The real story behind Mike Bloomberg supposedly picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate
This morning, Drudge Report exclusively reported that according to its sources, Mike Bloomberg is considering picking Hillary Clinton as his running mate if he wins the 2020 Democratic nomination. This has led to widespread debate about whether the story is true, and if so, whether it’s a good idea. But this misses the point entirely.
Let’s make this simple: the story isn’t true. If it were true, a right wing site like Drudge Report would be the last to stumble upon it. Drudge might be the first to have the story of a scandal surrounding a Democratic politician. But try to imagine the incredibly small number of people who would be involved in the discussions between Bloomberg and Hillary, and then ask what the odds are that Drudge somehow pried that information loose from one of them. So the story itself isn’t real. What is relevant here is who leaked this false story to Drudge, and why.
One of these three things has to be true: 1) Mike Bloomberg leaked the fake Hillary story to distract everyone from the story today about him mistreating women. 2) One of Bloomberg’s Democratic opponents leaked it, under the belief that attaching Bloomberg to Hillary would hurt him. 3) Trump and/or the GOP leaked the story for the same reason.
Hillary remains incredibly popular. But when she decided to bait Bernie and his supporters into attacking her so they’d have less time to attack his democratic opponents, she made it pretty clear that she’s not looking to ever run for anything again. It’s almost impossible to imagine that she wants to be on a ticket at this point. And no, Hillary didn’t leak it herself; she’d gain nothing by doing so, and would actually undermine her current position as an outside commentator on the 2020 race.
Whoever did leak this false story, why give it to Drudge of all people? They surely knew he’d publish it, because it’s a controversial story involving Hillary, whether they were able to provide any solid evidence to back up the story or not. But really, this story wasn’t designed to be believed, right? It was merely designed to dominate the headlines for a day or two. If it came from Trump’s camp, look for Trump himself to start tweeting about it soon. Whenever his people plot something like this, he never can keep his mouth shut and keep up the ruse.
