NBC’s Hallie Jackson Tries and Fails to Discredit Trump’s Speech

by Rebecca Bynum

Last night on the NBC Nightly News, Hallie Jackson attempted to poke holes in Donald Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton in his speech yesterday, but failed miserably.

Trump: “Her [Clinton’s] decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched. Among the victims is our late Ambassador, Chris Stevens. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed — that’s right, when the phone rang at 3 o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping.

Jackson refuted that by citing Clinton (under oath!) saying she was up all that night and that emails showed her at the State Department from early afternoon when the attack began and then showed an email sent to her daughter from home “shortly before midnight.” Doesn’t this support Trump’s allegation? Are there more emails or any other evidence that she was “up all night?” If such evidence exists, surely it would have been cited by Jackson.

Jackson: Trump alleged Clinton did favors for cash at the State Department, but the author of Clinton Cash says “no evidence exists for those allegations.”

This implies that Jackson was quoting Peter Schweizer in direct response to the speech, but of course this is highly unlikely as he does not appear on camera or voice recording. Jackson is likely citing Media Matters in their efforts to discredit the book.

Of course there is no direct evidence such as a damning quote from Secretary Clinton herself confirming this, but Clinton Cash makes a very strong case using circumstantial evidence that Clinton’s decisions at the State Department were influenced by the tremendous amounts of cash donated to the Clinton Foundation and/or given to Bill Clinton disguised as “speaking fees.” Come now Miss Jackson, you don’t really believe a speech is worth three quarters of a million dollars to you?

Third, Trump alleges that Clinton’s private server was hacked. Jackson replies that “no government official has said her emails were hacked.”

However, in May 2016—one month after being extradited to the U.S., and while jailed in Virginia awaiting trial— Marcel Lazar Lehel, aka, Guccifer claimed to have repeatedly hacked Hillary Clinton’s email server. Lehel claimed that the server was “like an open orchid on the Internet” and he distributed many of her emails on Libya and Benghazi to lawmakers and news organizations.

But I guess if “government officials” deny it, that’s good enough for NBC.