MISSING IN ACTIONMISSING IN ACTION
I’m not invited. I’m not on the A list, haven’t been on it in 20 years and my feet have never trod its red fluffy carpets.
—Nick Mancuso, actor, writer, director, producer, and painter
Three weeks after Hillary launched her campaign for the White House, President Obama spoke at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Forty thousand people, including Obama’s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, gathered in Selma to commemorate “Bloody Sunday,” the day in 1965 when police officers with billy clubs beat peaceful protesters, most of them black, as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
But where was Bill Clinton, “the first black president”?
And where was Hillary, the Democratic Party’s likely standard-bearer in 2016?
They were nowhere to be seen in Selma.
“According to people familiar with her thinking, Mrs. Clinton had discussed whether to go [to Selma] several weeks ago, as some of her allies pressed for her to attend,” noted the conservative blog Hot Air. “People close to the Clintons, who both made note of the Selma event, described them as in a bind regardless of what they did, given that their presence could have made people see the event through a political lens.”
But that wasn’t the real reason that Hillary and Bill didn’t go to Selma.
They didn’t go, because they weren’t invited.
As part of Valerie Jarrett’s vendetta against the Clintons, the White House had left the Clintons off the invitation list.
“Hillary very much wanted to go,” said a source who spoke with both Hillary and Bill. “It was a natural photo-op type of event for her. She thought she was denied it because the Obama people didn’t want her marching in the front row with two presidents, Obama and George W. It would have made her look like a peer and, by definition, a future member of the President’s Club.
“Bill, on the other hand, wouldn’t have gone if they had begged him,” the source continued. “He said, ‘I’m finished dealing with this guy [Obama].’
“Hillary would have even gone alone if she had been asked. She knew she would get shit for not going to Selma. But without a White House invitation it would have been awkward. The Obamas would have done everything but drop banana peels so that she would fall on her ass crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”
Instead, Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea went to a Clinton Global Initiative conference at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. There, Bill officially announced the appointment of Donna Shalala as the new head of the Clinton Foundation. For the privilege of hosting the Global Initiative program, the university shelled out at least $250,000.
While in Florida, Bill and Alonzo Mourning, the former Miami Heat star, and Mourning’s wife, Tracy, held a fund-raiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for the Clinton Foundation and the Mourning Family Foundation. Tickets for the event fetched as much as $25,000. Afterward they made appearances at gatherings in South Beach to raise more money. Bill charmed his way through the rooms, posing for selfies.
“As usual, women were all over Bill,” said a source who attended the fund-raiser with Bill. “He was flirty with the women, but Tracy and her security people held everyone at arm’s length and whisked Bill and Alonzo in and out as quickly as possible.”