Woodstock, Illinois is a quaint, idyllic town surrounded by farm fields. It is the city in which the high school I attended in the 1980s is located, and outside of some touches of suburban sprawl, it hasn’t changed a whole heck of a lot since that time. There is a scenic downtown area known as the Woodstock Square, which contains a historic opera house, a mid-nineteenth-century courthouse, and numerous businesses, centered around a tree-lined park with two gazebos and a Civil War monument.
It is the town where the movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, was filmed in 1992. Each year, in recognition of the movie, the town celebrates with a Groundhog Days event. This year, the city held a six-day event of all-things-Groundhog, marking the thirtieth anniversary of the filming of the movie, with activities ranging from a Groundhog Day bags tourney to a Groundhog Day pub crawl.
If you haven’t seen this romcom, the plot centers around a character played by Murray, who is stuck in a repetitive, cyclical time loop, as if he is trapped in a pattern of déjà vu. Though I have long been a fan of Bill Murray from the days back when SNL was actually funny, Groundhog Day is not one of his finest comedic moments. But, being that it is February, and in the celebratory spirit of the thirtieth anniversary of the filming of the movie, it seems fitting to point out that the nation itself seems to be experiencing a bit of a time loop: one in which Hillary Clinton rehashes her 1990s “vast right-wing conspiracy” claim again and again.
You see, in the Clinton-spun narrative of self-victimization, Hillary and Bill are the objects of some nebulous political conspiracy. But for the millions of Americans who observed the Clinton team’s strategic deceit concerning the Monica Lewinsky affair unfold on television in 1998, Hillary Clinton’s twenty-first century public response to the Durham investigation sounds familiar. It’s like reliving the same episodic past again and again. Different century, same spin. In the Clinton déjà vu realm, John Durham is Ken Starr 2.0.
Back on January 27, 1998, Hillary Clinton sat down with the now-disgraced Matt Lauer, to be interviewed on the Today show concerning the rumors that her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, had been involved in a sexual relationship with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. See, Hillary speaks out on Lewinsky accusations, Jan. 27, 1998, today.com. Toward the beginning of the interview, Hillary pointed out that Bill had “denied the allegations, on all counts, unequivocally” and she suggested that the claims against her husband were the result of an “intense political agenda at work.” She blasted the prosecution as using the criminal justice system “to achieve political ends” and said it was “part of an effort, very frankly, to undo the results of two elections.” Her most memorable line of that interview, when she tried to deflect blame away from her husband, was when she dramatically claimed that there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” This is a line that has not aged well.
Humorously so, during the interview, Hillary said that she was going to wait patiently and that the truth would eventually come out. It did, as it most certainly always does. It was ultimately revealed that Bill Clinton did indeed have a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He lied to the American people about it. He lied under oath about it too: an infraction serious enough to warrant suspension of his law license in the state of Arkansas, though not evidently serious enough to stop the Democratic Party from inviting him to speak twenty-plus years later at its 2020 convention.
1998 was a long time ago; but fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and here we are again, stuck in the Clinton time loop. Now, though, instead of using the “vast right-wing conspiracy” line in defense of her husband, Hillary is using similar tactics to defend herself. The catalyst behind Clinton’s revisiting of her victimology act, is special prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the false Trump-Russia-collusion narrative that dogged former President Donald Trump throughout his presidency. Durham’s recent court filing in the criminal case against the Hillary Clinton Campaign’s former attorney, Michael Sussmann, touched off a firestorm of legal and political opinions as to the potential significance of its contents.
Durham’s court filing also sparked a written response by former President Donald J. Trump, in which he alleged that the pleading by Special Counsel Durham, “provides indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia. This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution.” See, Statement of Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, Feb. 12, 2022, donaldjtrump.com.
Hillary’s counter to right-leaning commentary and former President Trump’s comments was to resurrect her conspiracy-theory bit from 1998. In her speech to the 2022 New York Democratic Convention, Clinton stated, “And we can’t get distracted, whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense or some new right wing lie on Fox or Facebook. By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny – the more trouble Trump gets into the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get.” See audiovisual footage, Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at the 2022 New York State Democratic Convention, Feb. 17, 2022, foxnews, youtube.com.
What actually is funny is how Hillary Clinton’s comments in 2022 sound an awful lot like her artful defense of her husband back in 1998: Gee, it’s that darned vast right-wing conspiracy at work again! Heck, this defense worked so well in the last century, why not use it in this one, too?
With Hillary Clinton’s story, every day is like being stuck in a Groundhog Day-like time loop, with Hillary doomed to repeat the cycle of defending accusations by pointing the finger of blame at the shadowy right-wing conspiracy. While her smoothly-delivered 1998 interview with Matt Lauer about the accusations against her husband is still entertaining to watch some twenty-plus years later, Clinton was absolutely correct in one point: that the truth would eventually come out. It always does.