- Argument‹2 of 2
Hillary Clinton's email scandal eroded trust between the Democrats and the electorate
When "Crooked Hillary" was subject to a CIA investigation, many of her supporters switched allegiance to Donald Trump.
The argument
Donald Trump was able to win because of Hillary Clinton's mistakes. The email scandal brought into question the trustworthiness of Clinton and swayed Democratic voters.
Context
During her time as United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used a private email server for official public communications instead of using the official State Department account maintained on secure federal servers. An FBI examination of Clinton's server found over 100 emails containing classified information, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret". This controversy was a major point of debate during the 2016 presidential election, where Clinton was Donald Trump's rival.
Premises
Counter-arguments
The media helped to elect Trump in 2016 by unfairly over-covering Hillary Clinton's email scandal. This gave Clinton a bad image in the eyes of the public and led to more Americans deciding to vote for Donald Trump instead.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] The counter relocates the cause from the candidate to the coverage, arguing that the scandal was over-covered by the media to an unfair degree and that this is what damaged her public image, so the loss of trust reflects the volume of reporting rather than what the conduct itself warranted. [Rejecting C] On that reading the 2016 outcome is not evidence that voters independently disliked her, since the counter holds that the disproportionate coverage is what moved Americans toward voting for Trump.