Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:21 pm
In her first interview since the second presidential debate, Hillary Clinton told Ellen DeGeneres that in spite of the string of accusations Trump threw at her, she was trying to “keep my composure, interact with the moderators, but really for me, more with the people there.”
In spite of Donald Trump’s stalking her around the stage and the falsehoods he threw at her, Clinton stayed focused on answering the questions of the people.
Watch the clip from ABC’s The Ellen Degeneres Show here:
Clinton talked about how important it is to try so speak accurately, and that everyone makes mistakes and she’s made more than her share. But that Trump took that to a new level.
“To run against somebody and debate somebody who is consistently just spewing falsehoods and when you catch him and say ‘No, wait a minute, you said this, you were on the record saying this,'” the former Secretary of State told the ABC host of Donald Trump’s denial of his own words, “‘No I wasn’t, no I wasn’t’ and just hoped, I guess, that people would forget it.”
“So I could have spent all of my time saying, ‘No, you told interviewer x and you said on y,’ but I thought no, I’m going to tell people to go to my website HillaryClinton.com, look at the evidence we have and I’m going to keep trying to talk about what this election should be about, which is people’s lives and our country and what we’re going to do to help each other.”
The audience clapped.
This is something I noted while watching it; Clinton focused on the people and on answering their questions. This is exactly what a candidate for president should be doing, not trying to harass an opponent, but listening to the people and answering questions.
The pundits at first seemed to miss this, with some criticizing Clinton for not pushing back against all of Trump’s lies. But to do that would have given Trump the win, because as long as he succeeds in distracting her from discussing policy with the people, he wins.
Hillary Clinton just did the media’s job for them by pointing out how difficult it is to debate someone who is lying constantly. When Mitt Romney did this in 2012, it threw President Barack Obama off his game because it’s impossible to debate someone who denies their own policies and in Donald Trump’s case, his own words.
Donald Trump denies reality when it suits him, and it suits him most of the time because Donald Trump spends most of his time creating a false image of himself to sell to the public.
It is simply not possible to debate someone who lies about their positions. That’s not a debate, it’s mud wrestling. The media needs to stop acting like lying is a win. Lying is not only not a win in the long run after the candidate gets fact-checked, but it’s should not be considered a win while it’s happening and immediately after in hot takes.
It’s the media’s job to set standards for debates, and a candidate who lies about what they said and their positions to the extent that the person on the stage doesn’t even represent the person who’s been campaigning should not be rewarded for misleading the public.
Hillary Clinton did the right thing by focusing on the people. Not once has Donald Trump chosen the people over his own ego.
Clinton managed to make the decision to focus on the people even as Trump was stalking her on stage and trying to physically intimidate her. This is who she is. No matter how low Trump goes, Clinton is focused on the people.
Image: Screencap of ABC’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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