NBC News Clinton campaign correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell was naturally among the first handful of individuals to comment late Tuesday night on Hillary Clinton’s primary victory speech and Mitchell did so by reminiscing about how intertwined both of the careers have been that’s led to “a moment that has been many years in the making.”
Breaking news anchor Brian Williams set the scene by tossing to Mitchell at Clinton’s rally in point out that “when I arrived as White House correspondent, you had just covered the arrival of the Clintons in Washington,” so she has “covered the journey in all the years since.”
Before alluding to the many scandals Clinton has created or been a part of, Mitchell spent some time praising Clinton, noting how she actually knew Clinton’s late mother Dorothy Rodham, and acknowledging the link between their careers:
Well, I was very struck by Hillary Clinton talking about Dorothy Rodham, her mother, whom she talked about on Roosevelt Island when she was kicking off her campaign. I knew Mrs. Rodham and the fact that she was born on the day that women got the right to vote, when I think of the arch of my own career covering the 1977 women's conference in Houston for International Women's Year, going with Hillary Clinton to Beijing when she first declared that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights...So this is a moment that has been many years in the making[.]
It was only after this fluff that Mitchell made mention of how the former secretary of state “has had a lot of missteps and made a lot of wrong turns along the way, and she's still going to have to pay the price for those with the e-mails and all of the other things she's done to protect her from the preying eyes of journalists and the Freedom of Information lawsuits.”
Alas, not all was lost for Clinton fans as the faithful reporter returned to the moment at hand and more anecdotes about the Clinton’s mother and 2008 campaign plus this observation:
[T]his is a moment that really is historic in every sense of the word and talking about her mother and her daughter who’s about to have another baby, you really feel that sense tonight — it is interesting she never mentioned her husband, Bill Clinton.
The relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s The Place for Politics 2016 on June 7 can be found below.
MSNBC’s The Place for Politics 2016
June 7, 2016
11:02 p.m. EasternBRIAN WILLIAMS: Andrea Mitchell is — remains there in the hall at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Andrea, when I arrived as White House correspondent, you had just covered the arrival of the Clintons in Washington. You have covered the journey in all the years since. Talk about tonight in — in terms of the long-term time frame.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, I was very struck by Hillary Clinton talking about Dorothy Rodham, her mother, whom she talked about on Roosevelt Island when she was kicking off her campaign. I knew Mrs. Rodham and the fact that she was born on the day that women got the right to vote, when I think of the arch of my own career covering the 1977 women's conference in Houston for International Women's Year, going with Hillary Clinton to Beijing when she first declared that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights, that was a speech that the State Department and the National Security Council did not want her to give and she with her speechwriter huddled on the plane as we were flying to Beijing, not letting the State Department and National Security Council staff see the draft, because she knew they would try to veto it. So this is a moment that has been many years in the making, and she has had a lot of missteps and made a lot of wrong turns along the way, and she's still going to have to pay the price for those with the e-mails and all of the other things she's done to protect her from the preying eyes of journalists and the Freedom of Information lawsuits, but this is a moment that really is historic in every sense of the word and talking about her mother and her daughter who’s about to have another baby, you really feel that sense tonight — it is interesting she never mentioned her husband, Bill Clinton. She mentioned her mother and her daughter from the stage. She didn't mention her husband, who was mobbed by the crowd when he worked the rope line here.
One of the things — Chris Matthews was talking about what she said, her tough language against Donald Trump. She said, my mother taught me not to back down from a bully, and that is true. That is her childhood in Park Ridge, Illinois, and she's not going to back down from this campaign. I think she feels that she has found the right cadence, the right sound to go after the issues that he himself has handed her and he was mocking her for playing the women's card right when we were in Philadelphia for that primary night. Well, she turned that to advantage by turning it into a fundraising vehicle and going — having a website where they issued women's card, membership cards to anyone who wanted to sign up and donate some money. So, I thought this speech, as Chris and all of you have been saying, was magnanimous to Bernie Sanders, and I think now is the moment to reach out. Already, the talks are under way, very preliminariarily, between Jeff Weaver for Sanders and Robby Mook for Hillary Clinton and we'll have to see whether they can, you know, replicate the moment where Obama — Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton came together in Diane Feinstein's northwest D.C. living room. Hillary Clinton's suggestion, following up on an invitation from Diane Feinstein, exactly eight years ago this week. That's when they sat together drinking glasses of water and one on one worked out the deal to make it possible for her to be his secretary of state, which I think made it possible for this night to take place. Where she takes it from here remains to be seen, whether she runs a smart campaign and takes advantage of the fact that she is running against a candidate who has hurt himself badly in the last couple of weeks, giving her certainly a lot of ammunition in this campaign.
WILLIAMS: Andrea Mitchell in the Brooklyn Navy Yard looking at the long scope of what led up to tonight.
