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In late July 2016 the above-reproduced rumor began circulating online, holding that Hillary Clinton's running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, had been chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) until he was replaced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz (a former Clinton campaign manager) in 2011 — a move undertaken as part of a long-con plan to influence the 2016 election, agreed to by Kaine in exchange for Clinton's promise to select him as her running mate in 2016. The graphic displayed above was credited a Reddit user, and the comment that inspired it appeared in a 26 July 2016 r/adviceanimals thread reacting to Wikileaks' DNCLeaks. The claim it presented was double-layered: One aspect considered the timeline of events and tenure of DNC chair Wasserman Schultz, and the second pertained to speculative backroom deals made between key players to influence the 2016 election. In the comment on which the image was based, the Redditor said: The last paragraph of the rumor was easy to corroborate. Kaine indeed was chair of the party's national committee until 2011, after which Wasserman Schultz filled the vacancy following a month in which Donna Brazile served as interim chair: After establishing a largely accurate timeline, the rumor flowed into stickier territory that pertained to unknowable motives and potential deal-brokering behind closed doors. However, both Kaine's departure and Wasserman Schultz's appointment were newsworthy in their own right in 2011 and generated plenty of political news coverage. On 5 April 2011, the Washington Post reported Kaine's decision to step down as DNC chair in order to pursue a soon-to-be vacant Senate seat: According to that article, Kaine's decision to seek election to the U.S. Senate was secondary to his position of DNC chair until fellow Democrats, including President Obama, urged him to pursue the former: Just as news coverage cited President Obama as a factor in Kaine's decision to step down and seek a Senate seat, so too did contemporaneous reporting suggest that the appointment of Wasserman Schultz to the DNC chairmanship was driven by Obama's preferences: An earlier article about Kaine's presumed bid for the Senate in 2011 and political chatter about his replacement mentioned that Wasserman Schultz did not have a direct line to the DNC chair position, and several other choices were also on the table: None of these reports prove the backroom deal hypothesis is incorrect, but they did suggest Wasserman Schultz wasn't moved to the DNC chair position without hesitation or consideration of other options. Moreover, such reporting tacked Kaine's departure directly to his decision to seek a Senate seat at the behest of President Obama and not a deal to garner a spot on the national ticket five years in the future. Separate contemporaneous coverage in the New York Times also addressed Wasserman Schultz's ties to Clinton but noted that the former had hopped aboard the Obama train with alacrity in 2008: In light of information readily available at the time, the chain of events (Kaine's Senate run, the search for a successor, and Wasserman Schultz's appointment) appeared far more innocuous than it does now based purely on considering a timeline. It was true that Wasserman Schultz succeeded Kaine in 2011 (with Donna Brazile serving in the interim for a month), and it was also true Wasserman Schultz campaigned for Clinton before flipping for Obama in 2008. But given the number of articles discussing up to four considered replacements for Kaine at the DNC, and the reasons for his 2011 Senate run, the theory's suppositions would require years of false posturing in the media to cover up the purported deal. Viewed through the lens of the July 2016 #DNCLeaks scandal (which revealed that the purportedly neutral committee actively worked as an arm of the Clinton campaign and sought to sabotage the campaign of fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders), the claim about Tim Kaine's vacating his seat as DNC chair sounded somewhat plausible. But the events the claim was based upon it had occurred five years earlier and seemed unlikely as a form of early collusion intended to stack the deck in favor of another future Hillary Clinton presidential bid — at the very least, the claim posited an far-sighted plot to fabricate a Senate seat vacancy to excuse Kaine's departure and deliberate efforts to plant false information about purported contenders for the spot of DNC chair before Wasserman Schultz was appointed. Finally, no reporting at the time suggested that Tim Kaine had recommended Wasserman Schultz as his replacement; rather, such reports held that President Obama did. WikiLeaks' October 2016 Podesta Emails dump involved an exchange between a public relations specialist and former informal Clinton advisor and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta indicating that Kaine may have been tapped for the VP spot as early as July 2015. An e-mail with a subject of Bob Glennon sent by Erick Mullen to Podesta on 15 July 2015 stated:
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