This will be highly interesting — but I’m betting noi matter what is in them, it won’t make any difference to true believers:
Former President Bill Clinton’s presidential library is set to make public nearly 500 pages of records pertaining to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to an official notice from the National Archives.
The records will detail the Clinton White House’s interactions with Trump and his Trump Organization, as well as how Clinton aides prepared to field questions about Trump’s entry into the 2000 presidential race, where he sought the nomination of the Reform Party for a few months before dropping out.
The files could revive questions about the friendly relationship Trump had with Bill and and Hillary Clinton before Trump launched his presidential bid last year and began taking a withering line against the Clintons.
“The Clinton Presidential records proposed for opening consist of email concerning birthday notes sent from President Clinton to Mr. Trump. Email also includes references to his campaign for President in 1999,” reads the Jan. 14 notice from the archives, which oversees the presidential records stored at the Clinton Library. “Also present is a printed database entry concerning Trump’s invitations to White House events, a photograph of President Clinton with Donald Trump at Trump Towers in New York, an autographed copy of Mr. Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, and briefing materials for press events that include media questions about Mr. Trump’s possible run for the presidency in 2000.”
This is in response to a Freedom of Information request. These could turn out to be innocuous materials that don’t spark any kind of major story or issue (among Republicans seeking to derail him), or something that suggests Trump operates from expediency and really was a best bud of the Clintons. I think it’ll mean very little in altering the pattern of this campaign. Our politics (partisan and ideological) have now become so tribal. Facts don’t matter. Igoring some, stating an allegation or problem as an established fact, or repeating a nonfact over and over to counter the fact is the way it works. Unless there’s something in there that sparks the ire of conservative talk radio hosts (who continue to have incredible influence over how the base reacts and acts) it won’t make a different to Trump supporters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.