Hillary Clinton said Monday that she was moved to tears when former President Donald Trump was convicted in the Stormy Daniels case for paying her ex-boyfriend to hush money.
In an interview with Katie Couric at DAR Constitutional Hall in Washington, D.C., Clinton also criticized her former rival for blaming Democrats on Monday for the second attempt on her life.
Clinton is making the rounds to promote her new book, Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Freedomwhich will premiere on Tuesday.
“If he were really a leader, he should be doing everything he can to calm the waters,” Clinton said. “He shouldn’t keep trying to throw red meat around to get people angry.”
The former Democratic candidate reacted to the assassination attempt and then to Trump’s subsequent tweet in which he claimed that “Comrade Kamala Harris” and the “ridiculous lawsuits” against the former president were responsible.
Hillary Clinton (left) kicked off her book tour Monday night at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. The former Democratic presidential candidate was interviewed by Katie Couric (right)
Clinton is promoting her new book: Something Lost, Something Gained
“It was horrific,” Clinton told Couric when asked about Sunday’s incident at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach.
Couric then read aloud Trump’s midday tweet that included the statement: “Because of this rhetoric from the Communist Left, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”
Clinton called it “unbelievable” that Trump would “take what is a genuinely terrible event” and then “turn it into a political attack on his opposition and literally everyone else who doesn’t support him.”
“Everything he says is about himself,” Clinton said. “And he’s not trying, in any way, to reach out to people. He’s not interested in representing all of America or all Americans.”
“And this is another truly regrettable incident,” the former Secretary of State added.
Clinton also criticized Elon Musk for his shocking post questioning why no one had tried to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Well, let’s all promise that we can have meaningful policy differences about who we want to be our next president, about the policies that we think will help our country and the world, and condemn that kind of rhetoric,” he said.
Hillary Clinton (left) and Katie Courick (right) pose at the end of the interview. Clinton expressed anger that former President Donald Trump did not try to “calm the waters” after Sunday’s second assassination attempt
Couric then went on to mention Trump’s conviction on 34 charges related to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election, in which Clinton was his rival.
The former first lady said she was working on editing her book, so her phone was turned off on May 1 when the verdict was announced.
Then she realized that “my phone was full of people I hadn’t heard from in years.”
“I quickly read that he had been convicted of 34 felony counts for interfering in the 2016 election, because that’s what the trial was about. Hush money was a means to prevent information from being made public that could have affected the vote,” Clinton said. “So it was election interference.”
“To see that a jury of his peers where he grew up in New York had found him guilty was, as you know, very reassuring to me about our system,” Clinton continued.
“And I was in tears because I thought, ‘Wow, no one is above the law,'” she added.