While overseas promoting her latest book, “She Persisted Around the World” Chelsea Clinton sat down with the UK’s Guardian for an exhaustive interview, in which the former First Daughter insisted President Trump “degrades what it means to be an American,” applauded the efforts to organize mass protests against him during his planned visit in July, saying she would join the demonstration (were she British), and called the President a racist.
The 3100 hundred-word feature is equal part biography and advertisement, with a consistent promotion of hard-left ideology that is all wrapped up in a brash, ‘poor me’ victimhood. In other words – Classic Clinton.
Here are just some of the highlights.
Blaming President Trump for “mainlined hate”
She used to believe the right thing to do about “all of the meanness” was simply ignore it, she reflects. “Now I’ve come to feel differently, because I think that the way that our president and many people around him have not only mainstreamed hate, but mainlined it, is so deeply dangerous.” Her eyes fill with dismay as she cites the rising reports of bullying in schools catalogued by the Southern Poverty Law Centre. “Not just the hundreds but now thousands of instances in schools across America, where children are citing the president as they’re demeaning a little girl, or they’re chanting ‘Build a wall’ in an attempt to demean and degrade brown children. So the reason, now, I no longer ignore it when people say hateful things to me on the street or on social media is, I think we have to shine a light. I think those of us who have platforms to do that have to say this is wrong and unacceptable, so we don’t normalise it but try to detoxify what has been unleashed. Because if we don’t, we leave a vacuum. And I think the darkness fills that vacuum.” (emphasis added)
Protesting President Trump during is planned trip in July
I tell her a lot of people in Britain are wondering how they should receive Trump’s visit in July. What’s her advice? “Well, I’ve been to multiple protests since the election. Charlotte’s been to at least three, maybe four. Aidan’s been to one. If I lived in Britain I would show up to protest, because I don’t agree with what he’s doing to degrade what it means to be an American.” (emphasis added)
On her former friend Ivanka Trump doing “her father’s grotesque bidding”
We are meeting two days after a smiling Ivanka Trump opened the US embassy in Jerusalem, as dozens of Palestinians were massacred. I ask if Clinton feels any sympathy for the first daughter, obliged to do her father’s grotesque bidding, or considers her complicit. Her expression hardens.
“She’s an adult. She can make the choices for herself. I mean, she’s 36. We are responsible for our choices. In 2008 I was really proud to support my mum – but I disagreed with her fundamentally on a few things, particularly her then opposition to equal marriage rights for LGBTQ Americans. I never defended that position, because it wasn’t what I believed was the right thing to do.”
Silver lining – “let [Barron] be, please:”
Were Ivanka to succeed her father in the White House, as some have speculated, would the election of the first female president still constitute a triumph for feminism? “Well, I didn’t support Sarah Palin when she was the vice-president nominee in 2008. And I hope my son is as much a feminist as my daughter. I think it is more about what we stand for, and how we do it, than the gender of the person there.” With the exception of Barron – “He’s 12; let him be 12, please” – she has no sympathy whatsoever for Trump’s children. “They’re adults who’ve made the decision to work in this administration.” Had her mother been elected, she says she would never have gone to work for her, so I ask if she shares others’ distaste at Trump employing his family. (emphasis added)
Chelsea Clinton calls President Trump a racist
“I used to believe all that mattered was the bottom line of the outcome, like, how many lives were improved, how many people were saved, how many more people got to go to school without debt, how many people had healthcare, how many women got to have paid maternity leave. I still believe that is what matters most. But I also now believe that intentions and tone and decency matter, because I think the wreckage that we’re seeing at this moment is one that will, I hope, be repaired on the policy standpoint when we elect Democrats. But I think we will still then have work to do on repairing the tone in our country, the exposure of the real racist and sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and antisemitic feeling which is on the rise in our country – a rot that has been exposed.”
We are well over time now, and I glance at her assistant, but Clinton hasn’t finished. “I think one of the big mistakes,” she continues, “was, for so long, we focused on tolerance, which I just think is insufficient. People tolerated casual misogyny, but casual misogyny is maybe the gateway drug. We have freedom of speech, which I do think is hugely important – and yet people thought you couldn’t dispute hateful things, because they’re like – well, it’s freedom of speech. Well, freedom of speech doesn’t mean there is freedom of consequences.
“Sure, you should not be in prison because you said something racist. But you also shouldn’t be able to run for president. And yet here we are.” (emphasis added)
Read the entire interview at the The Guardian.
