OPINION:
’’At long last,” she thinks. “My time has come. They’re now all here, fighting for me.”
And with that, her first orders in the White House will be to strip and replace the telecommunications system. Yes, she and Bill did that in the early 1990s, but surely it’s become outdated. Plus, there’s always been that lurking suspicion that someone’s tapping their phone calls.
“The Obama’s are technically on our side, but they’ve never really trusted us,” she thinks. “The way Obama denied Sidney Blumenthal a job at State — he was my personal friend and that was my call to make. Plus, they’ve always been suspicious of our great charity work, its best they remain on the outside.”
“Speaking of which, does the White House still have raw FBI files on the Democrats and Republicans who had worked in the White House under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush?” she asks her staff? “I’ve always found them useful. We don’t want anyone posing a security risk — and well, the information held in those files is often fascinating. Of course, we want to be much more discrete than we were in the ’90s, but having a little blackmail information on our political enemies is always a good thing. It is Washington after all.
“By the way — can someone, when we’re installing the new phone lines, create a direct one to the Clinton Foundation?” she asks, though it is clearly a demand. “But make it private. I’m going to need a secure line to call Chelsea, to talk about our yoga routines and my grandbabies.”
She thinks how great it is Chelsea will stay in New York running the Foundation. While they agreed the Clinton Foundation would stop accepting money from foreign governments and corporations, its largest project, the Clinton Health Access Initiative would continue on. Donations would continue to poor in.
It sometimes amazed her at how stupid the American public and press can be. Oh well. No longer a problem.
“So what’s happened to the travel office?” she asks. “You know, back in my husband’s administration, I never really said: ’fire the sons of bitches.’ We were just looking to give our good friends and donors, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason an opportunity to make money. He had, after all, formed a charter travel company, which was much more competitive than the travel shop the White House was using.
And you know, those longtime White House career travel agents were incompetent. That’s why we had to call in the FBI — to prove it. Yes, the FBI balked at first, but we had White House counsel William Kennedy tell them if they refused, we’d just call in the IRS to make the case. That’s how you get things done in this town.
No surprise, an audit by the FBI found $18,000 in unaccounted funds, and that’s when we determined there needed to be firings — well, not by me directly, but my team. Seven innocent men were fired, and one was indicted by a grand jury and later acquitted, his good name rung through the mud. I of course, had no idea any of this was going on.
Well, that’s what I said at the time, anyway. That I had ’no role in the decision to terminate the [travel office] employees,’ and that I ’did not know the origins of the decision.’
It was only years later — and some Congressional investigations — that the truth came out. I can never seem to escape those right-wing nuts. So, 2,000 documents, including handwritten notes of my closest advisers and aides showed I was deeply involved from the beginning. Note to self: We need to stop writing notes — and if we do — we must burn or shred them.
But, when it all came out it was too late. The public and press had moved on and no one seemed to care anymore. Which is why I’d like to refocus on that office — or perhaps some other function at the White House which could reward our closest friends and donors for being so good to us.
The Lincoln Bedroom got a lot of bad press with my husband, but I’m sure we could spin it differently this time around. The Blair House is right across the street. Contracting for White House parties can be up for grabs, not to mention I now control federal grants, and official government appointments need to be made.
This is going to be so much fun.
I know, I know, I must beware. Washington is a highly partisan, back-stabbing atmosphere.
But I’m the winner. My Teflon is strong, I’ve proven over and over I can evade responsibility and never pay a price. Others may fall, but I will not. I’m a survivor. I’m Hillary Clinton, and I’m here to serve myself, and my good friends and donors, of course.
Long live the Republic.
• Kelly Riddell is a columnist for The Washington Times.
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