This isn’t me, it’s Google talking. But plug in “Karl Rove is a …” into your search box, and the top hits are:
idiot
douchebag
criminal
loser
satan
Well, if you would have asked me yesterday, even leftist me would have admitted those labels are a little rough. Yes, he does look like a big fat baby, but I would never call him one. I mean, come on. But last night, my perception changed when Rove unleashed just the most head-scratching lie of his tattered career: Hillary Clinton has suffered a traumatic brain injury.
According to Page Six (yes, I read Page Six, so should you), Rove told a gathering at a political conference in Los Angeles earlier this month that he was suspicious of Clinton and her much-publicized fall in her Georgetown home in December 2012. After her fall, Clinton went on to spend four days in the hospital for treatment of a blood clot. Those four days also famously delayed her congressional testimony on Benghazi, a non-issue the political right has been aggressively trying to hang around her neck for some time. As for the glasses worn when she did testify, Clinton was honest that they were meant to treat double vision that resulted from the clot, not a traumatic brain injury.
Never mind those facts. Rove told the crowd gathered that Clinton had spent some “thirty days in the hospital.” Adding that when Clinton reappeared, “she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”
Pulling out one of his favorite tactics, Rove repeated the brain injury/30 days in hospital claim a number of times to the audience. You know, if you keep telling the lie over and over, it eventually becomes the truth. This morning, Rove began to distance himself from the comments. Insisting that he used “serious health episode” and not “traumatic brain injury.”
In response to the claims made by Rove, a spokesperson for Clinton noted that, “Karl Rove has deceived the country for years, but there are no words for this level of lying,” before adding, “Please assure Dr. Rove she’s 100 percent.”
When it comes to attacking Clinton and her all-but-assured run for the White House, Republicans have adopted an attack policy that hinges on the something old, something new, something borrowed and something Benghazi approach. Media Matters highlighted Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus basically tipping his hand to just that in an interview with Fox News:
Why do I think that attacks against Hillary Clinton will get a whole lot worse before they get better?
Brock Thompson is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.
