TGP FactCheck
- Hillary regularly rehashes tale of trying to become an astronaut in 1962
- Story probably is another Hillary lie, but the media, including the Washington Post, rate it true even though there’s no evidence to directly support her claim
- The real barrier to becoming an astronaut was her young age, and inability to get necessary training in the military’s test pilot program
- By the time Hillary would have been the right age to be an astronaut, she would have been eligible. . .
"OUR RATING: #FakeNews. This is what you’d expect on CNN playing to an empty airport.
"Young women in 1962 were potentially told that they couldn’t become astronauts in the near future, this is used as an example of pre-feminist attitudes.
"The major missing context in this argument is that, even if Hillary Clinton is telling the truth, which is hard to fathom given her reputation, the source pool for astronauts were specialist military test pilots until 1978, at which point women were admitted.
"This controversy is exaggerated and given a dishonest frame overall to prove a point about feminism. And the major credibility gaps in both Hillary and the underlying documents make this overall claim very suspect.". . .
Did Hillary actually send and receive this letter to NASA? We will never know.
Did NASA accept women in 1962? No, but that deserves significant context and clarification since they were not just excluding women but also most men.
Could Hillary have been an astronaut if she had applied? Yes, if she would have met the other standards, by the time she was the right age the program was accepting women and putting them into space.
Did the patriarchy keep Hillary out of space? No.
Shouldn't Hillary Clinton Be Banned From Twitter Now? "Trial testimony reveals Hillary Clinton personally approved serious election misinformation. Is there an anti-Trump exception to content moderation?"
"Last week, in the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis asked ex-campaign manager Robby Mook about the decision to share with a reporter a bogus story about Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Mook answered by giving up his onetime boss. “I discussed it with Hillary,” he said, describing his pitch to the candidate: “Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter… She agreed to that.”
"In a country with a functioning media system, this would have been a huge story. Obviously this isn’t Watergate, Hillary Clinton was never president, and Sussmann’s trial doesn’t equate to prosecutions of people like Chuck Colson or Gordon Liddy. But as we’ve slowly been learning for years, a massive fraud was perpetrated on the public with Russiagate, and Mook’s testimony added a substantial piece of the picture, implicating one of the country’s most prominent politicians in one of the more ambitious disinformation campaigns we’ve seen.
"There are two reasons the Clinton story isn’t a bigger one in the public consciousness. One is admitting the enormity of what took place would require system-wide admissions by the FBI, the CIA, and, as Matt Orfalea’s damning video above shows, virtually every major news media organization in America.
"More importantly, there’s no term for the offense Democrats committed in 2016, though it was similar to Watergate. Instead of a “third-rate burglary” and a bug, Democrats sent schlock research to the FBI, who in turn lied to the secret FISA court and obtained “legal” surveillance authority over former Trump aide Carter Page (which opened doors to searches of everyone connected to Page). Worse, instead of petty “ratfucking” like Donald Segretti’s “Canuck letter,” the Clinton campaign created and fueled a successful, years-long campaign of official harassment and media fraud. They innovated an extraordinary trick, using government connections and press to generate real criminal and counterintelligence investigations of political enemies, mostly all based on what we now know to be self-generated nonsense.". . .
