WASHINGTON — Would Hillary Rodham Clinton like to apologize to voters for the past emailing practices that have so many of them questioning her trustworthiness? Sort of.
“It wasn’t the best choice,” Clinton said during a 30-minute interview Friday with journalist Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. “I certainly have said that. I will continue to say that.”
But the only reason Clinton said she was sorry for her use of a email server in her home for government communications while secretary of state was because it has been “confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions.”
About a third of the sitdown interview — the longest Clinton has done since announcing her run in April — was consumed by the kind of uncomfortable questions about her emailing practices the campaign had hoped would be past her by now.
But as it has become clear the issue is not going away, Clinton is now confronting it with more public discussion. There will be many uneasy exchanges to come.
On Friday, Mitchell challenged Clinton’s assertion that Colin Powell used email in much the same way when he was secretary of state. Mitchell asked how it was possible the secretary of state could have a government email address that even the agency’s own information technology staff did not know she had. And then she asked how it was possible that none of Clinton’s advisers warned her that the private email server was a monumentally bad idea.
“I was not thinking a lot (about email systems) when I got in,” Clinton said. “There was so much work to be done. I didn’t stop to think what kind of email system there would be.”
The interview came a day after an aide who helped Clinton set up the private server told a congressional committee investigating her use of government email that he will be invoking his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, refusing to answer the questions of the committee. Clinton has said repeatedly she will not be doing the same when it is her turn to testify late next month.
She told Mitchell that the hearing, demanded by Republican lawmakers, is an opportunity for her to clarify the email issues “in front of the entire world.”
Clinton said the troubles her campaign has faced over the summer in no way resemble her experience during the 2008 race, which she entered as a dominant front-runner but ultimately lost. “I don’t feel that,” she said. “I feel I have questions to answer. Which I will at every turn.”
One topic Clinton seemed more eager to discuss was Donald Trump.
Asked about the attacks he has leveled against her and her staff, Clinton said: “He is great at innuendo and conspiracy theories and really defaming people.” And she had more to say, suggesting “loose talk, threats, insults” are dangerous coming from a potential head of state.
“I think it is an unfortunate development in American politics that his campaign is all about who he is against,” Clinton said, citing basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly as examples of targets of Trump’s attacks.
The interview was only the second Clinton has sat for with the national media since becoming a candidate. Next week, she will be a guest on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
