There goes the right’s answer to George Soros in 2008. Scaife says he’s still a Republican. But he and the man he hired to dig up dirt on the Clintons in the 1990s, Christopher Ruddy (now editor of NewsMax) may have become part of the Elvis entourage.
Scaife was no run-of-the-mill Clinton hater. In the 1990s, the heir to the Mellon banking fortune contributed millions to efforts to dig up dirt on President Clinton. He backed the Clinton-bashing American Spectator magazine, whose muckrakers produced lurid stories about Clinton’s alleged financial improprieties and trysts. Scaife also financed a probe called the Arkansas Project that tried, among other things, to show that Clinton, while Arkansas governor, protected drug runners…
Bill Clinton now finds himself the unlikeliest of Scaife heroes. Last month Ruddy posted a softball interview with Clinton on the Newsmax site (sample question: “What is the best thing about being an ex-president?”). A worshipful cover story followed in the current edition of the magazine. Clinton, it gushed, is “a political and cultural powerhouse” who is “part Merlin and part Midas—a politician with a magical touch.”
What is going on here? Scaife declined to comment, but Ruddy tells NEWSWEEK he and Scaife believe Clinton’s life since leaving office has been “very laudable,” and that he is doing “very important work representing the country when the U.S. is widely resented in the world.” He said they never suggested Clinton was involved in Foster’s death, and insisted they were not among those hyping alleged Clinton sex scandals, though he acknowledged their work may have encouraged others.
The alternate universe equivalent of this would be if, say, George Soros suddenly struck up a friendship with George W. Bush. Or if Sid Blumenthal suddenly grew a human heart. It’s that shocking and unlikely.
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