WikiLeaks: Hillary Camp Mocks Catholics, Southerners, 'Needy Latinos'

WikiLeaks: Hillary Camp Mocks Catholics, Southerners, 'Needy Latinos'

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

By:

Amanda Prestigiacomo

October 13, 2016

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton attempts to paint herself as a woman of the people, as a warrior for the middle class. But talk is cheap in the face of damning leaked emails revealing otherwise. And there's also her horrific record in office.
The Wednesday email dump by WikiLeaks has uncovered the vitriolic contempt the Hillary campaign holds for the American people. On the heels of Mrs. Clinton’s scripted slamming of half of Donald Trump supporters, calling them an irredeemable “basket of deplorables,” these latest emails reveal her closest officials also mocked Catholics, Southerners, “Needy Latinos” and other various groups of Americans.
Email exchanges—hacked from Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta—between Hillary campaign spokeswoman Jenifer Palmieri and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress John Halpin from April of 2011 mock conservative media mogul Rupert Murdock for raising his children Catholic. According to Hillary's inner circle, ​Catholics are phonies, only opting to be public Catholics because being an Evangelical is socially unpalatable, and attracted to "severely backwards gender relations."
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” said Halpin.
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals,” Palmieri responded.
“Excellent point,” Halpin replied. “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”
The Trump campaign, practicing Catholic House Speaker Paul Ryan and Catholic advocacy groups, such as CatholicVote.org, have condemned those remarks, demanding Mrs. Clinton reprimand those involved in the “anti-Catholic bigotry."
“We call on Hillary Clinton to apologize and to fire the staff who have engaged in this vicious anti-Catholic bigotry. All of this shows who these people are at the core,” said Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. “The American people need to know who they are and their very radical agenda that will be an assault on Catholics and all people of faith and good will.”
CatholicVote.org has called for Palmieri to be fired.
“Hillary Clinton has already called half of her opponents’ supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ and ‘irredeemable,’ and now it comes out that her campaign spokeswoman dismissively question[ed] the sincerity of Catholic Americans’ faith,” said Brian Burch, CatholicVote.org president. “Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups, she [would be] dismissed. Palmieri must resign immediately or be fired.”
Ryan connected the uncovered remarks to the Clinton campaign's contempt for "people of faith in general."
“If anything, these statements reveal the Clinton campaign’s hostile attitude toward people of faith in general,” said Ryan, in a released statement. “All Americans of faith should take a long, hard look at this and decide if these are the values we want to be represented in our next president. If Hillary Clinton continues to employ people with biased and bigoted views, it’s clear where her priorities are.”
In another exchange, this one from September of 2015, Podesta and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden rip Southerners and the Miss America pageant.
“Do you think it’s weird that of the 15 finalists in Miss America, 10 came from the 11 states of the CSA [Confederate States of America]?” asks Podesta.
“Not at all I would imagine the only people who watch it are from the confederacy and by now they know that so they’ve rigged the thing in their honor,” responds Tanden.
As noted by The Washington Times, Hispanics, a key voting bloc for the Hillary campaign, were also demeaned by Hillary campaign officials: "In an August 2015 message to other Clinton aides with the subject line 'Needy Latinos and 1 easy call,' Mr. Podesta lays out a strategy for getting former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Energy Secretary Federico Pena and other leading Hispanic Democrats on board with Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid."
Podesta also calls Richardson “a d—k," though he'd be a valuable surrogate.