Politico
By Gabriel Debenedetti
July 7, 2015
Hillary
Clinton believes Donald Trump should be thrown in the doghouse for his
comments on immigration. And that the rest of the Republican party
should be tossed in there
with him.
In
her first national TV interview since she launched her campaign, the
Democratic front-runner seized on the real estate mogul’s controversial
comments on immigration
(calling many Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals”) to shame
the rest of the Republican presidential field.
“I’m
very disappointed in those comments and I feel very bad and very
disappointed with him and with the Republican Party for not responding
immediately and saying, enough,
stop it,”
Clinton said to CNN after headlining an organizing meeting in a local public library.
“But
they are all in the — you know, in the same general area on
immigration. They don’t want to provide a path to citizenship. They
range across a spectrum of being either
grudgingly welcome or hostile toward immigrants.”
Clinton
has already publicly bashed Trump for his comments, through not by
name, after having previously accepted campaign contributions from him
and even attending one
of his weddings.
But
on Tuesday, she played into fears the Republican establishment has
about Trump dragging down the rest of the party with his inflammatory
comments.
She also took aim at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been more supportive of immigration reform than his rivals.
“He
doesn’t believe in a path to citizenship. If he did at one time, he no
longer does,” Clinton said. “And so pretty much they’re — as I said,
they’re on a spectrum of,
you know, hostility, which I think is really regrettable in a nation of
immigrants like ours.”
Clinton
touched on the email controversy that has bogged down the early days of
her campaign, as well, saying she did not violate any rules by using a
private email server
while serving as secretary of state.
“Let’s take a deep breath here. Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation,” she said.
And,
she added, there’s an upshot — the public now gets a glimpse into her
daily life, from telling aide John Podesta to wear socks, to her
struggles with operating a
fax machine.
“Now
I think it’s kind of fun. People get a real-time behind-the-scenes look
at what I was emailing about and what I was communicating about,” she
said.
The
interview, with Brianna Keilar, touched on a broad range of topics —
from Clinton’s doppelganger on “Saturday Night Live” to her plans for an
economic policy speech
in Kansas City on Monday to Democratic rival and surging candidate
Bernie Sanders (“I always thought this would be a competitive race.”)
Clinton
also answered a question about the brouhaha around a woman possibly
bumping Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill. Clinton’s not crazy about a
compromise in which
a woman might share the bill with Hamilton.
“That sounds pretty second class to me. So I think a woman should have her own bill,” she said.
The
airing of the interview followed a full day in Iowa, during which the
front-runner appeared looser-than-usual on the campaign trail.
Nearly
three months into what could be the political fight of her life,
Clinton noted on Tuesday that her time to ride off into the sunset is
not all that far away.
“This
is my last rodeo,” Clinton said during a campaign stop in the
first-in-the-nation voting state on Tuesday afternoon before taking
questions from reporters. Clinton
said she wants to play a role in setting the country on the right path
before hanging up her hat — but hopefully, she said, not until 2025,
after eight years in the Oval Office.
“I
believe that we can leave not just the country in good shape for the
future, but we can get a deep bench of young people to decide they want
to go into politics to
continue the fights that we’re going to be waging,” she said.
The
rodeo characterization may have been more apt than she intended. Her
campaign has been criticized in recent days for using a rope to corral
reporters who were following
Clinton during a parade over the July 4th weekend. Greeting reporters
after an organizing meeting at the Iowa City Public Library, Clinton
nodded to the minicontroversy, looking at the barrier between her and
the press and asking if it was the equivalent of
a rope holding them back.
“I think it should come down,” she deadpanned.
She also glanced upon a range of issues in the news.
“Let’s
not be afraid of the gun lobby, which does not even really represent
the majority of gun owners in America,” Clinton told the crowd of more
than 350 locals. While
she refused to take the bait and attack Sanders when prompted, she has
recently been speaking more about gun control — an issue on which she
differs from Sanders, who hails from gun-friendly Vermont.
Clinton
also focused on the dangers of climate change more than she usually
does, calling it “one of the most existential threats to our country and
our world.” And she
again said that “if a Republican is elected president, that will be the
end of the Affordable Care Act.”
At
times musing on her career as secretary of state, Clinton at one point
said that she jokes with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about
the difficulties of
conducting diplomacy in the modern era.
But
she refused to weigh in forcefully on the ongoing negotiations over
Iran’s nuclear program, telling reporters, “I don’t think it’s useful
for me to publicly comment
right now on what the negotiations are attempting to resolve.
“There
needs to be full transparency, disclosure and verifiable inspections
going forward, and certainly any part of the Iranian nuclear or military
establishment that
has anything to do with the program past, present and future needs to
be subject to that,” she added.
Nonetheless,
the former top diplomat did call the economic situation in Greece a
“tragedy,” insisting that it is important “that we can see an outcome
here that will actually
help Greece recover and keep them in the eurozone, and keep Europe
united.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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