Okay, so I posted this video on Monday about how Donald Trump has a pretty lousy record when it comes to LGBTs. And inevitably, the comment section developed some cesspools about how Hillary is even worse.
If we could, I'd like for all of us rational people to take a deep breath and acknowledge that we're all in agreement: Hillary's record on LGBT issues is better than Donald Trump's. Trump has demonstrated no interest, held no consistent position, done virtually nothing for LGBTs; Hillary, for all her failings, has done a ton.
In a contest between them, she is unquestionably better than he. Okay, everyone nodding in agreement so far? Now let's untangle the whole Saudi Arabia thing.
One of the weirder responses that I got to my video is that 20% of Hillary Clinton's campaign has been funded by Saudi Arabia, a country that wants to kill gay people, and so now she's going to allow terrorists to come to the country and kill us. What on Earth? Huh? What? I mean, there's just no sensible way to react to such a bizarre fantasy.
But let's see if we can piece together where the idea even came from.
There is a teeny tiny grain of truth in the rumor, and that is the fact that Hillary Clinton's foundation — not her campaign — has accepted millions of dollars from various foreign governments all over the world, most of it earmarked for projects like humanitarian relief.
And sure, there is still a creepy appearance of a conflict of interest inherent in those donations. If Saudi Arabia (and Australia, and Norway, and many others) gave money to one of Hillary's projects, it still might be hard for her to remain impartial when dealing with the country.
But then how does that get spun up into Saudi Arabia funding her campaign? Foreign governments aren't allowed to donate to candidates; and even if they had somehow laundered millions of dollars to Hillary's campaign, do you really think she'd be like, "okay, I'm president now, send over all your murderers!"
The origin of that rumor seems to be a story that you can find on the Fox News site: "Saudi Arabia Has Funded 20% Of Hillary's Presidential Campaign, Saudi Crown Prince Claims," reads the headline. But if you look closer, it's not actually a Fox News story — it's some kind of content-sharing arrangement that Fox must have with another website, because the "article" is only one sentence long, and is attributed to Fight Club character Tyler Durden.
If you follow a link at the end of the one-sentence piece, you'll find yourself on a sketchy blog that claims a Saudi prince has taken credit for funding 20 percent of Hillary's campaign. The source for THAT rumor is a blog called Middle East Eye, which was itself repeating a claim posted by the official news agency of the country of Jordan.
And THAT claim has since been removed, and replaced with an explanation that it was planted by a saboteur.
Whew.
Unraveling this tangled web isn't exactly simple, but fortunately Middle East Eye reported that they had some assistance getting to the bottom of things: after they reported the claim, they were contacted by Will Bohlen, a PR guy with the Podesta Group.
The Podesta Group was co-founded by John Podesta, President Bill Clinton chief of staff and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman. His company handles lobbying and PR for a variety of super-high-profile clients, including (just for example) the government of Saudi Arabia.
Hillary, you're not exactly making it easy to squash conspiracy theories here.
