Despite devoting two full segments, totaling over 11 minutes, to an interview with former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, on her Monday 9:00 a.m. ET hour show, NBC anchor Megyn Kelly failed to ask about the losing Democratic nominee’s recent bitter tirade against voters who did not support her in 2016.
Much of the lengthy exchange was devoted to promoting Palmieri’s new book, Dear Madam President, and her advice for women in the workplace. Ironically, while discussing topics like female empowerment, Kelly avoided pressing Palmieri on Clinton’s nasty claim that women who voted for Donald Trump only did so because they were being told to by their husbands.
Despite refusing to mention the offensive overseas rant that even Democrats have been forced to distance themselves from, Kelly did ask about the campaign, and even challenged Palmieri’s assertion that Clinton’s loss was fueled by sexism:
I want to challenge you on this. You wrote, “Underneath all the questions about wiping the server clean and deleting the e-mails lay the fundamental truth that there was something about Hillary Clinton that folks just didn’t trust.” Which I think is true. But then you say, “And that something was an intelligent, capable, ambitious woman in a position of power.” Having covered the race very closely for all that time, I would submit to you, it was so much more than that.
There’s no question sexism played a role in her defeat, but I watched her at that U.N. press conference when she first addressed those e-mails and she said several, several things that were not true, Jen, as you know. “There was no classified information, I only used one device out of convenience,” which didn’t turn out to be true. There was tons of classified information, 110 e-mails, classified or top secret and so on.
And these things kept unraveling and it led to a distrust that many people, yes, already had of her thanks to Whitewater and all of these other things. But you can’t ascribe even the majority of it to sexism, can you, fairly?
Palmieri maintained her fiction about the reason for Clinton’s defeat and portrayed her old boss as a victim:
I think that a man would have survived that. Okay? And I think that there was going to be something in the campaign, and it ended up to be e-mails. If it weren’t e-mails, it was gonna be something else. And I think that this is what the first woman, this sort of crucible, is what they had to go through – or she had to go through.
Laughably suggesting media bias against Clinton, Palmieri added: “And what I found with reporters on e-mails is the question just kept moving. The goal posts kept moving. And it just fundamentally, I think, there’s just something they find suspicion in a woman looking to succeed.”
Any point in that part of conversation would have been the perfect time for Kelly to grill Palmieri on Clinton smearing Trump voters as “backward,” but that question never came. Instead, the anchor went on to praise her guest’s book and urged to viewers to go out and buy a copy.
Here is a transcript of the political portion of the March 26 interview:
9:19 AM ET
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MEGYN KELLY: But first let me ask you about Hillary and Donald Trump. I thought it was interesting, the day after she lost, you wrote, “What I felt was fear.” How do you feel now?
JENNIFER PALMIERI: I – there are things that I’m still frightened for the country. But I don’t feel – I think that it is – it felt to me like a different universe, and that’s why I wrote about it as starkly as did I in the book. Because I want people to understand, it is – I felt it might not have been a glass ceiling that shattered that night, but something exploded. And I feel like we were in a new universe and I found that really frightening in the beginning.
And then – now I feel empowered. And I think that women could decide after – you know, it’s not so much about politics even, or about Hillary versus Trump, but just that the woman lost, a man like Trump won, and you could decide, that’s how it’s supposed to be or we’ve been playing by the wrong set of rules and we are going to play a whole new game now. And so that’s like the book is about how do you make the most of that sense of empowerment.
KELLY: We’ve seen some of that –
PALMIERI: And you do play by – play by your own set of rules.
KELLY: With the #MeToo movement and so on, a lot of people feel that wouldn’t have been happening had trump not been elected.
PALMIERI: Yes, I think that’s right.
KELLY: I do want to – I want to challenge you on this. You wrote, “Underneath all the questions about wiping the server clean and deleting the e-mails lay the fundamental truth that there was something about Hillary Clinton that folks just didn’t trust.” Which I think is true. But then you say, “And that something was an intelligent, capable, ambitious woman in a position of power.”
Having covered the race very closely for all that time, I would submit to you, it was so much more than that.There’s no question sexism played a role in her defeat, but I watched her at that U.N. press conference when she first addressed those e-mails and she said several, several things that were not true, Jen, as you know. “There was no classified information, I only used one device out of convenience,” which didn’t turn out to be true. There was tons of classified information, 110 e-mails, classified or top secret and so on.
And these things kept unraveling and it led to a distrust that many people, yes, already had of her thanks to White Water and all of these other things. But you can’t ascribe even the majority of it to sexism, can you, fairly?
PALMIERI: So the way I look at it is I think that a man would have survived that. Okay? And I think that there was going to be something in the campaign, and it ended up to be e-mails. If it weren’t e-mails, it was gonna be something else. And I think that this is what the first woman, this sort of crucible, is what they had to go through – or she had to go through.
I went back and watched interviews about Hillary Clinton and of Hillary Clinton from the ’92 campaign, right? And, you know what people – what do you think of Bill Clinton’s wife? Man on the street with most of her interviews, “You know, there’s something about her I just don’t like. There’s something about her I just don’t trust.” And I thought, “Wow.” It was – I felt really liberated in that moment, because I thought, “I am not solving this problem.” This is before Whitewater, this is before Travelagate, this is before anything in the White House, this is before e-mails, health care, anything. And I think she has always been – she’s always challenged the way we’ve thought about women from when she was a young college student.
KELLY: That’s true.
PALMIERI: To when she was Bill Clinton’s wife who is running for president. She made more money than him, she didn’t stay home and bake cookies. She was the first First Lady that worked on policy –
KELLY: But she got in trouble because she sounded judgmental of those who did.
PALMIERI: Yeah, and – yes.
KELLY: And that could be the thing that people don’t like, you know, the judgment.
PALMIERI: Yes, and that is – but that’s my – my point is, she’s always been that. She’s always been stepping a little outside of that box. And I just think that’s how it manifests itself, is that people – she vexes them. They don’t know what to think of her. And what I found with reporters on e-mails is the question just kept moving. The goal posts kept moving. And it just fundamentally, I think, there’s just something they find suspicion in a woman looking to succeed. And it doesn’t mean that the whole world is sexist.
KELLY: No, or that everybody who voted for Trump is sexist.
PALMIERI: Or everybody who voted for Trump is sexist. Or that everybody who doesn’t – you know, there was plenty of fine reasons to not vote for her. But I think I want – I think it is worth going back and looking at that, so we understand what lays at the root of that. And it's like TSAHIJDL, There is Something About Her I Just Don’t Like. And you hear it all of the time about women in powerful positions.
KELLY: Well, listen, even if you disagree with what Jen is saying, look at the history. Name a female president. We’ll wait. We’ll wait. We’ll be sitting here after the break. And why is that? Is it because there hasn't been a talented or smart or ambitious enough one since the beginning of time? Doubtful.
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