See Hillary Clinton Talk Kavanaugh Allegations, ‘Democracy in Crisis’ on ‘Colbert’
Hillary Clinton discussed the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, the Mueller investigation and whether our democracy is “in crisis” during a visit to the Late Show Friday.
“I really want people to take it seriously, regardless of who you voted for, whether you even voted, and think about why our democracy is in crisis, and I don’t use the word lightly, I really regret using the word because I wish it weren’t the case,” Clinton said of the new afterword to her paperback edition of What Happened.
“But what we’ve seen in the last months in so many ways is degrading the rule of law, delegitimizing our elections, attacking your two favorite subject ‘truth and reason,’ spreading corruption, undermining our national unity. Each alone is a threat but you put it all together and it really is a crisis to who we are as a nation.”
Clinton then talked about the comparison between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon and the anonymous reports that members of Trump’s own cabinet were withholding papers to “prevent the bad stuff from happening.”
“It didn’t comfort me because it’s always really troubling when the White House is in disarray. I was thinking about being Secretary of State, working with President Obama, we had disagreements, we argued over difficult decisions that had to be made, but in the end we had an orderly process where facts and evidence were presented, where the president had to make tough decisions,” Clinton said.
Clinton added of Obama, “I never had to steal a treaty off his desk.”
On the subject of the allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, after criticizing the Republicans’ treatment of Merrick Garland, Clinton said, “What they’ve done in this case is to hold back information, they have not provided all the information which was always made available for other nominees and they’re trying to rush this through to the detriment of the American public who deserves to have answers to whatever charges might be presented.”
Finally, Clinton talked about whether she’s in favor of impeachment. “I would like the elections to be fought out on [the] basis of who’s going to do the best job for you and your family,” Clinton said. “Having said that, there is a constitutional crisis that doesn’t have to be looked at through the lens of impeachment. When you have these attacks on the rule of law, when you have a president who spends so much time denigrating the FBI and his own Attorney General… that’s really a problem because who does that help? Who is actually benefitting from tearing down our law enforcement, our judicial authorities and the like?”
Clinton added, “It may come to people saying ‘We now have the evidence’ or ‘We now think there are high crimes and misdemeanors,’ but I think there are issues that need to be addressed and there is the need to provide accountability, to hold this administration to account.”