Gross: Democrats have said that they think there was Russian interference in the election, but that they're not challenging the results of the election. As more and more information comes out about the depth of Russia's interference in the election, do you think, at some point, that it would be legitimate to challenge the legitimacy of the election?
Clinton: I don't know if there's any legal constitutional way to do that. I think you can raise questions. In fact, I think part of the reason Trump behaves the way he behaves is that he is a walking example of projection. Whatever he's doing and whatever he thinks is happening he will accuse somebody else of. And there are examples during the campaign when he did just that, like when he called publicly on Russia to hack my personal emails.
He knew they were trying to do whatever they could to discredit me with emails, so there's obviously a trail there, but I don't know that in our system we have any means of doing that, but I just wanted to add to the point you made. There's no doubt they influenced the election: We now know more about how they did that.
Let me just put it this way, if I had lost the popular vote but won the electoral college and in my first day as president the intelligence community came to me and said, "The Russians influenced the election," I would've never stood for it. Even though it might've advantaged me, I would've said, "We've got to get to the bottom of this." I would've set up an independent commission with subpoena power and everything else.
Gross: I want to get back to the question, would you completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now?
Clinton: No. I would not. I would say —
Gross: You're not going to rule it out.
Clinton: No, I wouldn't rule it out.
Terry Gross then goes on to ask the obvious question, how: So what are the means, like, this is totally unprecedented in every way —
Clinton: It is.
Gross:What would be the means to challenge it, if you thought it should be challenged?
Clinton: Basically I don't believe there are. There are scholars, academics, who have arguments that it would be, but I don't think they're on strong ground. But people are making those arguments. I just don't think we have a mechanism. You know, the Kenya election was just overturned and really what's interesting about that — and I hope somebody writes about it, Terry — the Kenyan election was also a project of Cambridge Analytica, the data company owned by the Mercer family that was instrumental in the Brexit vote.
There's now an investigation going on in the U.K., because of the use of data and the weaponization of information. They were involved in the Trump campaign after he got the nomination, and I think that part of what happened is Mercer said to Trump, We'll help you, but you have to take Bannon as your campaign chief. You've got to take Kellyanne Conway and these other people who are basically Mercer protégées.
And so we know that there was this connection. So what happened in Kenya, which I'm only beginning to delve into, is that the Supreme Court there said there are so many really unanswered and problematic questions, we're going to throw the election out and re-do it. We have no such provision in our country. And usually we don't need it.
Okay now I found this exchange to be very interesting, very interesting indeed.
Here was what Chris Cillizza of CNN thought of this exchange:
This a big deal. The 2016 Democratic nominee, who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, is expressly leaving open the possibility that she would pursue legal action to invalidate the last presidential election.
I've paid close attention to what Clinton's been saying since she lost the election and I have never heard her broach the possibility of a formal challenge of the results.
Knowing what we know of Clinton, it seems unlikely to me that she simply spoke off the cuff here, that this was just an unconsidered remark. She doesn't really do that sort of thing.
Now I don't typically agree with Cillizza on a lot these days, but he makes a valid point. Hillary rarely misspeaks, and this certainly does not come off as a gaffe.
Essentially what Hillary is stating here is that currently there is no mechanism in place to invalidate an election liked this, but then she points out that never before in the history of the country have we really ever had a circumstance like the one we are facing today.
So in that context she seems to be suggesting that we might need to come up with a process to deal with what the facts are rapidly revealing to be a stolen election.
I am going to have to tap out on this one, because in this current political atmosphere I have absolutely no idea how we could ever really set things right without causing an actual, no shit, civil war.
But having said that her point is still valid.
If evidence emerges that not only did the Russians impact the outcome of the election, but actually altered the outcome of the election, how could we let that stand?
By definition that would NOT be an election where the American voters determined who would lead their country but rather an election whose outcome was determined by one of our long term adversaries.
Like I said I absolutely have no clue what to do about it, but I do feel that it would be necessary to do something.
Thoughts?
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