A well-heeled Tea Party group faked a video of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having sex with a panda as projected “entertainment” for its July 2012 FreePAC convention in Dallas, according to an investigative story in Mother Jones, which broke the Mitt Romney “47 percent” speech tape last fall.
The video was made but never shown.
In the video, a female intern at FreedomWorks played the part of Clinton, wearing a pants suit, while another dressed up in a panda suit wearing a Bill Clinton mask. In the video, FreedomWorks executive vice president Adam Brandon wakes up, walks down the hall, and — in a dream sequence — sees the nation’s top diplomat performing oral sex on the panda.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The video was shown to FreedomWorks staffers, whose objections carried the day.
“How was that not some form of sexual harassment? And there were going to be thousands of Christian conservatives at this this thing. This was a terrible lack of judgment,” a former FreedomWorks staffer told Mother Jones.
FreedomWorks has been wracked by controversy and rivalries in recent month. Its chairman, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, resigned from his $500,000-a-year position last fall following a feud with the group’s $320,000-a-year president Matt Kibbe, with whom Brandon is allied. Armey was given an $8 million golden parachute in the form of “consulting fees” to be paid in $400,000 increments.
On Thursday, Armey told the Washington Post:
“I had heard that there was a video made that was disrespectful of Hillary Clinton and it was a matter that I intended to investigate further, and I understand may be investigated further. I found all of that activity reprehensible, wholly unacceptable and distressing.”
Armey and Kibbe had collaborated on the 2010 book: “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.” Armey was once chairman of the economics department at North Texas University.
The fake video underscores a political problem for right-wing groups and what’s often called the “conservative entertainment media.” For years, these groups — and such media outlets as Fox News and the New York Post — demonized Hillary Clinton. The Drudge Report specialized in running unflattering photos of first lady-turned senator-turned secretary of state.
Over the last four years, however, negative opinions of Hillary Clinton (and Bill Clinton, too) have plummeted in the polls. Hillary Clinton left the Secretary of State’s office as the most admired public figure in America, even the most admired woman in the world with a 61 percent approval rating in an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
With a prospective presidential candidacy in 2016, how will the political right demonize her again?
