After facing a friendly interview from Christiane Amanpour Tuesday at an international women’s conference, Hillary Clinton had nothing to fear but more nice remarks from her friends at the “Clinton News Network.” While the network’s roundtable of analysts fawned over the “remarkable” interview Clinton gave, CNN’s David Chalian gave the gushiest remark of them all, calling it “the most authentic” and “astonishing” Clinton appearance he’d “ever seen.”
The panel consisting of Dana Bash, Brianna Keilar, Nia-Malika Henderson, Wolf Blitzer, and David Gregory expressed surprise at what Clinton said, calling it “remarkable” and an “incredible interview.” Talking about Clinton’s numerous attacks against Trump during the interview, Keilar laughed, “[She was] downright trolling him, I think!”
Blitzer then brought on CNN’s Political Director David Chalian to get his take on what Clinton said, to which he touted how “real” Clinton seemed:
DAVID CHALIAN: Wolf, after covering Hillary Clinton for more than 15 years and looking at many of her public appearances, I found this to be perhaps the most astonishing Hillary Clinton appearance I've ever seen. It was perhaps her at her most authentic -- authenticity is a word we talk about in politics all the time and in terms of Hillary Clinton, there was somehow a deficit of that over her career. Authentically raw, authentically bitter, authentically pissed off, if you will, at these election results that while she noted she was taking responsibility, her name was on the ballot but clearly placing the bulk of the blame on Comey and on Putin for Wikileaks and clearly thinking that an election that she believed was sort of rightfully hers, that she was winning, she said, was taken away from her in those cases and she's clearly not resolved that yet. There's still some real resentment that was apparent and I'm sure a lot of her critics will slam her for not talking more about how she didn't visit Michigan or Wisconsin and what have you. But what I think we saw on display there, Wolf, was a real, authentic and raw Hillary Clinton who was publicly revealing herself in a way that I don't recall her ever doing before.
Chalian went on to wonder if this supposedly “authentic” Clinton was indicating she was going to run for office again in the future.
CHALIAN: Yeah. And it startled me just watching it. This is Hillary Clinton that I don't know if she's either indicating as she's writing this book she told Christiane she's wrestling with this. It’s been a difficult process. Is this her sort of final way to get all of this off of her chest, what she experienced last year and put this in the book and be done with it? Or was this a Hillary Clinton demanding to still stay on the stage and have her say because she clearly has not sort of like left the campaign behind? It's clearly something that she's been critiquing the Trump administration for the things it’s been doing and she clearly still wants to have a voice, right now a voice of criticism that she's seen, that has real impact.
While the panel did mention a few times Clinton’s reluctance to take full responsibility for losing the election, the panel still made sure to defend her excuses as reasonable and at least part of the reason as to why she lost.
For example, right before this comment from Chalian, CNN analyst and former NBC News host David Gregory spent time rehashing Democrat talking points, blaming “misogyny,” James Comey and Vladimir Putin for Clinton’s loss:
I think she’s absolutely right about the unprecedented steps that Jim Comey took as FBI Director ---completely disregarded Justice Department policy for however many years on how to handle an investigation. That’s incontrovertible. We don't know the exact impact but just because she screwed up with her judgment and in the investigation of the e-mail server, does not mean she should have been subjected to something no citizen should be subjected to, including the leaks of interviews that were done in the process of the investigation by the FBI.That was absolutely totally appropriate. But she doesn’t seem to grapple with the idea that she missed the mood of the country that was for such radical change and that was not her. I do, however, believe that she’s right in that misogyny played a role in why people voted against her and maybe her book will bring in a wider conversation about all that.
