Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she takes personal responsibility for her 2016 loss, but also pointed to the timing of a letter from FBI Director James Comey and Russian interference as factors.
“Yes, I do think (Russian interference) played a role. I think other things did as well. Every day that goes by we find out more about the unprecedented inference, including from a foreign power whose leader is not a member of my fan club,” Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women event in New York, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It is real, it is very much a part of the landscape, political and socially and economically.”
She also pointed out multiple times she won the popular vote, earning more votes than President Donald Trump, despite losing the Electoral College and hence the White House.
The former secretary of state also pledged to “publicly request” that the Trump administration “not end our efforts making women’s rights and opportunities” central to US policy.
Clinton praised Defense Secretary James Mattis for making the case for maintaining US foreign aid funding, despite a budget request by President Donald Trump that would cut it.
“I am hoping that because of voices like Jim Mattis and others that that will begin to influence the administration,” she said.
Clinton also responded to Trump’s comments on being open to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un.
“I take this threat very seriously. But I don’t believe that we alone are able to really put the pressure on this North Korean regime that needs to be placed,” she said. “Now the North Koreans are always interested … in trying to get Americans to try to come to negotiate to elevate their status and their position and we should be very careful about giving that way. We should not offer that in the absence of a broader strategic framework to try to get China, Japan, Russia, South Korea to put the kind of pressure on the regime (that will bring them to the table).”
Clinton, who has not shied away from critiquing Trump, is addressing two groups in New York Tuesday that have plenty of gripes with the new president.
The former secretary of state is beginning to chart her post-2016 election life with a series of speeches and a new book. She first headlined the Women for Women International event before later speaking at a Planned Parenthood 100-year anniversary gala.
Women for Women International is a decades-old nonprofit that advocates for women in war-torn and conflict-ridden areas of the world. The group has protested the President’s plan to bar certain refugees from entering the United States.
Planned Parenthood has been vocal in their opposition to Trump, slamming many of his appointees and the Republican plan to defund the organization.
Both venues offer Clinton the opportunity to comment on Trump’s first 100 days in office and organizers at Planned Parenthood expect the 45th President will come up in the former Democratic nominee’s speech.
Since spending months out of the limelight after the 2016 campaign, Clinton has re-emerged onto the public stage as the Republican Party grapples with Trump and the Democratic Party searches for a leader.
In a series of speeches, Clinton has shown a willingness to knock the President, even if indirectly.
In March, Clinton called the Trump-backed health care bill “disastrous” and knocked the plan for doing away with a maternity care requirement in health care.
“Really? Take away maternity care?” Clinton said during her keynote address at the annual conference hosted by the Professional BusinessWomen of California. “Who do these people talk to?”
And in April, Clinton told another group of women that she is “deeply concerned” with how Russia meddled into the 2016 election.
“A foreign power meddled with our election and did so in a way that we are learning more about every single day,” she said.
She also added that it was “somewhat gratifying” to see Trump mystified about how complex health care is.
“You know, health care is complicated. Right?” Clinton said in a jab at Trump. “That was somewhat gratifying.”
The small group of aides who are still in regular contact with Clinton stress, though, that the recent uptick in Trump criticism does not mean the former secretary of state is on a comeback. Clinton, they say, has remained in touch with an array of groups and while it may appear she is growing more political, the speeches don’t foretell a more forceful jump back into the political fray.
The aides say that Clinton will knock the Trump administration when she sees fit — as evidenced by an April broadside against White House press secretary Sean Spicer after he chided a black female journalist for shaking her head at a news conference.
“Too many women have had a lifetime of practice taking this kind of indignity in stride,” Clinton said.
But they say the former secretary of state is more interested in helping the Democratic Party in 2018 and beyond then resuscitating her own political career.