Most clear-minded observers would agree that among the mortal body blows that have brought the Democrats to their present ebb, the passage of NAFTA in 1993, with consequent evisceration of the American industrial economy, must count as among the most lethal.
Key to that passage was Emmanuel, who directed the Clinton White House operation to get the treaty passed by any means necessary.
For years, Emanuel was the political brains of Bill Clinton's White House. Intense to the point of ferocity, he was known for taking on the most daunting tasks -- the ones no one else wanted -- and pulling off the seemingly impossible, from banning assault weapons to beating back the Republican-led impeachment. "Clinton loved Rahm," recalls one staffer, "because he knew that if he asked Rahm to do something, he would move Heaven and Earth -- not necessarily in that order -- to get it done."
"He's got this big old pair of brass balls, and you can just hear 'em clanking when he walks down the halls of Congress," says Paul Begala, who served with Emanuel on Clinton's staff.
There's the story about the time he sent a rotting fish to a pollster who had angered him.
the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" and plunging the knife into the table after every name. "When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape," one campaign veteran recalls. "It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you."
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In 1999 he left the White House and returned to Chicago where he made millions as an investment banker.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel is ducking questions about his role in the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Citizenship USA Initiative, which he helped direct back in 1996 during the Clinton Administration.
Emanuel, in his capacity as a senior White House adviser to President Bill Clinton, was well known in Department of Justice circles as a “shadow Attorney General,” according to a former Clinton DOJ official.
Emanuel was identified in a 2000 DOJ Inspector General report as a key player in a taxpayer-funded scheme to fast-track legal and illegal immigrants through any means possible for citizenship so that they could vote for the Democrat party. The program was called Citizenship USA.
We’re the party of change,” Emanuel tells me. “We’re the party of a new direction — a break from rampant cronyism and the status quo. Period.”
Lmao get out of here with that BS. He’s the first one the repubs need to dirty.