Hillary may have committed the ultimate political culinary sin -- not tipping the waitress -- or did she?
NPR has a nasty little anecdote about Clinton meeting a working-mom waitress at the Maid-Rite eatery in Iowa over the summer, using her story in a speech -- and then stiffing her on the tip. This seemed suspicious to us, because we've witnessed Clinton's coterie of aides at these kinds of events, wads of cash or credit cards in hands, literally fighting each other over who gets to shmear the wait staff (to avoid stories such as these).
Enemies pounced, Drudge drudged, and one enterprising flack likened it to a 2000 Albion, N.Y., stiffing incident.
But Clinton's counter-attacker Phil Singer seems to have come up with a pretty compelling case that the senator actually gave the Maid-Rite staff a $100 tip on a $57 food bill.
Three questions:
1. Will Phil cough up the receipt?
2. Where's the $100?
3. Was Norm Hsu in Iowa at the time?
UPDATE: NPR retracts, confirms tip!
Editor's Note: Since this story aired, Hillary Clinton's campaign contacted NPR to say that the campaign paid Maid-Rite a bill for $157 the day of Clinton's visit and left $100 in tip money. NPR contacted Maid-Rite manager Brad Crawford, who confirmed that a bill was paid and tip money was left. Crawford, who was not in the restaurant at the time, said that he believes a campaign staffer left the money with one of his employees, but "where Hillary was sitting, there was no tip left." Neither Anita Esterday nor the manager on duty that day were available for comment as of noon Thursday.
Glenn Thrush
Comments (3)
Skepticism and actual hands-on knowledge of how things work! Glenn, don't you get it? You guys are supposed to run with idiotic fake stories that smear democrats ;) Great work not pouncing on yet another BS gotcha story.
We are into coverup already.
NPR has NOT withdrawn the story and the waitress stands by her claim.
The latest version is is that the tip was not on the receipt - Hills-pals now claim they only charged the food and left a $100 bill for a tip in cash - right, everyone knows that political campaigns pay tips in cash.
Let's see the receipt (don't hold your breath). Look, they screwed up, in the hustle an bustle they forgot to leave a tip, why don't they just say so?
spin all you want, but the only thing you have quoted is the Clinton campaign and a half-baked partial backdown by NPR, a very faithful friend of Hill's.
The tip is not the issue. The issue is the campaign, instead of simply sending someone out there with some money, is calling the waitress a liar. After Hillary used her as a campaign example without her permission.
When JFK was President-elect, he was attending mass and found himself money short for the collection. He borrwed a $20 fromone of his aides and made sure he was seen doing the right thing. Hillary and her machine could have turned this into a humorous chance to show how much she cares about those she claims to care for. Instead she and her machine come across cheap and evasive. And when combined with other Hillary stories of how she treats those who serve her, a picture of someone out of touch and very harsh emerges.