On CNN Thursday afternoon, Chris Cuomo sat down with Hillary Clinton to discuss the recent conflicts in the Democratic party and what her strategy will be to defeat Trump, if she becomes the eventual nominee. Instead of asking hard-hitting questions that have been raised by Clinton’s critics, Cuomo followed the majority of the media’s example and asked Clinton sympathetic softball questions like, “Do you ever feel compelled to defend your honor [or] the honor of your husband?” and how she “gets up” after being “bullied” by Trump.
Cuomo began by bashing Trump’s “heavily personal” “ugly” attacks against Clinton, bringing up Bill Clinton’s infidelities and the Clinton Foundation as examples of where Trump inappropriately went “personal” as if these weren’t legitimate issues to bring up. Cuomo praised Clinton’s ability to “stay above that” before asking if Clinton felt “compelled” to defend her family’s “honor.”
CHRIS CUOMO: Do you ever feel compelled to defend your honor, the honor of your husband?
HILLARY CLINTON: No.
Clinton told Cuomo that she didn’t feel responding to the questions would make sway with voters who “fundamentally agreed” with Trump on his more controversial statements, including “criminalizing abortion.”
CLINTON: He took out a field that couldn’t really criticize him on issues because they fundamentally agreed with him. They don’t want to raise the minimum wage either. They all want to criminalize abortion. When he would say these outrageous things, more dramatically perhaps than his Republican counterparts were saying, they were stymied. And when it got to the personal piece of it, they just tried to respond tit for tat. If you pick a fight with, you know, a bully, you know, you're going to be pulled down to their level.
Cuomo offered no impartiality to what Clinton said, egging her on,“But at some point you have to stand up to a bully, as well, right? That's what we teach our kids.”
At the end of the interview Cuomo threw even more softballs asking Clinton about how her mother “inspired” her to “get up” after facing attacks about her “foundation” or “marriage or whatever” as if these had no bearing on Clinton’s credibility.
CUOMO: Nobody saw what is happening in this election coming down the road. What do you think about when you think about your mother and the inspiration about how you get up? You've never faced an opponent like Donald Trump before. The way he's coming after you, whether it's the foundation or your marriage or whatever. What do you think the advice would be about what to do to him?
See the partial transcript from CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin May 19.
CHRIS CUOMO: Do you ever feel compelled to defend your honor, the honor of your husband?
HILLARY CLINTON: No.
CUOMO: With statements he's making that go to the core of the relationship?
CLINTON: No. Not at all. I know that that's exactly what he is phishing and I'm not going to be responding.
CUOMO: So as you head forward in this, where do you believe the path forward is from here? What do you think happens within the democratic party going forward? Because it does seem to be somewhat of an unknown right now. Not the math about the nomination. That's frankly, the easy part.
CLINTON: Right, it is.
CUOMO: Where does the party windup and how?
CLINTON: Right.
CUOMO: What do you bring against Donald Trump? You know what he's bringing against you.
CLINTON: Well, I think that we are going to come together. We will unify. That doesn't mean we won't have some vigorous discussion and debate about issues, about the platform, about all of the process of a convention. I welcome that. I think that's healthy.I think bringing people into the party giving them a voice at the end is going to help us in the fall.
I think as I said I will certainly do my part and more to reach out and bring in Senator Sanders supporters and I have every reason to expect he'll do the same.
I think we'll have a great convention in Philadelphia and then we'll go out and carry on the campaign against Donald Trump. And the Republicans. And I really believe that we're going to have a strong, compelling case to make about the choice that the American people will be facing.
And I feel, you know, very optimistic about how the election will come out and I also feel optimistic about the country. I mean, most of what Trump says is pretty negative about America. It's pretty much fearmongering, criticizing. You know, we are well positioned if we do our part. If we show leadership, if we bring people together. I think the three big tests any of us have to meet who is running for president, Can you produce positive results in peoples' lives? I have a track record of doing that. Can you protect America? Can you be commander in chief? Can you lead the world toward safety and prosperity? And no. 3, can you unify the country? I think on all three of those I'm able to go to the American public and say, I can meet that test and I believe on all three of those Donald Trump can not.
CUOMO: Last question. I don’t want to keep you from your hometown but I have to ask you this. When you started this campaign, you talked about your grand kids and you talked about your mother.
CLINTON: Right.
CUOMO: Nobody saw what is happening in this election coming down the road. What do you think when you think about your mother and the inspiration about how you get up? You've never faced an opponent like Donald Trump before. And the way he's coming after you, whether it's the foundation or your marriage or whatever. What do you think the advice would be about what to do to him?
CLINTON: I think same advice my mother always gave me and everybody gets knocked down and knocked around in life and the real test is whether you get back up, you dust yourself off and keep going.
And my mother's life, which was really so different from mine because she was abandoned and neglected by her family and was out working on her own to survive at the age of 14. And someone's home is a maid and a babysitter. She taught me resilience and courage and the power of love and kindness. Because that's what kept her going. Not from her own family. But from the teachers that saw the spark in her and reached out to help her. Even from the woman whose house she worked in and knew how desperately my mother wanted to go to high school.
And so she said, Dorothy, if you can get up early and get your chores done, I'll let you go to high school but you have to come right back. And that might sound harsh to our ears with your beautiful children and my adorable granddaughter, but to my mother it was a gift that she could actually go to high school while working to support herself. So, I by osmosis and example, know if you're putting yourself in the arena everything that just goes with life as hard as it may be, is probably amplified, magnified, increased. I get that. I'm someone in the library of my hometown in park ridge, Illinois, a place I spent a lot of hours in, I am the recipient of not just my family's sacrifice, but this country's promise and I feel with all my heart, Chris, that's what's really on the ballot come November.
Are we going to reconfirm the promise of America, which does have a place for immigrants, which does try to move people to be more unified and not divisive, that does expect leaders to bring people together, not tear them apart? Are we going to chart a course in keeping with our history? Because I think we already are great but there’s no guarantee we stay great unless we work together, leaders and citizens alike. So coming back to this place where I went to public school, my first jobs in the park system and the time at the library and the movie theater across the street inspires me to make sure that my granddaughter has the same opportunities that my mother made sure to provide for me. That is my mission and that's what I will try to do and stand for in this campaign.
