This feature appears in the June ’16 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.
Hillary Clinton’s cozy relationship with George Soros went public after the State Department released a batch of her emails earlier this year.
You know Soros. He’s the Hungarian billionaire known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” because, during the United Kingdom’s Black Wednesday currency crisis in 1992, he engineered a short sale of $10 billion that made him a profit of $1 billion. He now spends some of his time, and some of his billions, attacking the right to bear arms cherished by little people like you and me.
The emails reveal that Soros told a close Clinton ally in 2012 that he regretted supporting Barack Obama over her in the 2008 primaries. He also praised Clinton for being open to discussing policy.
In an email in May 2012, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, told Clinton about a conversation she had with Soros. Tanden was seated next to Soros at a dinner. After Tanden told Soros she had worked for Clinton during her 2008 campaign, Tanden wrote to Clinton that Soros told her “[H]e’s been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn’t met with [President Barack Obama] ever (though I thought he had). He then said he regretted his decision in the primary—he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that was one of them. He then extolled his work with you from your time as First Lady on.”
This conversation took place at an event sponsored by Democracy Alliance. According to the conservative Power Line blog, “The Democracy Alliance is not a famous organization, but it deserves to be. The Alliance consists of approximately 100 rich liberals who have taken upon themselves the task of coordinating America’s many left-wing organizations to promote a single radical agenda.” Though piles of statistics bear this out, Clinton still seems to think attacking American freedom is a winning campaign issue, and she does so on a nearly daily basis.
Meanwhile, in 2012, The New Yorker reported that Soros felt snubbed by Obama after a meeting between them at the White House failed to take place. The two would later meet at “a low-profile, private meeting in New York, when the president was in town for other business,” but the rift doesn’t appear to have been smoothed over.
The New Yorker also quoted a Soros insider saying: “They pissed on him ... He didn’t want a ******* thing! He didn’t want a state dinner, or a White House party—he just wanted to be taken seriously.”
Rest assured that Clinton is taking Soros seriously.
The released emails also show that Clinton planned to call Soros in July 2011 and that she wanted to meet him in March 2012.
“George Soros is anxious to see you before he leaves for Europe next Tuesday,” an aide wrote to Clinton. “Could I fit him in for tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Clinton replied.
This open door to the Hungarian billionaire has been lucrative for Clinton. Soros donated $6 million last December to the leading super PAC supporting Clinton’s presidential campaign, Priorities USA Action—and that’s after having given $1 million to Priorities USA Action and $1 million to American Bridge 21st Century, which is another super PAC that supports Clinton, earlier in the year.
This is something gun owners also must take seriously, as Soros’ anti-Second Amendment expenditures have perhaps only been outdone by New York gun-ban billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
Here Comes The Anti-Gun Money
In 2015 Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, pledged to spend $50 million to take on the NRA’s millions of members. Bloomberg ranks eighth on the 2016 list of Forbes’ billionaires, which estimates his net worth at $40 billion. Bloomberg has spent tens of millions of dollars in support of anti-gun groups and politicians, and has been a vocal advocate for every anti-gun scheme in recent history.
As this was being written, Bloomberg had recently decided not to run as a third-party candidate for president, as his research showed—surprise, surprise—that he’d mostly take votes from Clinton. So he hadn’t yet endorsed Clinton or reached into his deep pockets for her campaign, but his eventual support for her seems very likely.
In fact, the two have been close for a long time.
In the summer of 2008, after Clinton lost a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg visited her in Washington, D.C., and told her he wanted to throw her a “welcome home” party, according to Politico. “That August, in the backyard of Gracie Mansion, the mayor invited 400 of her closest friends to celebrate her return to New York politics,” reported Politico. “The cast of the Broadway musical ‘Hair’ performed. The actor Chevy Chase made jokes. Barbara Walters and Oscar de la Renta hobnobbed, and the crowd sipped Big Apple martinis … [When at] the microphone, [Clinton] said she was deeply touched by the party, which the billionaire mayor paid for himself. She hadn’t realized he cared so deeply for her, she said.”
One reason for the affection is clear: Clinton’s anti-gun rhetoric is very much in step with Bloomberg’s. Even her official positions on guns listed at HillaryClinton.com are basically a cheat sheet taken from Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety’s propaganda. One of her official positions, for example, is, “Keep military-style weapons off our streets.” She is talking about so-called “assault weapons” (modern sporting rifles). She backed her husband Bill Clinton’s original 1994 ban and is now calling for a new arbitrary ban on certain semi-automatic, and very popular, rifles.
Perhaps her most consistent attack has been on gun manufacturers. Clinton said in the first Democratic debate last fall that America’s gun manufacturers “are the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability. They can sell a gun to someone they know they shouldn’t, and they won’t be sued. There will be no consequences.” Clinton repeated this false claim on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” by saying gun manufacturers are “the only industry in our country where we have given that kind of carte blanche to do whatever you want to do with no fear of legal consequences.”
Clinton is, of course, referring to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), legislation signed into law in 2005 that was designed to halt politically motivated lawsuits that began during, and were backed by, President Bill Clinton’s administration. These lawsuits attempted to hold gun makers civilly liable for the actions of criminals with the goal of bankrupting manufacturers. The lawsuits filed against gun makers and sellers were akin to someone suing General Motors because, say, some sociopath intentionally drove a GM vehicle into a crowd of people.
In fact, it is very easy to prove Clinton is lying about the PLCAA. Even Politifact looked into this and ruled Clinton’s claim to be “false.” The language of the PLCAA is actually so plain that anyone who takes the time to skim it quickly sees that it loudly states it does not protect gun manufacturers or dealers who break the law or sell a bad product. Nevertheless, Clinton keeps saying it does.
Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn is actually just a short walk from where Jonathan Lowy, an attorney and now a director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, had worked with a team of lawyers on behalf of New York City to push a lawsuit in Brooklyn’s federal court that was attempting to hold gun manufacturers liable for the actions of criminals. Both Mayor Bloomberg and Clinton supported the lawsuit. This legal action was stopped in 2005 when the PLCAA squashed it and other lawsuits like it.
Now Clinton and Bloomberg are trying to turn back the clock and once again make gun makers and dealers liable for the actions of violent criminals.
To see how such liberal elitist movements crawl forward, lets look back just a few months to last November when Clinton attended a $1,000-per-plate fundraiser hosted by the Brady Center in Manhattan’s chic Cipriani restaurant. It was an event filled with New York City’s elite liberal donors and politicians. They honored Clinton with an award. Time reported that “[i]n the audience watching Clinton were actors including Steve Buscemi and Paul Rudd. Lowy was also in the audience.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was one of the speakers at the event. He said, “When Hillary Clinton’s opponents say that they don’t support gun control because they have rural communities in their state, what they really are saying is that they are afraid of a political opposition.” Cuomo added, “The gun issue is the best proxy of our time to judge the essence of an elected official.”
He was at least right about that.
All of this ties together in a tight clique that is a big-liberal-money donor base now fueling Clinton’s aspirations—goals that include taking away your right to bear arms.
As of early April, the list of her campaign’s biggest contributors detailed at OpenSecrets.org was headed by the Soros Fund Management and followed by a list of labor unions, liberal foundations and financial sector firms mostly located in New York City and California.
Anti-Gun Money Vs. We The People
Clearly, Clinton’s politics are in sync with—if not at least partially driven by—big money donors who don’t want you to have the right to protect yourself with a firearm. But is this a savvy political calculation on Clinton’s part? After all, Al Gore made his desire for stricter gun control a plank of his 2000 campaign and arguably lost his own state, and with it the presidency, as a result. Even Obama was careful about the gun issue in 2008 and near his re-election in 2012.Clearly, Clinton’s politics are in sync with—if not at least partially driven by—big money donors who don’t want you to have the right to protect yourself with a firearm.
The reason for not openly attacking the freedom of the American people is sound. There are more than 100 million gun owners in America, and the number of gun owners has been increasing for some time. Also, the number of women who choose to own firearms has been surging. Nevertheless, of all the big issues facing America, Clinton has targeted gun ownership as America’s biggest problem. Perhaps this is because she can’t run on the economy, foreign policy or national security after her dismal record as Secretary of State.
For perspective, I asked Sabrina L. Schaeffer, executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum, if she thinks Clinton is miscalculating with regards to the women’s vote.
“Hillary has overplayed her hand with the sexist narrative,” Schaeffer said. “And, interestingly, this seems to be impacting support for her among even progressive feminists. From the minute she launched her campaign there has been the faulty narrative that she is going to be swimming against a current of sexism. She’s had cheerleaders like Barbra Streisand lamenting that the media mistreats her. But more and more voters are rolling their eyes at this storyline.”
Julie Gunlock, a director and senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, said, “Hillary Clinton advocates for policies that will put women in danger and take away their most basic right—the rights to defend themselves and their families. Guns provide women with the ultimate equalizer during violent confrontations when more often than not the man is physically larger and more powerful than the women he’s attacking. Guns reverse this inequality and give the woman a real chance at fighting back and protecting herself. If Hillary is elected, she’ll take that power away from women.
“Hillary might want to brush up on her statistics if she’s going to take such a wildly unpopular position on guns. Women are buying more guns. They’re participating in shooting sports and more women are hunting today than ever before. Women aren’t afraid of guns. They know guns are a tool that can be utilized to make them more secure.”
Though piles of statistics bear this out, Clinton still seems to think attacking American freedom is a winning campaign issue, and she does so on a nearly daily basis.
The only way to make sure she’s wrong—and isn’t the next resident of the White House—is for all gun owners to work hard to mobilize pro-gun voters against her between now and this November’s election.
