On Wednesday night, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for an extended interview that was sobering and enlightening.
In the first segments, Secretary Clinton talks about the importance of Americans keeping focused on the themes and findings in the Mueller report amid the antics and obfuscation that William Barr has brought to the Special Counsel process. She also discusses the dubious legal arguments being made by Attorney General William Barr on Donald Trump’s behalf and the disdain it shows for Congress and the American oversight process. She said that Barr is doing the job he was hired to do, protect Donald Trump.
She then turns the discussion to impeachment which she believes must take a back seat to fact finding as it did in Watergate in 1973. Sec. Clinton talks about the importance of the role of the House Judiciary Committee in continuing to explore and publicize the findings of the Mueller report with an eye toward whether what is learned leads to the impeachment of Donald Trump.
The conversation then turns to the Mueller report and the Russian interference with the 2016 election and how successful it was and the dangers of Republicans putting partisanship ahead of national security just because their candidate was the beneficiary of that interference. Since Republicans are blocking legislation on orders from the White House, Sec. Clinton dropped this supposition:
Let’s suppose that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show, and that person said, you know, ‘The only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians is China. So why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us?
And not only that, China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns? I’m sure our media would richly reward you. Now according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open. so if after this hypothetical Democratic candidate says this on your show, within hours, all of a sudden, the IRS offices are bombarded with incredibly sophisticated cyber tools looking for Trump’s tax returns, and then extracts them and then passes them to whatever the new Wikileaks happens to be and they start being unravelled and disclosed, nothing wrong with that.
I mean, if you’re going let Russia get away with what they did and are still doing according to Christopher Wray, the current FBI director who said that last week, they’re in our election systems. We’re worried about 2020, he said. So, hey, let’s have a great power contest, and let’s get the Chinese in on the side of somebody else. Just saying that shows how absurd the situation we find ourselves in.”
The interview ends with a discussion of the Republicans’ and Trump’s obsession with her. The secretary said, “I’m living rent free inside of Donald Trump’s brain.” She says that repeated calls for re-investigations, and the effectiveness of Republican smear campaign are tactics appealing to their base of supporters.