong.

 
Nina Burleigh is a propagandist. And not a very good one.