Clinton blames Comey, Russia, WikiLeaks, media, DNC for election loss
WASHINGTON- Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she is not the reason she lost the White House to President Donald Trump, but instead put the blame on nearly everyone from the DNC to Netflix.
“I take responsibility for every decision I make -but that’s not why I lost,” Clinton told the California Recode’s Code Conference on Wednesday.
Clinton told the conference that then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen her email investigation 11 days before the election after having discovered Clinton-related emails in an unrelated probe may have distracted voters from Russian election meddling.
“Comey was more than happy to talk about my emails, but he wouldn’t talk about the Russians,” she complained.
Clinton went on to dismiss her email scandal as: “the biggest nothing-burger ever.”
Comey two days before the election closed the second Clinton email investigation.
Clinton blamed the Democratic National Committee for what she perceived to be an ineffective campaign operation.
“I inherited nothing from the Democratic Party,” she said. “I mean, it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong.”
Former Democratic National Committee data science director Andrew Therriault in a series of Wednesday afternoon Tweets that have since been removed-refuted Clinton’s assertion.
“DNC data folks: today’s accusations are f*******g b******t, and I hope you understand the good you did despite that nonsense.”
“Private mode be d****d, this is too important,” Therriault continued in a corresponding Tweet. “I’m not willing to let my people be thrown under the bus without a fight.”
Clinton in part attributed her defeat to the release of damaging information following WikiLeaks’ publications of hacked campaign emails that suggested she had used her family’s foundation as a vehicle to trade favors in exchange for access while serving as the nation’s top diplomat.
Clinton said that WikiLeaks is orchestrated by Russian intelligence and she indirectly accused Trump campaign aides of having colluded with Moscow to undermine her campaign.
“The Russians, in my opinion, and based on the intel and counterintel people I’ve talked to, could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided,” she alleged. “Guided by Americans. And guided by people who had polling and data and information.”
Clinton also blamed the entertainment industry, social media, the mainstream media and even said Netflix had a role in her defeat.
“Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix, last time I checked, were screeds against President Obama and myself,” she said.
“If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to, as we now know, the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,” she alleged.
“They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor,” she said in reference to The New York Times’ coverage of the unexpected October revelation that Comey had decided to reopen the investigation into her email scandal.
Clinton said she is writing a book about her presidential campaign and how the email scandal affected her candidacy.
Polling data suggests Clinton’s defeat can largely be attributed to her failure to gain sufficient support among white working-class voters. Although that demographic has for the most part voted Republican since the Reagan-era, Clinton was the first Democratic presidential candidate in a generation to lose the rust-belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Clinton did not even campaign in Wisconsin whereas Trump zeroed in on that state as well as others that had experienced a chronic loss of manufacturing jobs. She blamed her failure to win Wisconsin on Gov. Scott Walker.
President Trump in a Wednesday evening Tweet called on Clinton to take responsibility for her election loss.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/870077441401905152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.talkmedianews.com%2Fus-news%2F2017%2F06%2F01%2Fclinton-blames-comey-russia-wikileaks-media-dnc-election-loss%2F
This article is republished with permission from Talk Media News
Bryan is an award-winning political journalist who has extensive experience covering Congress and Maryland state government.
His work includes coverage of the election of Donald Trump, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions-as well as that of the Maryland General Assembly, Gov. Larry Hogan, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan has broken stories involving athletic and sexual assault scandals with the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
His original UMBC investigation gained international attention, was featured in People Magazine and he was interviewed by ABC’s “Good Morning America” and local radio stations. Bryan broke subsequent stories documenting UMBC’s omission of a sexual assault on their daily crime log and a federal investigation related to the university’s handling of an alleged sexual assault.