Patterico's Pontifications

5/19/2015

Hillary Clinton Deigns To Take A Few Questions From The Press

Filed under: General — Dana @ 5:47 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Remember when Hillary promised a new relationship with the press and then went on to break that promise?

“I am all about new beginnings,” Hillary Clinton said at event honoring the late New York Times Robin Toner Monday night in Washington. “A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new e-mail account. The relationship with the press. So here goes: no more secrecy. No more zone of privacy. After all, what good did that do me?”

I know, funny, right? Especially the line about the new email address….

Well, after about a month (or as the WaPo notes: 40,150 minutes) of avoiding the press, Ed Henry of Fox News claims that Hillary was basically pressured (by reporters) today to break her silence:

Here is a summation:

On her relationship with Sidney Blumenthal: Clinton also answered a question about her relationship with Blumenthal, whom The New York Times reported sent her numerous memos about the security situation in Libya before the Benghazi attacks occurred. She defended her relationship with Blumenthal, saying, “I have many old friends. … I’m going to keep talking to my old friends no matter who they are.”

On the Clinton Foundation and questions about its donors: “I am so proud of the Foundation. I’m proud of the work that it has done and that it is doing,” she said, adding that she would “let the American people make their own judgments about that.”

On whether the invasion of Iraq was a mistake: Clinton has previously said her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war was a mistake, and she reiterated that Tuesday as the issue has come back into the headlines in recent days. “I’ve made it very clear that I made a mistake, plain and simple, and I have written about it in my book, talked about it in the past, and you know, what we now see is a different and very dangerous situation.”

On her personal wealth and whether regular Americans can “relate” to her: Clinton, asked about her wealth after personal financial-disclosure forms revealed that she and her husband made $25 million in speaking fees since 2014, said both of them remember their roots. “Obviously, Bill and I have been blessed and we’re very grateful for the opportunities that we had, but we’ve never forgotten where we came from and never forgotten the kind of country we want to see for our granddaughter,” she said. “And that means that we’re going to fight to make sure that everybody has the same chances to live up to his or her own God-given potential.”

According to Robert Costa of the Washington Post, in spite of reporters’ sustained efforts, Clinton took no follow-up questions. (Here’s a few they could have started with: Was Blumenthal paid and by whom in regard to Clinton and the Libya emails? What does she think about Mike Morrell’s (former Deputy Director of the CIA) response to whether or not foreign governments could have gotten information off of Clinton’s server and responding that “I think that foreign intelligence services, the good ones, have everything on any unclassified network that the government uses whether it’s a a private server or a public one. They are that good.” And, in keeping with the press meme this past week, if she knew then what she knows now (that her campaign would be so bogged down by one scandal after another and become stuck in the mire to the point of near non-existence), would she have chosen to put national security at risk with her private server, been utterly dishonest about Benghazi, and taken money from a number of sources under the guise of “donations” – some being paid directly to her without even being laundered through the foundation? Etc! Etc! Etc!)

(Note the strange, trance-like state Clinton seemed to be in when listening to the second reporter ask her a question. Was she stoned? Were her Spanx cutting off her circulation? Or was the automaton simply experiencing a momentary short-circuit? Not to go all Alec Baldwin, but this woman simply can’t become our next president!)

–Dana


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