During the Tuesday night vice presidential debate, Mike Pence attacked the Clinton Foundation, bringing up the discredited AP story as a basis for pay-for-play charges, and pumping out the ludicrous positions and even more over-the-top numbers that circulate through right-wing sources to diminish the work of the foundation. At the same time, Donald Trump’s personal foundation got off with the lightest of taps.
It was probably the most frustrating moment of the whole debate, because the lies put out by Mike Pence—and they were flat-out lies—are easy to refute. But the moment passed, and Pence got away with a load of bull big enough to stock the nation’s McDonald’s for a year.
So here’s a quick primer, refresher, and reference source for winning the Foundation Wars.
CLINTON FOUNDATION
PENCE: Now, you all need to know out there, this is basic stuff. Foreign donors, and certainly foreign governments, cannot participate in the American political process. They cannot make financial contributions. But the Clintons figured out a way to create a foundation where foreign governments and foreign donors could donate millions of dollars.
This is the primary charge that needs to be stomped hard and fast. No one in the Clinton family made a dime from the Clinton Foundation. Not a dime. The Foundation’s books are open, every penny is accounted for, and none of it—none—went to Hillary, or Bill, or anyone else in the family. That’s just a fact. Every time Pence or Trump says that the Clintons “got millions from foreign governments” … nope. Not true.
Short version: None of the Clintons got any money from the foundations, not from foreign donor, not from US donors. Not. One. Cent.
Of course, Trump treated his foundation like a piggybank he could raid at will … but we’ll get to that.
And then we found, thanks to the good work of the Associated Press, that more than half her private meetings when she was secretary of state were given to major donors of the Clinton Foundation.
No. No we didn’t. This is so wrong, it’s painful.
Back on August 23, the Associated Press put out a tweet saying that more than half of Hillary Clinton’s meetings as secretary of state were with people who had donated to the foundation. It was a lie. Then they followed up with an article in which they threw out over 97 percent of all the meetings Hillary had as SOS, and then if you looked at it just right, and if you counted people who worked for companies who had donated, and people who worked for foundations who had donated, but left out all these other people, you could get the numbers they wanted. So … it was still a lie. Not just a lie, but maliciously slanted journalism.
Oh, and the AP said they had found 85 donors who had meetings with Clinton, but they wouldn’t release the list to the Clinton campaign so they could check it. In fact, they wouldn’t show it to anyone. They were still “cross referencing,” which they apparently didn’t bother with before running the story. And they still haven’t shown their list to anyone. Where’s the #$!#ing list, AP?
Short version: The AP retracted their original tweet two weeks later and acknowledged that it had been wrong, but the Trump campaign is still pretending they didn’t notice. Foundation donors were a tiny fraction of the people Clinton met with while SOS.
PENCE: ... the reason the American people don't trust Hillary Clinton is because they are looking at the pay to play politics that she operated with the Clinton Foundation through a private server...
Pence has gone into a full melt-emails-onto-foundation cross-wired fake scandal thing with this answer, but it doesn’t really matter.
Short answer: There is absolutely no evidence that Secretary Clinton lifted so much as a finger to help anyone because they were a foundation donor. None at all. Clinton got no pay, and there was no play.
PENCE: Less than 10 cents on the dollar of the Clinton Foundation has gone to charitable causes. … It has been a platform for the Clintons to travel the world, to have staff. ...
Tim Kaine actually hurried out a “90 percent” in response to this charge, but the dishonesty here just can’t be allowed to pass.
Short & Long Answer: This is a lie. A damned lie. A disgusting and deliberate lie. The Clinton Foundation spends 87 percent of all the money coming in goes right back out in the form of programs and services. That’s better than just about any charity out there. Way better than most. It goes out to help 432 million people. 432. Million. people.
And hey, Mike Pence knows that. Someone please give him a kick in the balls for that one, would you? Thanks.
TRUMP FOUNDATION
PENCE: The Trump Foundation is a private family foundation. They give virtually every cent in the Trump Foundation to charitable causes.
You’ll have to excuse me, but this is the point where I wanted to kick Tim Kaine. Because he had this teed up for him so nice and pretty, with two minutes to talk about it, and just …. aaarrggh. Anyway, the list of ways this isn’t true is growing daily.
First: It’s not a “private family foundation,” the Trump Foundation solicits contributions. Or at least it did, until the New York attorney general shut it down this week. Not a penny of the money in the Trump Foundation came from Donald Trump since 2008. It all came from other people.
Second: Far from spending “virtually every cent” on charity, practically none of the money has gone to good causes for a long time. Not only has Trump used the foundation to buy himself autographed football helmets and pay for giant self-portraits, he’s dipped into the foundation to pay off over a quarter million dollars in legal bills.
Third: Where Trump did give to “charitable causes” a lot of them turn out to be conservative groups Trump wanted on his side for the campaign. He used his foundation to buy acceptance with evangelical leaders and to buy his way on stage at political events.
Fourth: Trump spent $25,000 of foundation money paying a bribe to Florida AG Pam Bondi. Practice that word, “bribe.” And he spent another $100,000 trying to get New York AG Eric Schneiderman out of office when Schneiderman wouldn’t play ball with Trump.
Fifth: Trump asked some people who owed him money to pay instead directly into the foundation. That way, it never showed up as income on Trump’s end, and he had available in his slush fund “charity” without ever paying taxes.
Sixth: Trump actually paid off the winner of a “Trump pays your bills” contest by paying them from the Trump Foundation. So no, Trump didn’t pay your bills. Whoever Trump suckered into contributing to his foundation—not Trump—paid your bills.
Short Answer: The Trump Foundation is nothing but a big hunk of tax evasion pretending to be a charity. A place where Donald Trump uses other people’s money to do whatever he wants, and occasionally take credit for doing something good on someone else’s dime.
One of these things is a global foundation that helps more than half the people on the planet with AIDS and undergoes rigorous public review every single year.
One of these things is a slush fund that has violated the law over and over. And over.
The next time someone mentions either of them, have your ammo handy.
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