[VIDEO] EXCLUSIVE: New York 2015 - FOUR THOUSAND sleeping on the streets, 80 homeless encampments in the city and beggars making $75 a day as arrests for panhandling and street drinking plunge

They are sleeping in front of the Empire State building, sprawled in front of the doors of Macy's, and panhandling outside Grand Central.

New York is in the grip of a homeless epidemic so bad that it has raised fears of the city slipping back into the disorder of the 1970s and 1980s.

The city's police chief this week said that as many as 4,000 people are now sleeping rough in the city, in a crisis which even the city's ultra-liberal mayor has finally acknowledged after months of denials.

Police officers have identified 80 separate homeless encampments in the city, 20 of which are so entrenched that they have their own furniture, while its former mayor Rudolph Giuliani has spoken scathingly of how his successor is failing to keep order. 

This week New York governor Andrew Cuomo said bluntly that 'it's hard not to conclude that we have a major homeless problem in the city of New York' while the city's police chief Bill Bratton described the scale of it as 'a tipping point'.

And even Bill de Blasio, who has spent months refusing to acknowledge that the growing scale of rough sleeping was anything other than a 'perception problem' finally said there was 'a reality problem'.

Now Daily Mail Online can reveal how a toxic combination of cheap drugs and softly-softly policing are fueling the epidemic - and that beggars are making as much money as someone on the city's minimum wage in cash each day.

Homeless people spoken to by Daily Mail Online said that they were making $70 dollars every day from panhandling.

The amount is the same as working an eight-hour day in a minimum wage job in New York, where the state-mandated minimum wage is $8.75.

One homeless man - a former professional who had become a drug addict and ended up one the streets - said: 'People... are very kind and and give me food and on a good day I can get about 70-80 dollars which shows you the kindness of New Yorkers.'

And Patrick Kolher, who begs outside the Trump International Hotel at Central Park West, said he regularly saw donations of $70 a day into his collection tin.

If the amount of money they can make is encouraging people on to the streets there is little policing to drive them off.

Daily Mail Online has established figures which show how little police action has been taken against the problem.

Arrests for offenses normally associated with the homeless and street dwellers and assessed under the quality of life bracket, have dropped drastically since the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor.

The self-proclaimed champion of 'the progressive agenda' came into office after a campaign in which he was critical of the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk tactics.

He set himself as a reformer who would move away from the aggressive policing championed by former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his successor Michael Bloomberg, which was credited with dramatically cutting crime in the city, which went from being one of the most dangerous in the US, to one of the safest.

But figures provided by the NYPD suggest that their 35,000 officers - of whom around 20,000 are on regular, uniformed patrol duties - are making far fewer arrests for the sort of quality of life crimes which blight streets.

The department provided figures for previous years, but only those for the first three months of this year. 

They show that in 2007, for the consumption of alcohol on streets, 129,073 people received criminal charges. Over the years the numbers went up or remained steady until de Blasio was elected.

This year, during the first three months, police summonsed only 12,477 which means at that rate, less than half of those arrested in Bloomberg's last year of 2013 will have faced charges.

In crimes such as littering, urinating, exposure, spitting and pan handling, the number of arrests have also dropped.

In 2013, there were 8372 charges for littering. In 2014 when de Blasio took office the number dropped to 7886. For the first three months of 2015, there were 1227 arrests.

People who were accused of urinating in public faced courts 29,579 times in 2013. This figure fell to 28,609 last year when the current mayor took power and the first three months of 2015 saw 4,547 summonsed.

Arrests for exposure in 2013 were 723. In 2014 the number stood at 619 and for the first quarter of this year, the figure was 108.

Police held for spitting numbered 2230 in 2013.Last year it was down to 1827 and until March of this year the figure stood at 324.

In 2013 there were 56,103 arrests for disorderly conduct. Yet between January 1 2015 and the end of March there were 7005, which is again heading for a 50 per cent reduction.

A New York Police Department spokesman told Daily Mail Online: 'If someone is stopped for aggressive panhandling and they have no ID they will be arrested.'

But only 50 people were arrested for the offense up until March this year, while in 2013 there were 310 and last year 201 in the same period.

A police spokesman declined to answer a question of whether police under de Blasio have been instructed to have a softer approach to street crime.

This week, however, Bratton said that his officers would be tackling the problem - with the department's chief of patrol describing how they would be asking the homeless 'why are you out here? Where are you from?', the New York Times reported.

Bratton provided the first official estimate of the scale of the problem, saying there were as many as 4,000 sleeping on the New York streets, compared to 56,000 in homeless shelters.

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'Chase them': Rudolph Giuliani has been severely critical of the response to the homelessness crisis, saying that police have to act to get people off the streets

The city's laws mean that anyone who is homeless is entitled to a place in a shelter.

Of the 3,000 to 4,000 on the streets, Bratton said: 'It's a number that's been growing over a period of time,

'It's reached a tipping point, however, I think, to use that term, that it did become more visible this summer.'

Officers are now moving through a total of 80 homeless 'encampments' which they have identified.

One was removed this week in Harlem, an increasingly trendy area which has seen complaints of aggressive beggars around its busiest stations.

But the action only goes some way towards meeting vocal criticism made by Giuliani of the current state of policing.

He revealed last month how he had complained at his local police precinct about a homeless man who was urinating near his Upper East Side home.

He told NBC 4 New York that his message was: 'You chase 'em and you chase 'em and you chase 'em and you chase 'em, and they either get the treatment that they need or you chase 'em out of the city.

'I had a rule. You don't get to live on the streets.'

That put him at odds with de Blasio's administration, who say that street homelessness is related to a growth in the number of homeless people overall - which they say is because of Giuliani and Bloomberg.

They claim that increasingly expensive rents are making it impossible for the poorest to live in New York, leading them to move into shelters.

However another factor appears to be leading to the increasing dysfunction on the streets - a wave of cheap drugs, especially heroin, which can be bought in New York for just $10 a fix.

A leading expert charged with treating heroin addicts in New York has described the drug problem as an 'epidemic'.

Monika Taylor, who runs drug treatment at a hospital in Syracuse, NY, and who has been tasked by New York state to look at the problem, told Daily Mail Online the crisis is being fueled by the cheap price of the drug on the streets.

Via: Daily Mail

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[VIDEO] Migrants Fleeing Hungary Start a Long March Toward Germany

Almost 1,200 migrants - some crammed onto overcrowded inflatable dinghies - have been picked up by Greek authorities in the eastern Aegean Sea in the past two days. 

Packed boats were being towed on to the shores of Kos yesterday, with refugees dropping to their knees to pray after completing the perilous journey. 

One woman even stopped to take a selfie on her mobile phone after the boat in which she had travelled was apprehended by coastguards on its way from Turkey.  

Boats containing dozens of migrants have also been taken to the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios and Farmakonisi in recent days.

After Italy, financially crippled Greece is the main destination for refugees, mostly from war-ravaged Syria plus economic migrants seeking a better life in the EU. About 30,000 have already arrived this year. 

On the holiday island of Kos, some of the new arrivals - mainly Syrians and Afghans - are staying in a deserted hotel. 

Kos, which is only 25 miles long and five miles wide, is of particular concern to the authorities, with many people-trafficking boats able to land without detection.

Despite being under Greek control, most of the Aegean islands are closer to Turkey, with Kos just two miles from Bodrum. Journeys from the port take as little as 20 minutes, with migrants paying smugglers up to 800 euros (£565) each for a place on a boat.  

While some traffickers carry out several journeys a day, other migrants land on inflatable dinghies that are discarded on the island’s pristine beaches. A police station built to hold only 36 people has become a refugee camp after more than 200 migrants with nowhere else to sleep were packed in. Dozens settled in the building’s courtyard, living in filthy and cramped conditions. 

The influx will fuel fears that Greece could unleash a wave of economic migrants to travel to Britain and the rest of Europe.

Greek politicians have threatened to hand travel papers to vast numbers of people, including 10,000 migrants held in detention centres, in the row over EU austerity measures. The country’s proximity to Turkey, regarded as a key buffer in the fight against Islamic State encroaching into Europe, has prompted concern that jihadis could use the route.

It is also feared that some of the people trafficking gangs are linked to IS, with smuggling fees used to fund the group’s terrorism

Via: Daily Mail

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University of Tennessee tells staff and students to stop using 'he' and 'she' - and switch to 'xe', 'zir' and 'xyr' instead

Gay rights official at Knoxville campus wrote new language instructions

Tells students and staff to use unusual, gender-neutral pronouns like 'xe'

Donna Braquet said that the new regime would make campus 'inclusive' 

University clarified that guidelines are not compulsory after critics called them 'absurd' 

The University of Tennessee has told its staff and students to stop calling each other 'he', 'she', 'him' and 'her' - and to start referring to one another with terms like 'xe', 'zir' and 'xyr' instead.

The Knoxville branch of the public university, which has 27,400 students, sent a memo round to its members filled with unusual new parts of speech to avoid referring to anybody's gender.

According to a gay rights official at the university, the new language regime will make the university 'welcoming and inclusive' and stop people feeling 'marginalized'.

New regime: Pictured above is a conversion table given to staff and students at the University of Tennessee's Knoville campus to instruct them in the use of non-gendered pronouncs

The university published the instructions on its website on Wednesday after they were emailed to every member of the university by the institution's Vice Chancellor for Diversity.

Officials have since insisted the the guidelines are not compulsory and that they do not want to 'dictate speech'.

Donna Braquet, who runs the university's Pride Center, wrote the guidelines, which are accompanied with a long table demonstrating how to replace the regular parts of speech.

She also advises staff members not to call roll in class, and to instead greet every student by asking them to announce their name and pronoun of preference.

Instead of 'he' and 'she', Braquet suggests four alternatives.

One is the commonplace strategy of using 'they', 'them' and 'their' for individuals rather than groups.

She also suggests 'ze' and 'xe' - both pronounced 'zhee' - and a variety of secondary conjugations to be used for anybody who rejects the traditional gender binary.

Barquet argues that if everybody follows her instructions, campus will become 'more inclusive'.

She wrote: 'When our organizational culture shifts to where asking for chosen names and pronouns is the standard practice, it alleviates a heavy burden for persons already marginalized by their gender expression or identity.' 

There is no information on the numbers of students on campus who do not identify as the traditional genders, as the university's official data only recognizes male and female.

In an interview with DailyMail.com, Rickey Hall, the university's vice chancellor for diversity, said he was 'ancedotally' aware of students on campus who reject traditional gender divisions.

After a backlash from critics who called the proposals 'ridiculous' and 'absurd', the university clarified that nobody would be forced into using the terms.

In an interview with Fox News commentator Todd Starnes, Tennessee state senator Mae Beavers, a Republican, said: 'It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.

'If you must interview a student before you greet the student, that’s not acceptance – that’s just absurd.'

A statement from a university spokesman said: 'We would like to offer clarification of the statements that have been made referring to gender-neutral language.

'There is no mandate or official policy to use the language. The information provided in our Office of Diversity and Inclusion newsletter was offered as a resource to our campus community on inclusive practices.

'We recognize that most people prefer to use the pronouns he and she; we do not dictate speech. 

'We do strive to be a diverse and inclusive campus and to ensure that everyone feels welcome, accepted, and respected.

Via: Daily Mail

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Post-holiday blues? The Obamas look glum as they return home from Martha's Vineyard

President Barack and the first lady looked glum as they stepped off Marine One in Cape Cod as their annual summer vacation drew to a close.

The pair, who have been on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, then managed to overcome their disappointment and put on a smile as they greeted a crowd at the Air Force base before they flew back to Washington.

Their two-week break on the Massachusetts island has become an annual tradition for the first family - and this year they enjoyed bike rides.

The President squeezed in one more round of golf at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs before the journey home as he prepares to meet the daunting fall period on Capitol Hill.  

As the first family disembarked Air Force One in the capital, Obama took the hand of his 17-year-old daughter Malia, while his wife and Sasha, 14, followed behind. 

Via: Daily Mail

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EXCLUSIVE: 'Don't you know who I am?' How Hillary's 'arrogant' aide Huma Abedin - now in the crosshairs of Servergate - tried to force her way past Secret Service agents without ID and expected them to carry her luggage

Ronald Kessler,  a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets of the FBI and The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, now in paperback.

When it comes to arrogance, Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's longtime top aide, and her presidential candidate boss are two peas in a pod, according to Secret Service agents.

For that reason, it's not surprising that the FBI investigation of Hillary's use of classified emails reportedly got a jump start after uncovering highly classified emails sent by Abedin and another Clinton aide.

Yesterday, it was revealed that State Department BlackBerry devices issued to the  former Secretary of State's aides Cheryl Mills and Abedin, 39, have likely been destroyed or sold off, the department said in a court filing.

Scroll down for video 

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At your service: Hillary and Huma Abedin leave posh department store Bergdorf Goodman in New York city surrounded by Secret Service agents. 'There's not an agent in the service who wants to be in Hillary's detail,' a current agent, not in this photo, says. 'If agents get the nod to go to her detail, that's considered a form of punishment

Based on the research and interviews for my book The Secrets of the FBI, I can say that the FBI would not have opened such a high profile investigation unless it already believed Hillary had violated criminal laws governing handling and dissemination of classified material. 

Nor, as some media reports have claimed, is the investigation a 'security investigation' into handling of the emails. The FBI does nothing unless it is pursuing violations of criminal laws and targeting individuals. 

And the pertinent laws make no distinction between classified material that is marked as such or not. If material is classified and is handled improperly, that is a violation of criminal laws.

While Hillary Clinton claims she will be the champion of the little people if elected, the truth is that behind the scenes she is so nasty and abusive toward her own Secret Service detail and treats them with such contempt that being assigned to Hillary's detail is considered a form of punishment within the Security Service. 

According to Secret Service agents interviewed for my book The First Family Detail, Abedin can be just as rude and nasty as Hillary. A former agent recalls helping Abedin when she got lost driving Chelsea to the February 2008 Democrat presidential debate in Los Angeles.

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Closer than close: It's not surprising, says Kessler, that the FBI investigation of Hillary's use of classified emails reportedly got a jump start after uncovering highly classified emails sent by Abedin 

'She was belligerent and angry about being late for the event,' the former agent says. 'No appreciation for any of it, not a thank-you or anything. That was common for her people to be rude.'

At another event in Los Angeles, a female agent challenged Abedin because she was not wearing a pin that identifies cleared aides to Secret Service agents. The agent had no idea who she was.

'You don't have the proper identification to go beyond this point,' the agent told her.

'Huma basically tried to throw her weight around,' a former agent says. 'She tried to just force her way through and said belligerently, 'Do you know who I am?''

That got her nowhere. Eventually, Abedin - who is married to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner - cooperated with the agent and suggested a contact who could verify her identity

Via: Daily Mail

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[VIDEO] Is Hillary Above the Law?

Hillary Clinton decided when she took the office of Secretary of State that she was above the law.

Hillary knew that she was supposed to use a secure government controlled server for email and other communications, but she believed that she was part of an elite class of people who are not subject to the same laws as average Americans.

The Clintons are the political equivalent of royalty and Bill proved that he was above the law.

The Daily Mail put together an excellent time line of events in this developing scandal. A Romanian hacker named ‘Guccifer’ exposed screen shots of Clinton’s longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL email account in March of 2013 that contained emails from the Secretary of State.

Since that date, evidence is mounting of a Clinton cover up.

According to the Daily Mail time line, in June of 2013, Hillary shifted control of email domain to IT contractor and sent her original server hardware to a data center facility in New Jersey where it was erased. Erasing, or wiping, the hard drive shows that Hillary did not want anybody to second-guessing the way she handled her email that likely contained, what most people would consider, classified information.

The Associated Press reported on June 30, 2015, “senior Obama administration officials knew as early as 2009 that Hillary Rodham Clinton was using a private email address for her government correspondence.” This implicates others like former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama confidant David Axelrod.

According to the AP “the newly released emails show Clinton sent or received at least 12 messages in 2009 on her private email server that were later classified ‘confidential’ by the U.S. government. Those emails were censored because officials said they contained activities relating to the intelligence community, or had discussed the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence information. At least two dozen emails were also marked ‘sensitive but unclassified’ at the time they were written, including a December 2009 message from top Clinton aide Huma Abedin about an explosion in Baghdad that killed 90.” This is strong evidence that Hillary is lying about her emailing of sensitive information.

Via: Human Events

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[VIDEO] Clinton aide Huma Abedin STILL hasn't sworn under oath that she's turned over all her State Department emails

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton declared Monday under penalty of perjury that she has given the State Department all of her work-related emails from her four years as secretary of state, but her trusted aide Huma Abedin has not yet taken that step – despite a request from a federal judge. 

Abedin's lawyer Karen Dunn told Politico on Thursday that the longtime Clinton insider, who served as deputy chief of staff at State, plans to turn over her work-related emails and other messages from her tenure there by August 28.

But Dunn declined to say whether or not Abedin will ink the same statment Clinton has signed.

Abedin enjoyed a rare but legal status as a 'Special Government Employee' during part of her time in government, allowing her to double-dip with a second paycheck in the private sector.

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TROUBLE COMING: Clinton aide Huma Abedin has yet to swear that she's turned over all her work-related emails and other materials to the State Department as an investigation swirls around Hillary

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SAFE FOR NOW? Clinton signed a statement under penalty of perjury, but there's no indication when or whether her top staffers will follow suit

That arrangement has led some Republicans to speculate that she might have exposed classified information to people who are not authorized to see it. 

Donald Trump told DailyMail.com on July 30 that it's reasonable to think Abedin may have shared information with her husband Anthony Weiner, including the contents of classified emails that passed through the former secretary of state's private home-brew server.

Weiner, a former Democratic congressman, resigned in 2011 amid lewd sexting scandals. 

Trump told DailyMail.com during a wide-ranging interview in his New York City Office that 'the person seeing [Clinton's] emails more than anybody else is Huma. And who's Huma married to? The worst deviant in the United States of America, right? Weiner!'

Abedin holds a security clearance of the kind that typically comes with detailed guidance on what kind of information must be kept secret from family members, including spouses. 

Trump said Weiner's actions were 'shocking and disgusting' and questioned whether 'anyone that untrustworthy' should be 'anywhere around national secrets.'

'Huma knows all those emails,' Trump insisted, 'and she's married to a deviant who has a big

Via: Daily Mail

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Shameless lesbian couple burned down their own house for the insurance payout then called it a hate crime and blamed their neighbor

A lesbian couple scrawled homophobic abuse on their garage before burning down their own house in Tennessee then calling it a hate crime, a court ruled.

Carol Ann and Laura Jean Stutte reduced their own house to a pile of charred rubble in September 2010 and branded their neighbor a homophobe in order to get the $276,000 insurance pay out.

But insurers American National Property and Casualty Company caught on to the ruse and accused the couple of faking the fire.

Liars: Carol Ann and Laura Stutte reduced their own house to a pile of charred rubble in 2010 in order to get the $276,000 insurance pay out but it has now been uncovered as a ruse

A court has ruled that the lesbian couple scrawled the homophobic abuse on their own garage

A federal jury ruled in favor of the insurance company and they will not have to pay out on the insurance claim on the house in Venore, reports the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The court heard how the couple spray-painted the word ‘queers’ on their garage and later blamed their neighbor Janice Millsaps.

They claimed that, a month before the blaze, Millsaps said: ‘Do you know what is better than one dead queer? Two dead queers.’

Stutte told the Metro Pulse: ‘We know who wrote those threats. Anyone who could go so far as to write those hateful letters and burn someone else’s house down, they are really disturbed.’

And in the lawsuit, the couple claim that Millsaps ‘repeatedly’ threatened their lives and specifically mentioned burning down their house.

But Millsaps was never charged, despite a probe by the FBI and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

And the court has now ruled that it was an elaborate lie after the insurance company concluded their own probe, which included a polygraph test on Millsaps. 

Via: Daily Mail

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Access Denied: Daily Mail Reporter David Martosko Barred from THIRD Clinton Campaign Event: 'Offensive, Unacceptable'

A political reporter for The Daily Mail told The Kelly File that he was barred from a third Hillary Clinton campaign event in New Hampshire. It was a story reported by Megan Kelly.

"This is the one thing she doesn't get to control,” said Megyn Kelly.

The latest incident happened Monday night at the Manchester City Democratic Committee’s Flag Day Dinner, according to David Martosko, the Mail’s U.S. political editor.

"The Daily Mail is a very dogged, thorough reporting organization, and we don't tend to show up and do what we're told...and a lot of those stories the Clinton's don't like," said Martosko.

"I was embarrassed, as a journalist to see how many journalists reported on Saturday only what the Clinton campaign wanted them to,” he added. "We have a duty to do more than that. But I think the Clinton campaign, at this point, doesn't have a lot of tolerance for reporters who stray outside the lines."

The press pool stands with Martosko and the Daily Mail to have access, like all other journalists, to cover the Hillary campaign.

This was the third campaign event Martosko has been denied media access to as it was previously reported that Martosko was barred from covering Clinton events in Rochester and Concord, NH.

Hillary can choose whether or not she wants to answer questions from the media, but as Martosko stated, "the Clinton campaign doesn't get to choose who covers them."

As the Daily Mail reporter noted, this story is about the fact that reporters "have the freedom to go to these events and cover them."

"I was told 'you need to leave,' Martosko said, "I find that unacceptable and offensive."

If Hillary won't give power to the press, how can we trust she'll give power to the people?

Via: Fox News

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Days After Relaunch, Hillary Campaign’s Press Relations Already Hits New Low

Just two days into Hillary Clinton‘s re-relaunched presidential run, the campaign has already dealt a self-inflicted wound to its precarious relationship with the press.

Rather than send fifty reporters from fifty news outlets to a given event, press organizations typically set up “pools” of reporters who take turns attending events and filing pool reports of what happened. But on Monday, the designated print pool reporter, The Daily Mail’s David Martosko, was denied access to all pooled campaign events.

The campaign’s denial comes after weeks of negative, tabloidish coverage from the conservative UK-based outlet. Most recently, Martosko critiqued many of his fellow reporters’ coverage of Saturday’s re-re-relaunch, tweeting, “It’s truly astonishing how many journalists at the @Hillaryclinton speech today reported exactly, and only, what the campaign wanted them to.”

The Daily Mail is a conservative-leaning tabloid. Everyone knows that. Everyone in the press pool knows that, especially the reporters Martosko not-so-subtly swiped on Saturday. If Martosko had filed an overtly biased, false, or substandard pool report, he would faced the ire of the dozen or so other political reporters who strongly rely on his reporting.

But instead, the Clinton campaign made Martosko the victim. They screwed over not just the conservative journalist, but a dozen other reporters as well. A campaign plagued by allegations that it is inaccessible to press fed into that narrative by overtly denying access to a reporter that other print outlets were more than happy to send as their representative. And as Politico’s Dylan Byers points out, the denial of access comes one day after the pool “threw a fit” when Clinton staffers kept them away from a conversation Hillary had with everyday Iowans.

Clinton ought to have taken a note from President Barack Obama‘s “War on Fox” back in 2009. Traditional and liberal news outlets were more than happy to keep mum as Obama and his staff openly questioned the legitimacy of Fox News and issued a general no-interview policy. But when the administration tried to exclude their reporters from pool events, the other networks defended Fox News and told the administration they had gone too far.

It’s basically a given that the Clinton campaign will receive negative coverage from conservative-leaning outlets. On the other side of the aisle, Republican politicians have long understood that they’ll never get a fair shake from many/most national outlets. But only Hillary and her thin-skinned staffers treat such negative coverage as utterly unacceptable and worthy of retaliation.

By and large, national outlets are more than happy to ignore when conservative outlets are snubbed or the victims of unfair retaliation (just ask the Washington Free Beacon). But Hillary inconvenienced “respectable” outlets– the very same outlets her re-re-re-relaunch hoped to sway– earning negative coverage from the like of liberal outlets like The Guardian. And if 2008 proved anything, it’s that those are precisely the outlets that make or break Democratic campaigns.

Via: Mediaite

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