“I have never met Hillary Clinton, although I tried. When I became the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in January 2002, I asked my assistant to arrange an introduction to the state’s junior senator. After a number of attempts and multiple messages with Clinton’s office, we gave up. It wasn’t a big deal at the time, but I found it odd. To this day, I don’t know why the meeting never happened.”
— Former FBI Director James Comey, writing in A Higher Loyalty.
Jennifer Palmieri, former Hillary Clinton communications director and author of Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World, joins Chris Riback for a great discussion of what the first woman president needs to know.
Rather than dwell on the results of the 2016 election, Palmieri turns the experience into something very empowering for future female leaders.
Subscribe via iTunes or Google Play to get new episodes automatically downloaded to your phone.
Thanks to the Cook Political Report for sponsoring this podcast.
“I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product… So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by CNN, speaking in India over the weekend.
Washington Post: “In the first electoral season since the stunning loss that extinguished her years-long drive for the presidency, Clinton, 70, has begun a discreet and low-profile reentry into the political fray.”
“Her emerging 2018 strategy, according to more than a dozen friends and advisers familiar with her plans, is to leverage the star power she retains in some Democratic circles on behalf of select candidates while remaining sufficiently below the radar to avoid becoming a useful target for Republicans seeking to rile up their base.”
“Most likely, they said, Clinton will attempt to help Democratic candidates who have a history of supporting her and her family, and expending her political capital in a number of the 23 congressional districts she won in 2016 but are now held by a Republican. Lending a hand to Democrats organizing at a grass-roots level is a priority, they added.”
“A senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign who was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young subordinate was kept on the campaign at Mrs. Clinton’s request,” the New York Times reports.
“Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager at the time recommended that she fire the adviser, Burns Strider. But Mrs. Clinton did not. Instead, Mr. Strider was docked several weeks of pay and ordered to undergo counseling, and the young woman was moved to a new job.”
“Justice Department officials are taking a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state,” the Daily Beast reports.
“An ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is familiar with the thinking at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters described it as an effort to gather new details on how Clinton and her aides handled classified material. Officials’ questions include how much classified information was sent over Clinton’s server; who put that information into an unclassified environment, and how; and which investigators knew about these matters and when. The Sessions ally also said officials have questions about immunity agreements that Clinton aides may have made.”
“There is a deliberate, very well-organised, sophisticated assault on facts and reason and evidence. In our country, it’s driven originally by a cabal of billionaires and religious fundamentalists, and their view is that it doesn’t matter what they say. If they say it often enough and they put enough money behind it, they’ll convince a significant number of people.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by The Guardian.
President Trump defended former national security adviser Michael Flynn, saying it’s “very unfair” he was charged with a crime and Hillary Clinton was not, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “Well, I feel badly for Gen. Flynn. I feel very badly. He’d led a very strong life.”
He added: “I will say this, Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. I think it’s a shame.”
“What he told people was a fraud. It’s in keeping with his bankruptcies and his Trump University. He is a con artist, and that’s what Mike Bloomberg called him at our convention and every day that goes by seems to prove that.”
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview with the Washington Post, on President Trump.
“What’s the fucking point? Keep the fight up? History will judge that campaign, and it’s always a period of time before they do. You’ve got to move on. This is Hillary’s problem right now: She doesn’t have anything to do.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by Esquire, saying Hillary Clinton made a mistake writing her campaign memoir, What Happened, so soon after her defeat.
“Not everybody will lose a presidential election, but everybody will suffer loss.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
“I didn’t think he’d be as bad as he turned out to be.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by Politico, on Donald Trump’s presidency. When asked if there was anything about him she admired, she said: “No. The answer is absolutely no.”
Hillary Clinton told Mother Jones that “there are lots of questions” about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election due to Russian interference and widespread voter suppression efforts.
Clinton said Russian meddling in the election “was one of the major contributors to the outcome.” The Russians “weaponized false information” in “a very successful disinformation campaign” that “wasn’t just influencing voters, it was determining the outcome.”
Republican efforts to make it harder to vote, through measures such as voter ID laws, shortened early voting periods, and new obstacles to registration, likewise “contributed to the outcome.”
Former DNC head Donna Brazile “writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton’s fainting spell, in part because Clinton’s campaign was ‘anemic’ and had taken on ‘the odor of failure,'” the Washington Post reports.
“In an explosive new memoir, Brazile details widespread dysfunction and dissension throughout the Democratic Party, including secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the removal of Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) from the ticket after Clinton’s Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.”
“Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. “
“Look, we just elected someone who admitted sexual assault to the presidency.”
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview with the U.K.’s Channel 4 News, when asked about assault allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.