Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and host of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday night to discuss the fallout from Hillary Clinton’s news conference regarding her sole use of a private email system while at the State Department.
Speaking to Maddow, Mitchell complained about having to cover Hillary’s self-inflicted email controversy and insisted that “the report they issued jointly with the Gates Foundation yesterday, the Clinton Foundation and Gates Foundation report on the no ceilings report, was very important and had a lot of data in it, and I wish we had been working on that, frankly.”
After Mitchell described the “circus” that took place during Clinton’s United Nation’s news conference, the MSNBC host conveniently blamed the press from the 1990s for creating the wall of secrecy around her:
This goes back to the last such press conference, not combative, it was in the state dining room in April of 1994, she was wearing a lovely pink sweater, and she was addressing the question of cattle futures and Whitewater and the Rose law firm and whether they had special benefits from -- and favors because of their position in Arkansas.
Mitchell continued to complain that much like today she would have preferred to cover foreign policy issues such as Bosnia rather than Whitewater and the Rose law firm:
And she answered questions, you know, until the cows came home. And it was a day when there was a lot happening on Bosnia, and a lot of other stories we were really more interested in covering but this was the first chance to interview the first lady about all of this, and she yielded to advice to answer all those questions, they said to her, this will be the end of it, just answer these questions.
The MSNBC host wouldn’t let up in her attempt to justify Hillary’s use of a private email system and insisted that the entire press core “who covered her before, who really wanted to cover the International Women’s Day events” rather than discuss her emails:
And six months later, Ken Starr had been appointed and there was a prosecutor. So, her experience has been, if you answer questions, they’ll want more, and they’ll never be satisfied. And so, that’s why she hunkered down.
Nowhere in Mitchell’s defense of Clinton did she suggest that it was Hillary’s history of secrecy that was to blame for the media coverage surrounding her private emails. Instead, Mitchell accused the media of forcing Clinton to have to hunker down and be less transparent to both the press and the public.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show
March 10, 2015
RACHEL MADDOW: Maybe the only thing you can predict about her run for the presidency is that the person in the front row who will get in the first question and the most aggressive question and the one question she got today actually about women’s rights -- and she will get those questions in there if it kills her and she has to stand on a box to do it -- is NBC’s own Andrea Mitchell, who was there today with Secretary Clinton at the U.N. Andrea, it’s great to see you. You were on a box, weren’t you?
ANDREA MITCHELL: I was on a box.
MADDOW: How tall is this box?
MITCHELL: A lot taller than I am. I had to get high enough so the camera could see me and so that she could see me.
MADDOW: Well, she addressed you by name when she called on you. You got the first very aggressive question Secretary Clinton today. You have spent a lot of time with her at State and in her previous career. Is what you saw today at the U.N. -- am I right in saying that’s a very atypical experience for press and the U.N. and what goes on there?
MITCHELL: I have never seen anything like that. I’ve covered the U.N. for decades. It is a very sedate place. An ambassador comes out of a handful of reporters, you know, ask questions, politely. It was madness today. This was a circus and it was interestingly a combination of the political press corps and some diplomatic press corps, the State Department press corps who had followed Hillary around in mostly respectful ways.
She has not seen anything like this since 2007/2008, because this now was an energized active group of reporters wanting to ask questions about something that she had stonewalled on for two weeks, frankly, and many people, Democrats as well as certainly Republicans, but political analysts think it was self-imposed, this injury that this all could have been disclosed and dealt with much sooner.
MADDOW: In terms of substantive how she dealt with questions today, I tried to run through sort of the assertions of fact that she made and some of the questions that remained. Certainly, we’ve already seen today, particularly among fellow Democrats, there’s been giving her basically some credit for coming out and talking about it, for making herself available for questions, for not trying to stay out of this but rather engaging.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
MADDOW: She’s getting credit for that but in terms of the substantive story, what she addressed, what she advanced today on the story, do you think that she made progress in terms of satisfying people as to what happened?
MITCHELL:I think even just coming out was progress.
MADDOW: Yes.
MITCHELL: Her explanation it was convenience was a little striking because there was guidance. It wasn’t a rule, it wasn’t a regulation, certainly wasn’t a law but there was guidance that you should use the government e-mail system. She used a personal email system. It seemed I think because -- it seems rooted in the experience the Clintons had had in the ‘90s. This goes back to the last such press conference, not combative, it was in the state dining room in April of 1994, she was wearing a lovely pink sweater, and she was addressing the question of cattle futures and Whitewater and the Rose law firm and whether they had special benefits from -- and favors because of their position in Arkansas.
And she answered questions, you know, until the cows came home. And it was a day when there was a lot happening on Bosnia, and a lot of other stories we were really more interested in covering but this was the first chance to interview the first lady about all of this, and she yielded to advice to answer all those questions, they said to her, this will be the end of it, just answer these questions. And six months later, Ken Starr had been appointed and there was a prosecutor.
So, her experience has been, if you answer questions, they’ll want more, and they’ll never be satisfied. And so, that’s why she hunkered down. But in the era of social media, I don’t think you can -- politically, you can’t get away with it especially in the weeks leading up to the launch of a campaign. Let me just say this, there were a number of us from the State Department press corps, you know, who covered her before, who really wanted to cover the International Women’s Day events.
MADDOW: Yes.
MITCHELL: I was in Beijing with her, so --
MADDOW: In 1995.
MITCHELL: In 1995. So that arc goes back very far for me and this was incredibly meaningful. I think the report they issued jointly with the Gates Foundation yesterday, the Clinton Foundation and Gates Foundation report on the no ceilings report was very important and had a lot of data in it, and I wish we had been working on that, frankly.
