Rachel Maddow Defends Hillary on Authenticity Issue: She Talks ‘Like a President’
Immediately following a rare national sit-down interview with Hillary Clinton Friday afternoon, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell brought in a panel of seven commentators to weigh in on what stood out to them in the conversation. First up: Rachel Maddow.
On the email issue, which dominated the first part of Mitchell’s interview, Maddow said, “Obviously it’s starting to feel like a threshold political issue for her, not just a sidebar.” She appeared to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt that the whole thing “boils down” to nothing more complicated than she didn’t “stop and think” about the consequences and it “wasn’t the best choice” to use a private email server.
From there, Maddow moved on to Mitchell’s question about Clinton’s authenticity compared to candidates like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and even Joe Biden, who have an easier time connecting with voters on an emotional level. She noted that Clinton seemed to be contrasting her deliberate speaking style with the “loose talk, threats, insults” of someone like Trump. “The president of the United States needs to be careful about what he or she says,” Clinton added.
Paraphrasing Clinton’s point, Maddow said, “Listen, I talk like a president, I talk like somebody at the highest levels of government because I have operated at the highest levels of government. The reason I don’t rail and insult people and move people in an emotional way is because I’m speaking precisely and that should be seen as feature, not a bug.”
Watch video below, via MSNBC:
[Photo via screengrab]
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