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Hillary Clinton discusses Trumps inauguration in 2017

Mrs Clinton was obliged to attend, not because she was the Democratic presidential nominee that year, but because she is a former First Lady, being married to Bill Clinton. However, she confessed on a UK chat show that she tried to get out of it by calling other former Presidents and First Ladies to ask if they were going. She felt that if they were not the only ones refusing to attend, they could get away with it.

Unfortunately for the Clintons, everyone else said they were going to go, except George HW Bush and Barbara Bush, who were in hospital at the time.

Both Mr Bush and Mrs Bush died just one year later aged 94 and 92 respectively in 2018.

Mrs Clinton recalled the details of her plot in an interview on The Graham Norton Show on BBC One.

She said: I really tried to get out of going.

I was going, not as the candidate or the opponent but as a former First Lady, because the tradition is Presidents and former First Ladies all show up regardless of Republican or Democrat to show support and continuity of our government.

READ MORE:Ivanka Trump poised to stop Donald Trumps final trick up his sleeve

So we thought maybe others arent going, so we called the Bushes and the elder Bushes were in the hospital, which I think was legitimate.

Mrs Clinton said the last bit rather tongue-in-cheek and the audience guffawed.

She continued: So then we called the younger Bushes and they said, Yeah, were going, we called the Carters, they said, Yeah, were going.

So, Bill and I looked at each other and said, Well, weve got to go.]

The former Secretary of State then described what it felt like to attend the inauguration of someone she lost the election to, and someone who ran such a divisive campaign.

She referenced her book What Happened, which was released that year, in 2017.

Mrs Clinton said: Oh my gosh. I try to describe in the book what that felt like, because I didnt know what to expect.

What I wanted to have happened was, despite the kind of campaign he ran, I wanted him to rise to the occasion of being our president, and being the president for everybody not just people who supported him. That didnt happen.

And so we were sitting there and we were listening, I was sitting next to George W Bush and Bill was on my other side, and were listening to this really dark, divisive speech that I describe as a cry from the white nationalist gut.

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And I was so disappointed, really so sad that it wasnt an outreach, it was a narrowing and a hammoring of what he said before.

And its reported, so I put it in the book, its reported that George W Bush at the end said, That was some weird s***.

Mr Trump, having lost the election in which he was trying for a second term in office, has said he will not attend Joe Bidens inauguration on January 20.

However, his daughter Ivanka Trump is reportedly planning on attending against her father's wishes.

The President is said to have described it as the worst decision she could ever make.

Since losing the election in November, Mr Trump has claimed it was rigged and stolen from him and his supporters via widespread electoral fraud.

However, there is no evidence to suggest this is correct.

Last week, after the Georgia run-off result switched power in the Senate over to the Democrats, Mr Trump held a rally in Washington DC.

At the rally, he urged his supporters to make their voice heard, and a huge crowd of people descended on Capitol Hill and stormed the building.

In the violence that ensued, shots were fired, four people died, two pipe bombs were found but thankfully not detonated, and more than 70 people have had charges brought against them.

Accused of inciting the violence, Mr Trump was permanently banned from Twitter and suspended from numerous other social media platforms.

With just a week until Mr Bidens inauguration, Chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood warned Express.co.uk that Mr Trump still has something up his sleeve and plans to go out with a bang.

Original post:
Hillary Clinton tried to get out of going to Donald Trumps inauguration - Daily Express

FALL 1980 | 10 YEARSIntellectual Insecurity

Although successive editors have reiterated Foreign Policys commitmentstated in its first issueto publish writers at all points on the political spectrum, it is symptomatic of a larger national insecurity that the magazine has at times been under attack for allowing certain views into print. This insecurity, both cultural and intellectual, reflects significant shifts in the global distribution of power, shifts that did not benefit the United States.

Charles William Maynes and Richard H. Ullman

In 1970, national divisions over the Vietnam War were at their peak, and the main goal of any sensible U.S. foreign policy was to end that war before the damage to Americas image and stability became irreversible. Today, the task of U.S. foreign policy is not extricating the country from a disastrous war but institutionalizing the unexpected peace that has broken out between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Charles William Maynes

There is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our bad, old ideas with smart, new ones. If anything, the story of the last few decades of international relations can just as easily be read as the maddening persistence of dubious thinking.

Stephen M. Walt

Excerpt from:
Archival Passages From Writers Such as Hillary Clinton, Kofi Annan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and More Show Where We've BeenAnd Where We're Heading -...

MARTINSBURG A former national advance lead staffer for former first lady Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign has been appointed chairman of the Berkeley County Democratic Executive Committee and said he is ready to use his experience to give back to the Mountain State.

Born in Washington D.C., and raised in Berkeley County, Martinsburg High School graduate Kenny Roberts said after being born in and raised near the nations political epicenter, as well as having parents who were in the political space, his natural affinity for politics came as no surprise.

My mother worked for a number of governors for Puerto Rico, so I was always growing up around political figures, and because of this, I always had an interest, Roberts said. That only grew as I was in high school, when I began volunteering working on local campaigns and political races.

Roberts said as a teen, he was civically involved, was a member of his schools West Virginia Young Democrats Club and was even supported by the BCDEC in a high school program that took him to Charleston to perform in a mock government and leadership training course.

Once a high school graduate, Roberts said he obtained his bachelors degree in political science and communications from Washington & Jefferson College and his masters degree in energy management from Texas Christian University.

With two degrees to his name, Roberts said he wholeheartedly pursued the political field that had captivated him throughout his life and earned the opportunity to work with former President Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton as a national advance lead staffer for the latters 2016 presidential campaign.

All in all, I found myself back in D.C. where I wanted to be, in the mix with business and politics. Even with more exposure I got traveling the country and world, I always had a strong affinity to West Virginia, Roberts said. I have had a bank card from a local bank since I was 16 my first job ever working at the Bank of Charles Town and it was a reminder that I pride myself on being a West Virginian and always wanted to get back here, so I thought there was no better way than to serve the area that has given me so much.

According to Roberts, the BCDEC is a body of local individuals who are elected to the committee, who then appoint the chairman, a role to which he said he was humbled and honored to have been selected.

Roberts said he believes the body is a true representation of individuals from across the area and gives the group unique perspective in that one man and one woman are chosen from each of Berkeley Countys six magisterial districts to serve.

Roberts said as a body, the BCDEC is responsible for representing the Democratic Party in Berkeley County and does so by focusing its efforts on ensuring locals are registered to vote, supporting local candidates and pursuing projects the group feels support the vision of growth for the area.

We believe it is important to have representation and perspective when we are meeting monthly to find ways to better the Democratic Party. By having one man and one woman, we are able to have gender-neutral perspective, Roberts said. I think we, as a party, have a lot of great opportunity in Berkeley County to rise to the occasion and showcase how special our communities are.

Having had a bit of time to settle into his new role, Roberts said he would like to spend his term focusing on expanding the groups message, as he said he believes for too long, small political groups have allowed the national party to define what is important when it comes to local issues. Roberts said he would like to address that by making sure the BCDEC focuses its efforts on issues that are important to Berkeley County residents.

In addition, Roberts said he would like to focus the groups efforts on the local candidate pipeline and finding candidates who are enthusiastic and eager to be agents of change for our community, as well as fundraising creatively to make these things happen.

All we can do is go up from here, so I am really happy to be in a position to work alongside some talented people to do just that, Roberts said.

According to Roberts, the BCDEC currently has two vacancies: a female representative in the Tuscarora District and a male representative in the Shenandoah District.

For more information on serving on or efforts made by the BCDEC, visit bcdec.info or its Facebook page at Berkeley County Democratic Party.

Original post:
Former Clinton campaign staffer named chair of the Berkeley County Democratic Executive Committee - Martinsburg Journal

Former FBI Director James Comey, here in 2017, says he was "sickened" by last week's attack on the Capitol. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

Former FBI Director James Comey, here in 2017, says he was "sickened" by last week's attack on the Capitol.

Former FBI Director James Comey's new memoir has the misfortune of rendering a verdict on the Trump presidency before what could be its most defining day.

Comey's book was already finished before the violent mob incited by the president stormed the Capitol last week, leading to five deaths.

"I was sickened, as I hope all Americans were, watching an attack on the center of our democracy," Comey says of the violence. "And I was also angry as someone who spent a lot of a career in law enforcement; I was angry that it was being allowed to happen and that the Capitol was not being adequately defended. It just mystified me and angered me."

The federal prosecutor in Washington left open the possibility of charging Trump over crimes related to the riot. Washington, D.C.'s attorney general said the same. Some Democrats have also called for prosecuting Trump over other potential crimes.

Comey tells NPR he thinks Trump should be impeached but opposes a drawn-out federal criminal trial. "I think it's still the best thing for the country not to have Donald Trump on our television screens every day for the next three or four years," he says.

Comey's 2018 book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, describes Trump as "unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values." His latest offering, Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency and Trust, continues to lay out his case against the Trump administration while assessing former Attorney General William Barr and the Mueller report. Trump's firing of Comey in 2017 helped set in motion what became Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Comey talked with NPR's Ailsa Chang about the attack on the Capitol, the response of law enforcement, his actions involving Hillary Clinton's email in 2016 and trying to convince people to believe the truth.

There were warnings that something on that scale was going to happen at the U.S. Capitol. How concerned are you that law enforcement, potentially, even including the FBI, just were not ready for what happened?

That was the source of my anger as I watched it, because we were faulted as a government after 9/11 by the 9/11 Commission for a failure of imagination, not imagining how the terrorists might attack us. This required no imagination at all. This was just a failure.

Because they were announcing they were coming. They were literally walking slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue. I don't know how the Capitol was not fortified in an adequate way. And I think it'll be really important for all of us to find that out with a commission-type examination.

You do make the case at the end of your book that the Justice Department should not spend its time trying to prosecute Donald Trump after he leaves office for the sake of rebuilding national unity and moving on. Do you still believe that, given last week's events, that Donald Trump should not be prosecuted?

That was a very close call when I wrote about it and finished the book back in the fall. It's even closer now, but I think it's still the best thing for the country not to have Donald Trump on our television screens every day for the next three or four years as part of United States v. Trump in the District of Columbia.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to try to heal a country both spiritually and literally, because so many of our fellow citizens are sick and dying. And I just think Donald Trump's craving for attention is something we don't want to accommodate now. We don't want him center of our lives. I'd rather him in his bathrobe yelling at cars on the lawn at Mar-a-Lago with the camera lights off. I think that's the best thing for the country now. But look, I'm not sure that I'm right.

Do you think he should at least be investigated for his role in what happened at the U.S. Capitol?

I think the Congress has important interests to vindicate. I think he ought to be impeached. And ideally, he would be convicted by the Senate and barred from further office. I also think that the local prosecutors in New York should continue their work to hold him accountable for his life of being a garden-variety criminal before he became president. I'm just talking about not giving him the platform of a daily drama outside the federal courthouse in Washington, while Joe Biden is trying to change this country in a good way.

You mentioned the impeachment process, but impeachment is a political process, right? And you write in your book that for people to trust in the legal system, everyone needs to be held accountable under the law. So how does the country move on when you don't hold the president of the United States accountable under the law and you rely on a political process, assuming that states don't end up prosecuting?

That's what makes it such a close question. But I think slightly differently about the impeachment process. It's a deeply legal process embedded in our Constitution, and it's about the American people, through their representatives, holding accountable the chief executive. And so I don't think of that if there were no federal prosecution as not holding him accountable. I think it's actually the most important form of accountability right now.

Throughout the book, you talk about this reservoir of trust that's necessary for the Justice Department to function. In what way do you believe former Attorney General Bill Barr eroded this trust you speak of when the Mueller report was released?

By lying to the American people about it in both written and in a brief press conference, misleading the American people so severely that later a federal judge wouldn't trust the Department of Justice's redactions or elimination of some texts from that in deciding what to make public. But that misleading the American people allowed the Trump administration and their enablers to proclaim full vindication, complete vindication, this thing is over. When anyone who took the time to read the report knew that that was false.

You argue that Mueller left himself wide open to having his findings distorted by Bill Barr and others. You say that was Mueller's fault. Can you just briefly explain that point?

I think the world of Bob Mueller and I have worked with him and considered him a friend for a long time, but I think the way he handled the conclusion of his investigation allowed it to be distorted, lied about by the president and the attorney general. And the reason I say that is: Bob did the old-school thing. He prepared a very long report in single-spaced, 12 Times New Roman with, I think, thousands of footnotes and sent that over as his report. Well, that's not how Americans consume information. I don't know that they ever did, but they certainly don't today. And that allowed the attorney general to go to the keyboard and write pithy letters and offer snapshots in a statement at a press conference to the American people, which drove the entire narrative.

You announced in a letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election that you were restarting the Hillary Clinton email investigation because of a new batch of emails that was discovered. Do you think that you also left room for people to distort what you were, in fact, saying in that letter?

Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, it's a different kind of situation, but it's the same basic challenge. How do you provide information that fosters the trust and the knowledge of the people that you're working for, the American people? The challenge there in late October was there was nothing we could say beyond that sparse letter that wouldn't magnify the harm that was flowing from our doing the notice in the first place. If I had included in there that we found hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop, I think I would have increased the harm. And so we wrestled with it. But there was no way to do less harm by speaking more at that point.

I want to turn you now to the ultimate question that you pose in your book, and that is, how do you restore faith in the Justice Department given all that's happened the last four years? How optimistic are you that restoring that trust is possible?

I'm very optimistic. It will take time. The easiest part's going to be restoring the morale and the operations of the Department of Justice because the culture is solid. The hard part is going to be reaching those Americans, the tens of millions, literally, who are trapped in a fog of lies about the virus, about our institutions, including about the FBI and the Justice Department. It'll take time to win that back, to coax those people back to reality. But it'll happen. The work will prove itself.

And the pick of Judge [Merrick] Garland, who I don't know, seems to be the perfect person, as Ed Levi was when he became attorney general after Watergate, to restore not just the internal operations of the department, but the way in which the American people see it as something nonpartisan, something above the tribal scrum in our country.

You continually argue in this book that truth is paramount, but how do you make the truth matter when it appears a lot of America does not agree on what the truth is?

It's very hard. It requires constant attention. And you don't bring people out of a fog of lies by shouting at them that their facts are wrong.

And so the way you do it is you show them what good looks like. And I'm optimistic that our new president is going to show what empathetic, competent leadership when we need it most looks like, and then people gradually awaken.

I'm actually hoping that this horrific attack on the Capitol is an inflection point in that sense, that if the numbers are to be believed, people are awakening more quickly even than I expected to what's really going on here. But it will take time. It'll be earned by the work and by transparency and communication with the American people.

Sam Gringlas and Courtney Dorning produced and edited the audio interview. James Doubek produced for the Web.

See the article here:
James Comey On The Capitol Riots, Truth And Trump - NPR

Former Trump counsellor Kellyanne Conway defended her presidents legacy on Friday night, telling HBO Real Time host Bill Maher: You cant deny that many people are better off.

Well theyre not better off now, Maher replied. A lot of them are dead.

Johns Hopkins University put the US death toll from the coronavirus at 391,789 on Saturday, with 3,258 deaths on Friday and a caseload of 23.5m.

Also on Friday, Joe Biden labelled the Trump administrations vaccine rollout a dismal failure.

Conway insisted the real disappointment for people like me is that the last two months, lets just say from 6 November to 6 January, werent spent mostly talking about the accomplishments, reviewing the accomplishments. He built the greatest economy we had.

Maher responded that the US economy was pretty much built when Trump succeeded Barack Obama. He did not mention the catastrophic economic impact of Covid and the botched response. The US unemployment rate is 6.7%, with new claims rocketing.

Conways reference to 6 January was telling. That was the day Trump told supporters at the White House to fight like hell to overturn his election defeat, which he has not conceded and which he baselessly maintains was the result of electoral fraud.

A mob stormed the US Capitol, resulting in five deaths one a police officer who confronted attackers, one a rioter shot by law enforcement multiple arrests, fears of more attacks and reports saying some who ransacked the seat of federal government intended to capture lawmakers and kill them.

Trump eventually said he disavowed the violence but was nonetheless impeached in the House of Representatives for inciting the attack. He is set to vacate the White House on Wednesday, when Biden will be inaugurated, but will still face a Senate trial. Mike Lindell, chief executive of My Pillow and an informal Trump adviser, was seen at the White House on Friday carrying notes which appeared to advocate the imposition of martial law.

Conway is a longtime Republican operative whose CV now includes five years as counsellor to the only president impeached twice, a dogged defender who found infamy claiming Trump peddled alternative facts and for blaming refugees for a terror attack, the Bowling Green massacre, that never occurred.

She left the White House in August, saying she wanted to spend more time with a family split by Trump her husband is the lawyer George Conway, a founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, while her daughter Claudia has made a name for herself with criticism of the president on social media. Conway campaigned for Trump in November and for the Republican candidates in two Senate runoffs in Georgia in January contests Democrats won, thereby taking control of the chamber.

Conway told Maher the Capitol riot was horrible, inexcusable, disgraceful and said justice should be served. She added: Last week was vulgar. Theres no place for violence and vandalism. I wish the president had spoken with the people earlier to get them the hell out of there.

I did get through to him. Id said to the person standing next to them, Please add my name to the chorus of people just saying, You have to tell them to get out. I dont know what theyre doing, why theyre there, but tell them to get out.

Maher asked if Conway would admit that the reason why they were there is because he never conceded the election. She told Maher she recognised Trumps defeat a long time ago. In fact, she did so on 4 December, a month after election day and long after the race was called for Biden.

I think those murders and marauders insult, not represent, the Trump movement, Conway insisted, adding that Trump represented the forgotten man and woman and saying: 74 million people is not a base its a large percentage of the country.

More than 81 million voted for Biden, who also won the electoral college by 306-232, a result Trump said was a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton.

Maher pressed Conway on Trumps lying and insults, reading out both a list of barbs Trump has thrown at him and a list of things kindergarteners know not to do lie, bully, boast, mock the handicapped which Trump did from his position of power.

Conway dodged such volleys with practiced ease, saying she was proud to have been a woman with a voice in White House policy debates.

Conway and Maher have history, back to his days presenting Politically Incorrect for ABC. Writing in the Daily Beast on Friday, Marlow Stern said the comedian could have done a better job of holding her feet to the fire.

See original here:
Kellyanne Conway tells Bill Maher Americans 'better off' thanks to Trump - The Guardian