An email scandal. So original.

Hillary Clinton found herself in the midst of a controversy last month when reports surfaced that she had used a private email account during her time as Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

Reports stated that Mrs. Clinton used only one email account, which was not government-issued, to communicate both personal and diplomatic information.

The Republican Party, anticipating a presidential run that Mrs. Clinton made official today when she announced she will seek the nation’s highest office in 2016, did not waste time getting on the critical bandwagon.

But according to a March 11 article in The New York Times, it is not the GOP (the members of which “appear too busy jousting among themselves to do much damage to her”) who will become her biggest foes.

It will be the news media.

This is not a big surprise considering how influential the media can be. After all, everything you hear in the “news” must be true, right?

Wrong.

Mrs. Clinton’s email “scandal” is just one of many distractions to come on the road to the presidential election of 2016. People who fear her and people who are threatened by her political supremacy are going to find ways to make the American public lose faith in her.

Mrs. Clinton has stated on numerous occasions that she has turned over 55,000 pages of emails, but mentioned she had deleted some 30,000 as well. The deleted emails caused an uproar because many feared that she attempted to eradicate important information.

She said the deleted emails were personal and had no relevance to the issue.

According to a Times article published on March 15, “Mrs. Clinton said that her lawyer had turned over all of her work-related emails, but she remained steadfast that she would not turn over personal emails, and said that those messages had in fact been deleted.”

“I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email,” Mrs. Clinton said. “There is no classified material.”

It is true that, over the past six months, Mrs. Clinton has seen a drop in approval ratings. According to an article from Sept. 9, The Wall Street Journal reported that 43 percent of registered voters viewed Mrs. Clinton positively.

In a March 11 to March 16 poll from Quinnipiac University, Mrs. Clinton’s approval rating stood at 51 percent.

But here’s the thing: Mrs. Clinton is outpolling any of her potential GOP counterparts, maintaining favorable reviews among the American people.

It appears that Mrs. Clinton will not have any significant Democratic opponents for the party’s nomination. That does not necessarily mean she will have an easy campaign, but polls showcase her appeal among the electorate.

Besides, a presidential race without Mrs. Clinton would be chaos. She keeps everyone else in check.

So what’s the bottom line? Just how detrimental is this “scandal”?

It seems that the GOP might be using this issue to add fuel to a fire that really does not exist. With Mrs. Clinton the projected Democratic nominee, Republicans are looking to dig a hole for their opponent.

If anything, however, the spotlight is on Mrs. Clinton; her name is in every major newspaper out there.

The Republicans seem to be trying to show that they are united behind a manufactured scandal when in reality, according to The Wall Street Journal, they are “divided about the balance between ideology and pragmatism.”

But there is a consequence to all this. As they say, it takes great strides to build yourself, but one false step to bring you down. Mrs. Clinton’s credibility will be continuously hit and her assertions will be questioned.

Should she not have announced a run? No. To do so would be admitting to some incredible wrongdoing.

Mrs. Clinton has showed she is willing to cooperate in order to regain the trust of those who find it difficult to believe her. She is willing to release all emails for the public to read for itself.

That is a pretty big risk for someone with such a high profile to take, but she is adamant she has done nothing wrong.

Let’s be real here. “Emailgate” is not a threat to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.