The ginned-up claims of corruption getting lobbed against Joe Biden look all too familiar to former aides to Hillary Clinton.
President Donald Trump may have finally moved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to back impeachment by scheming to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine in exchange for campaign dirt against Biden, but Clinton aides fear those dubious allegations might stick anyway, reported The Daily Beast.
The 2016 Trump campaign hyped claims of corruption against Clinton, which were then amplified by conservative media and foreign trolls, and the mainstream media failed to recognize those efforts as a misinformation campaign and instead tried to strike a bipartisan balance in their coverage.
That's already happening with the claims of Biden corruption, much to the horror of former Clinton aides -- who say the Democratic Party must push back harder, and soon.
“I think the other candidates should all recognize that it may be Joe Biden in the barrel today but it could just as easily be them tomorrow if Trump decides any of them emerge as the Democratic nominee,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary in 2016. “It is a problem that needs to be tended to by the party as a whole. It is not a Joe Biden problem. It is a party problem.”
Clinton veterans say Biden's in a difficult bind, because attacking Trump over his apparent extortion of a U.S. ally risks elevating the president's overcooked claims against his son, Hunter Biden, while not pushing back hard enough signals weakness and the suggestion of impropriety.
“The key piece of advice is to never repeat the negative,” said Zac Petkanas, who ran Clinton's rapid response team in 2016. “Never accept the premise of the question. The only thing the Biden campaign should say about the substance of the attack is that it has been debunked.”
A Biden adviser agreed that addressing Trump's claims gave the story oxygen, but she said the president and some of his top officials -- including he secretary of the treasury and the secretary of state -- are already pushing the story.
"When the president decides to tweet or talk to the press, he is elevating the issue regardless of whatever we are doing," said Biden adviser Anita Dunn. "The question then becomes: What is the most effective way to combat it?”
“We will be direct, call it out for what it is, be aggressive, and won’t back down,” she added. “I hope the media has taken some lessons from 2016 on this too, because the media tries to play by a set of rules and Trump knows what those rules are, and uses them to his advantage because he doesn’t play by any rules.”
Clinton's former spokesperson warned Trump's misinformation campaigns were just getting started, and she said the president was ready to exploit structural deficiencies in the media and any missteps by rival campaigns.
“Everybody get ready," said former Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney, "because this is what 2020 is going to be like every day."
