EDITORIAL: Hillary Clinton now plays dumb

Hillary Clinton has spent the past few months firing arrows at Donald Trump from a number of fronts. On foreign policy, the former secretary of state touts her diplomatic experience, judgment and leadership over Mr. Trump’s supposed amateurish and inexpert approach to international affairs.

“He’s just not unprepared,” Mrs. Clinton said during a June speech in California. “He’s temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. … He says he has foreign policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia. The stakes in global statecraft are infinitely higher and more complex than in the world of luxury hotels.”

As opposed to Mr. Trump’s “loose cannon” approach, Hillary Clinton, we’re assured, offers the nation a sober, pragmatic and prudent vision of the world, one characterized and shaped by her depth, wisdom and sophistication.

Interesting, then, that FBI notes released last week covering the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices reveal that the Democratic presidential candidate portrayed herself as a faltering novice unfamiliar with basic security practices and safeguards.

For instance, Mrs. Clinton told the agents she had no idea that the letter “c” stood for “confidential” in official government communications. Instead, she insisted that she thought the letter marking had been a way to alphabetize paragraphs on documents.

She also told the FBI that she didn’t know the difference between the federal classification levels of “top secret,” “secret” and “confidential.” Mrs. Clinton attributed this to the fact that “she could not remember ever receiving training on how to handle classified material, despite the fact that she signed her name to a form agreeing to the proper treatment of sensitive records,” the Washington Examiner noted.

During the July 2 FBI interview, the heavily redacted notes disclose, she also told agents that she “did not recall” or didn’t remember specific information on more than three dozen occasions. And contrary to her repeated assertions that she never sent classified information on her private server, the FBI found she had, in fact, been involved in more than 81 such email chains.

So now the seasoned stateswoman of media lore offers up the “I didn’t know what I was doing” defense. Instead of “smart” and “savvy,” the word “pathological” comes to mind.

“To the public, she claims to be a sharp professional who knows the score,” the Wall Street Journal opined over the weekend. “To the FBI, she presents herself as a clueless grandee who left the details to her minions.”

Either way, she’s lying to someone. But that, of course, should come as no surprise.