Hillary has an Elizabeth-Warren-Like Family Lore Problem
Contrary to stump speeches, only one of Hillary’s grandparents was an immigrant.
Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed reports that Hillary’s often-told story about all her grandparents being immigrants is 3/4 false. Only one was.
Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents.
The story of her grandmother specifically immigrating is one Clinton has told before. Clinton’s sole foreign-born grandparent, Hugh Rodham Sr., immigrated as a child.”
Extensive public records support Kaczynski’s findings.
Here’s a Buzzfeed video file of Hillary recently telling the story.
There’s also a Youtube video linked by Buzzfeed.
The campaign’s explanation when caught by Buzzfeed?
Wait for it. Wait some more. Here we go: Family Lore.
“Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News. “As has been correctly pointed out, while her grandfather was an immigrant, it appears that Hillary’s grandmother was born shortly after her parents and siblings arrived in the U.S. in the early 1880s.”
Family lore? Where have I heard that before?
Ed Morrissey points out that while the 3/4 lie is not in itself fatal to Hillary’s campaign, it fits a pattern that is forming the damaging public perception that Hillary is untrustworthy:
Had Hillary noted that she descended from immigrants in the sense that she wouldn’t qualify for the Mayflower society, she’d have been on firm ground. Had she just used her grandfather to speak to the immigrant experience, there would have been no problem. Instead, she exaggerated for effect, making a claim that was easily checked and refuted, all for the sake of scoring a gauzy point in an otherwise forgettable event.
As lies go, this is somewhere between the Tuzla dash and the bombed-out Belfast hotel that wasn’t. The problem for Hillary is that it fits a pattern, and that pattern’s emerging very early in a campaign that has to run for another 18 months. Every time Hillary campaigns, she begins to fantasize about her history and experience in a way that reminds voters about the Clintons and their lack of credibility. Last year, she blew up her book tour by trying to claim that she and Bill left the White House “dead broke,” even though they owned two expensive houses, Hillary had already been elected to the Senate, and both she and Bill immediately began lucrative speaking tours and got huge book advances.
Re-imagining grandparents as immigrants all by itself wouldn’t necessarily be fatal to any candidate, let alone Hillary Clinton, who’s already stretching credulity to the breaking point by running as a populist while locking up all of the establishment backers in the Democratic Party. The problem for Democrats is that it’s not all by itself, and the fabulism problem will only get worse the longer Hillary talks.
Just like the staged coffee shop photo-op, there is very little to Hillary’s campaign that is not packaged and contrived.
How long can that hold up?
There’s a saying: “People who tell the truth don’t need to remember what to say.”
Hillary needs to remember what to say.
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Comments
Can anyone be more willing to lie his way into office?
Hillary wants it BAD.
So what.
Uh…did you just call Hillary a Trannie?
Dude looks like a Lady….la la la la
I wonder if these imaginary ancestors were “immigrants”, or “illegals”?
Good God, man… at this point, what difference does it make?
(“it” = credibility and character)
You must throw your hands in the air, shake your fists and make a really mean face when you say that!
….all while doddering.
Don’t forget to dodder when doing that impression!
Not that its any of my business, but why would any Methodist woman stand for having Hillary address their group.
Lying, fraud, and stealing, and destroying the lives of other women a husband sexually assaults are not values they’d support, one wouldn’t think.
Apparently, there’s a Methodist to her madness.
Wickens?
Hillary’s ‘lore’ is multi-dimensional:
In early May 1993, (Vince) Foster gave the commencement address at his University of Arkansas Law School alma mater, and said:
“The reputation you develop for intellectual and ethical integrity will be your greatest asset or your worst enemy. You will be judged by your judgment. … There is no victory, no advantage, no fee, no favor, which is worth even a blemish on your reputation for intellect and integrity. … Dents to [your] reputation are irreparable.”
……
As it happened, how Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret Williams, in particular handled Foster’s files and documents immediately after his death became an issue of much investigation itself.
-Wikipedia
The Hillary running for office is like an evil Max Headroom, a digital reality that only superficially has the qualities voters desire. “The Hillary” is only loosely based on the corrupt carpetbagger wife of impeached pedophile island hopping Bill.
I’m so tired of this “nation of immigrants” lie. We are a nation of Americans that made America great by learning civics, and by clinging to our religion, our guns and our liberties. A large wave of immigrants came in the mid 19th century, after passing stringent requirements. I bet all Hillary’s real immigration story fits that scenario.
We need to play up American pride, as I see it, and refute this notion that PC diversity religion will make us stronger, (so we must import half of Guatemala). To qualify for Team America, immigrants need to come legally, and pass the tests.
The waves of immigration we had that made us stronger were legal immigrations. Pausing between waves also made us stronger.
Like Hillary, I have one grandparent who was an immigrant, The rest were born of parents who appear to have immigrated between 1865 and 1885.
I am not sure how stringent any entrance requirements were since they did let my ancestors in. My grandfather already had a drinking problem when he arrived. Another used the fog of immigration to conceal his intent to marry too close a relative soon afterwards. With one great grandmother I have only family lore she was born in Germany as there appears to be no public record of her anywhere under the (assumed?) name she used when she married my great grandfather. Yet another was on the lam from the Kaiser’s laws. This ancestor claimed he ditched the noble “von” when he arrived in America from Prussia but I have found no confirmation of that claim in any records.
They seem to have been scoundrels all. My grandfather never became a citizen until he decided after five decades here to go home to see his cousins one last time and needed a passport. Nor did my great grandparents ever give up their native language, religion or culture for all things American. Indeed, much of basic American meat and potatoes cooking as well as the fondness for beer is very German. The one on the lam back home opened a German language beer hall, was a charter member of a German language church and spoke exclusively German in his home. Nor where any of them gun owners except for the homesteader who kept a shotgun to use on critters who raided the chicken coop.
What they all had in common was that they didn’t want a government under the likes of a Hillary telling them what to do.
It would be interesting to see what they were looking for exactly, at Ellis Island. But it seems immigrants needed to be somewhat healthy and able to care for themselves … not sure about speaking English. But they certainly couldn’t come to live off welfare, and many did not pass. And crossing the ocean was no small investment, with no guarantee.
At least compared to today it was “stringent”. All my great grandparents came around the 1860’s, settled mostly as farmers, and developed drainage districts, or were involved in trades. One story is my current last name is just made up (or borrowed, it did exist), as he was avoiding the German draft and didn’t want to be tracked down.
But everyone was documented, checked for disease. Not coyotes or criminals that get deported and return repeatedly, while we never know their real identity but we subsidize them anyway. We are under assault, and DC is supporting the invasion.
Ha! Reminds me of the time I asked my Irish born and raised father why he never gathered together the family history.
“I was afraid of what I would find.”
There were no requirements beyond being able to pay the fare until 1885.
Precisely because Hillary’s ancestors seem to have come before that, they did not have to meet any “stringent requirements”
Immigrants did had to be registered upon arrival since I think 1820, although I think that was more an obligation of the shipping company.
In 1885 basically two requirements were added: that a person should not be liable to become a public charge (which later tended to mean a sponsor) and that a job could not be arranged in advance. There were no visas issued abroad until World War I. There were no visas needed to travel anywhere.
Hillary Clinton’s grandfather Hugh Rodhamcame as a 3 year old child in 1882. He died in 1965. His parents both died in 1917.
One great grandfather came between 1881 (when he is in the UK census, age 14) and 1891 (when he is not) Most individual U.S. census records for 1890 were destroyed in a fire in 1921, so if you merely check Census records you can’t tell.
Thanks Sammy, I was thinking the Ellis Island thing was earlier, or that the other places of entry had those type conditions.
But there were some requirements, and just getting here was not easy, and they had to follow the law and register. Most notable they had to renounce their country of birth/origin.
http://www.edhelper.com/ReadingComprehension_54_186.html
And of course those times were so different from our current welfare state, and the desire of the left to import a new voting base of third worlders.
There were similar things at all ports of entry, but I think the medical checks and everything only started after 1885.
It looks like Hillary’s great grandfather, Jonathan Rodham may have obtained a job mining coal before coming to the United States in 1882, because a company signing someone abroad to a contract to work in the United States wasn’t illegal until 1885, and Scranton, Penn. is also coal country.
That was a condition (and still is) of naturalization not immigration
If you read the U.S. constitution carefully, you will see that Congress only has power over naturalization, not immigration. Whatever power Congress does have is derivative of its power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce.
I don’t know how people are reading something into the U.S. Constitution that just isn’t there!
The power to regulate immigration is clearly reserved to the states under the 10th amendment.
The error confounding authority over naturalization with a imagined power of Congress over immigration seems to have happened after the Civil War, not earlier than the 1870s..
thanks again … so Holder is wrong for taking states to court? I guess it has been established now that the feds decide? But the states get the burden. What a mess.
It should be noted that those immigrants were not just legal, but they were people who intended to adopt American ways and who did so, and who inculcated their children in them as well. They did not come here with the intention of re-establishing the same culture as that which they fled. Today people come here from true shitholes, with the intent to set up their own, insular shitholes within the cities of this country in which they congregate. This is not how immigration is supposed to work. If you come here because it’s America, you’re supposed to come here expecting to become American.
I grew up in a neighborhood that was packed with immigrants of all stripes.
Of course, my Irish parents didn’t have to learn English (though my friends might disagree. They always claimed they couldn’t understand a word they were saying! The rest of the block I was on consisted of Germans, Poles, Italians, and Greeks.
To a man and woman, ALL of them spoke English and, if we complained about America, would chastise us to appreciate the greatest country on earth.
I couldn’t have grown up in a better environment.
IMNSHO, Hillary is toast!
In the background, I can hear the drumbeats from the encampment of the faux Indian soon to be followed by intentional smoke signals as it is her, the “true” native American that will sweep, (what’s left of), the nation to the perfect solution: Dissolution…
With Mochelle as VP.
Yes, only one grandparent, Hugh Rodham, Sr, was actually an immigrant. But he was under sniper fire attack while approaching Ellis Island, so he counts as a Four-fer.
Five. He was gay. Oh, wait.. six. He was black, too. Brian Williams has corroborated Hillary on all points.
Careful what you say about Brian Williams! I heard that he was an undercover Navy Seal.
Seven!
He was a member of an oppressed minority –
the wealthy British royalty.
Hugh Rodham Sr. was 3 years old or less when he came to the United States in 1882 from coal country in England, but he didn’t pass through Ellis Island, which opened in 1892.
Hilary reminds me of the wannabe writer who seems to think that since slipping on a banana peel is considered funny, slipping on five banana peels must be five times as funny. She always takes her spin just a little too far and even if she doesn’t lose credibility in the process the end result still feels strained.
And yet there are too many people who blithely and blindly say they will vote for her, regardless. I saw on FB a young leftie who was CROWING about how happy she was that Hillary had FINALLY “done this”! Just that she announced is her dream…..regardless of the roll-out fakery, etc.
First problem – no one in the MSM will make any of this problematic…..they will ignore, marginalize, or creatively twist it (they say narrative, I say propagandize).
Second problem – the REALLY BAD things she’s done (e.g. Benghazi, no accomplishments while SecOfState, Whitewater, Bimbo Eruptions guard) DO NOT MATTER to most voters. Why would they CARE that this roll-out is horrendous?
The only way she will be defeated is if the GOP candidates (Cruz in particular, as he is a solid Conservative) EXPOSE HER and EDUCATE THE VOTERS about the Clintons, and Hillary in particular – WITHOUT the insufferable #waronwomen(tm) being successfully launched against them, just because they are male and she is a “fragile” “weak” “defenseless” “female” (all in quotes, because feminists will say females are equal – except when its their favored one that is being treated as an equal to a male).
Lots of work to do. Lots.
Don’t expect this latest round of blatant, egregious lying by Hillary to be mentioned on the alphabet nightly news. Now, of course if this had been Ted Cruz telling these kinds of lies, it’d be FEATURED on every channel for weeks.
Hillary actually does have an Elizabeth Warren problem because she once claimed to have some Indian ancestry.
http://www.wargs.com/political/rodham.html
That maternal grandmother would be Della Murray, born in Aurora, Illinois on June 17, 1902. She was divorced in 1926 or 1927. She later married Max Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant from Russia born in 1901, in 1933, but her daughter, Dorothy Emma Howell, Hillary’s mother, born on June 4, 1919 in Chicago, was not living with her. she lived with her father’s parents in Alhambra, California from 1927 to 1933 or 1934 and then left home and worked as a live in $3-per-week housekeeper, cook, and nanny for a woman in San Gabriel, California, who also encouraged to go to school After graduating from Alhambra High School in 1937, she
Living History was published in 2003.
After graduating from high school in California in 1937, age 18, Hillary’s mother moved to Chicago to live with her mother and stepfather, Jewish immigrant Max Rosenberg, but the reunion did not go well, (she said her mother didn’t love her, according to Wikipedia) and she shortly moved out.
Hillary’s grandmother, whom she obviously did not know too well, died in Miami, Fla. on March 25, 1960, aged 57, when Hillary was 12 1/2 years old. Her step-grandfather, Max Rosenberg, died in Los Angeles, California, in March 1984, when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas.
Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania (hometown of Joe Biden) on April 2, 1911 and did in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Bill Clinton had moved Hillary’s parents probably to prevent them from speaking to the press, on April 7, 1993, but he is buried in Scranton.
His widow, Hillary’s mother, Dorothy Rodham, moved to Washington, where her daughter could more easily prevent her from speaking to the press, after Hillary was elected to the Senate in 2000. She almost never spoke to the press, but did appear on Oprah in 2004. She moved in to live with her daughter in Washington in 2006. Eventually, sometime after her daughter was sworn in as Secretary of State, her health failed, and she died on November 1, 2011 in Washington. D.C., aged 92.
Why was it Buzzfeed and not the NYTimes to call her out on this?
The New York Times mentions it today (in a paragraph inside parenthesis which noted the Buzzfeed report) in an article otherwise mostly praising Hillary for her stage management, and her willingness to hire the best brains from the Obama operation to do it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/us/politics/the-hillary-clinton-reboot-both-off-the-cuff-and-meticulously-planned.html?_r=0
The article also seems to attribute spontaneity to her. For instance she supposedly surprised her aides by saying she wants to drive to Iowa (source: Huma Abedin)
The New York Times was too busy working on the (more intellectual) Hillary Clinton e-mail story.
They reported the other day that the fact she used (only) private e-mail had been copcealed from a Congressional committee two years before it became generally known.
Congressman Darrell Issa had sent letters to all agencies about whether officials were using private e-mail, after it was discpvered that this had happened at the EPA.
Hillary Clinton never answered the letter addressed too her personally, and was soon out of office.
The State Department responded in March, 2013 with a statement of general policy. The general policy was outdated – it said that if [!] someone had a private e-mail account – how many important people didn’t by 2013? – they should make clear to all correspondents that it was not to be used for official business (to send e-mail too them?)
Hillary Clinton obviously had not followed that policy.
I checked the original article, which ran Wednesday down the far right column (column 6) on page A15 about the letter sent by Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
It was addressed to Hillary Clinton (and similar letters were sent to other government agency heads) and was dated December 13, 2012. It asked her:
And also:
Hillary Clinton never answered that letter. It was not based on any information connected to her, but rather on what had happened at the EPA, and was a fishing expedition.
The letter also asked for written documentation of agency policy regarding use of personal email for government business.
In its March 27, 2013 reply, the State Department said
I am not sure of the meaning of the quote within a quote.
The New York Times became aware of the letter when somebody leaked it.
Hillary parked her van, at one point, in a handicapped spot:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/04/scooby-van-parked-in-handicapped-spot-during-clinton-visit/
It is possible, of course, that her security recommended that.
The van was used only one way. On her way back to New York, she flew in jet flying out of Eppley Airfield just outside Omaha, Nebraska, probably on the regular commercial flight at 6:50 DSM->LGA
There’s something on the Internet about her van having been first parked in a non-handicapped place, and then moved to the handicapped spot (so they could get away quickly?)