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  • 2016-09-27 (xsd:date)
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  • 'Clinton Operative' Removed Secret Folder from Her Lectern After Debate? (en)
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  • The 2016 major party presidential candidates squared off one-on-one for the first time on 26 September at Hofstra University in New York in the first of three debates. While voters mulled over what Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had said about the issues (and each other), Internet conspiracy theorists and fake news web sites honed in on the implausible notion that Clinton had been provided with the debate questions ahead of time, giving her an unfair advantage over her opponent. For instance, the clickbait web site MadWorldNews.com, which is dedicated to spreading Islamophobic stories and other bizarre yarns with headlines such as U.N. Sides with U.S. Black Lives Matter, Orders Whites Do Sick Thing for Blacks shared a story claiming that a man seen in television footage taking a papers off Clinton's lectern just after the conclusion of the first debate was a cleaner, or a Clinton operative, who was tasked with removing evidence of some illicit activity: A bespectacled, white-haired man can be seen entering the frame at the end of the debate, but what can also be seen in the same camera angle is that both Clinton and Trump had papers on their lecterns, most likely notes they were taking during the debate. At the 1:35:20 mark in the below shown video, papers are visible on both Clinton's and Trump's lecterns: The cleaner can be seen collecting the contents of Clinton's lectern (which look like a notepad) then walking in the direction of Trump's: At that point the camera cut away to focus on the candidates interacting with their families, so if the man in question removed similar items from Trump's lectern, that activity was not caught on camera. Note-taking during a presidential debate is far from uncommon. In 2012, President Barack Obama was criticized for taking copious notes while his opponent, Mitt Romney, was speaking. Debate rules typically don't allow candidates to bring any notes or props with them, but they are allowed to take notes during the course of the debate on blank sheets of paper provided by the Commission on Presidential Debates. This practice has been codified in the debate rules since at least as far back as Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale duked it out in in 1984, according to Slate: We have yet to hear back from the Commission on this year's rules, but the most likely explanation for the man glimpsed clearing off items off Clinton's (and possibly Trump's) lectern is that he was simply picking up notes they took during the debate along with any unused sheets of paper. Additionally, it defies logic that if Hillary Clinton had flagrantly cheated during the debate by bringing prepared material along with her in defiance of the rules, she would have left the evidence of her misdeed behind and depended upon someone else to remove it — all openly broadcast on live network television. (en)
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