Back on campus 48 years later, Hillary Clinton didn’t hold back.
In a fiery speech at Wellesley College’s commencement ceremony Friday, Clinton went after President Donald Trump and the controversies that are swirling around him, comparing his imperiled presidency to that of Richard Nixon’s.
“We were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice, after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice,” Clinton said as she discussed the sentiment on campus in 1969, the year that she graduated.
Clinton’s remarks at her alma mater came more than six months after her defeat to Trump, and almost five decades after a young Hillary Rodham’s speech at her own graduation thrust her into the national spotlight.
Clinton, now 69, graduated from the women’s liberal arts college outside of Boston in 1969. The fact that Clinton, who was class president, would speak before her peers on graduation day was remarkable on its own: Prior to that year, the college had never had a student commencement speaker.
But it was her now-well known decision to improvise — and publicly take a US senator on from the stage — that gave Clinton her first real taste of national recognition, fame and controversy, perhaps a defining moment that helped set young Clinton on a path to politics.
Massachusetts Republican Sen. Edward Brooke had just given his remarks, urging the young women who were about to receive their diplomas not to protest the Vietnam War (antiwar demonstrations and sentiments were widespread at the time, particularly among young people).
Clinton, seemingly with little effort, delivered an impromptu response to Brooke, specifically latching on to Brooke’s message that he had “empathy” for those who opposed the Vietnam War.
“Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything,” Clinton said, according to a transcript available on the college’s website. “We’ve had lots of empathy; we’ve had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”
Those off-the-cuff comments, inserted into the middle of her prepared speech, made Clinton both a hero among some on campus and also drew her scorn. The remarks also no doubt put Clinton on the map: She was featured in LIFE Magazine’s spread on the class of 1969 that summer.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN on Thursday that the former secretary of state is excited to return to campus, see old friends and speak to Wellesley students about their futures.
Friday’s commencement speech also comes as Clinton has appeared increasingly willing to speak in public — and rebuke President Donald Trump — months after her defeat by Trump in November.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour earlier this month, Clinton offered stinging criticism of Trump and referred to herself as both “a private citizen and part of the resistance.”
Clinton didn’t mince words about the outcome of the presidential election, saying she believes she would have won if it were not for WikiLeaks’ publishing of hacked emails from her campaign and former FBI Director James Comey’s letter about his bureau’s investigation into her emails just days before Election Day.
“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton said. “And the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling, persuasive, and so we overcame a lot in the campaign.”