Taking issue with Hillary Clinton’s overdue apology on Tuesday night, Esquire’s Charles Pierce, formerly with the Boston Globe, appeared on the airwaves hours later on MSNBC’s All In to lament that Clinton “didn’t owe me an apology” because “[s]he didn’t do anything to me” with the entire apology being a wash due his belief that “[t]he American people don’t care about” her e-mail scandal at all.
Pierce’s rant was first prompted by Clinton’s exclusive interview with ABC’s David Muir hours earlier and then by host Chris Hayes commiserating with him that the media focusing on Clinton’s apology “just doesn't strike me as necessarily that important and yet, it seems to be a real focal point for a lot of the coverage of this.”
Following a short pause, Pierce began spouting off by rhetorically asking Hayes if Clinton owed him an apology “[c]ause she didn't owe me an apology” seeing as “[s]he didn’t do anything to me” before further pontificating that Americans aren’t interested in the scandal:
I mean, seriously, who is she apologizing to? Is she apologizing to the, you know, the 20 or 50 or 100 people who are on her campaign plane with her? I don't understand, who is she apologizing to? The American people. The American people don't care about this.
<<<Click on the image below to help us with your tax-deductible gift>>>
<<<Thank you for your support!>>>
He then provided viewers with a flashback to one of the many Clinton scandals in the 1990s with a Whitewater reference: “I spent the whole day or the last couple of days having very serious, Al D’Amato Dan Burton flashbacks to the Whitewater investigation. I think we're all living in the cocktail lounge of the Mena airport right now.”
For those who may not remember the details of Whitewater or were too young at the time (as in the case of this writer), Pierce provided his spin on what the Mena Airport meant in context:
The Mena Airport was this – one of the wilder Bill Clinton conspiracy theories was that he was running, you know, cocaine like water through a mill race at a little airport in Mena, Arkansas and that's become at least my shorthand for all the weird stuff that gets thrown at the Clintons because they're the Clintons.
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes on September 8 can be found below.
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
September 8, 2015
8:39 p.m Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: About Those Emails]
CHRIS HAYES: Joining me now, writer at large for Esquire, Charlie Pierce. Charlie, I don't get – well, I guess I understand this sort of apology focus in the coverage of this. Today, she apologized. Was it a sufficient apology? But it just doesn't strike me as necessarily that important and yet, it seems to be a real focal point for a lot of the coverage of this.
ESQUIRE WRITER-AT-LARGE CHARLES PIERCE: Yeah, I mean, did she owe you an apology, Chris? Cause she didn't owe me an apology. She didn't do anything to me. I mean, seriously, who is she apologizing to? Is she apologizing to the, you know, the 20 or 50 or 100 people who are on her campaign plane with her? I don't understand, who is she apologizing to? The American people. The American people don't care about this. I spent the whole day or the last couple of days having very serious, Al D’Amato Dan Burton flashbacks to the Whitewater investigation. I think we're all living in the cocktail lounge of the Mena airport right now.
HAYES: Explain that – explain that reference.
PIERCE: The Mena Airport was this – one of the wilder Bill Clinton conspiracy theories was that he was running, you know, cocaine like water through a mill race at a little airport in Mena, Arkansas and that's become at least my shorthand for all the weird stuff that gets thrown at the Clintons because they're the Clintons.
HAYES: But, I mean, so there's also there’s the e-mail thing, right? There's also this sort of reboot and I read that Times article and I was just a little bit, like, I don't quite get this. Is this, you know, aides, it was just so sort of easily mockable, you know? She will show more spontaneity and I guess any article about a campaign reboot is and maybe nobody cares a the this point anyway, but I didn't understand the strategy of telling the Times this.
PIERCE: Yeah, there's a real – there's a fine line in every campaign. One is a lot of people outside of your campaign are telling you you're doing very badly. The real problem was when the people inside your campaign start to believe them. Now, it's still September, I got the month right this time, by the way, which I didn't last time I was on.
