BEVERLY HILLS, May 2, (THEWILL) – Hillary Clinton, the US Democrats presidential candidate that won the popular vote by a mile and lost the electoral college in last November election, says she will give details about what went wrong in a forthcoming memoir.
Hillary gave glimpses of what the memoir, which she said is due for release in September, will contain as she took questions from CNN anchor, Christiane Amanpour, in an event hosted by Women for Women International, an organisation that works for equality and higher standards of living for women in war-torn countries around the world.
She said it’s fair to question President Donald Trump’s legitimacy due to supposed Russian involvement in the election.
“Ask yourselves this: Within an hour or two of the [Access Hollywood] tape being made public, the Russian theft of [Clinton campaign manager] John Podesta’s emails hit Wikileaks. What a coincidence,” she said.
Trump was heard making disparaging remarks about women on the tape, which was recorded in 2005 by Access Hollywood, during an interview with correspondent Billy Bush.
“So, you just can’t make this stuff up,” Clinton added. “Did we make mistakes? Of course we did. Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes. … But the reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events of the last 10 days.”
A big part of those last 10 days was an announcement by FBI Director James Comey that the bureau was looking into potential new evidence in the Clinton email investigation — an extremely rare move by a government agency that close to an election, and one that turned up no wrongdoing on Clinton’s part.
The former Democratic nominee has previously pinned part of the election loss on Comey’s decision and the WikiLeaks emails, which U.S. authorities believe were mined by Russian hackers.
Clinton said she also took some responsibility for losing the 2016 election. “I take absolute personal responsibility,” she said. “I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot.”
She added, “I am writing a book and it’s a painful process, reliving the campaign.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign — there is no such thing — but I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” Clinton said.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president.”
Clinton said the Trump campaign “quite coordinated with the goals” of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the election, adding that Putin “certainly interfered in our election — to hurt me and help my opponent.
“And the evidence for that intervening event is I think compelling, persuasive, and so we overcame a lot in the campaign.”
Though Trump won the Electoral College by a national count of 304-227, Clinton won the actual popular U.S. vote — by more than 2.86 million ballots. She became the second Democratic candidate in 16 years — as well as the second candidate ever — to win the most votes but lose the presidency.
The former New York senator and first lady also said certain questions posed to her during some of the debates harmed the Democrats’ chances against Trump — and that she counts herself as part of the “resist” movement that opposes the current GOP administration.
About the Author
