During her Wednesday interview at ReCode’s Code Conference 2017, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton blamed her loss at least partly on misogyny, while claiming that President Obama was able to overcome racial barriers due to his appearance.
“So I never said I was a perfect candidate, and I certainly have never said I ran perfect campaigns, but I don’t know who is or did,” she told interviewer Kara Swisher. “And at some point it sort of bleeds into misogyny. And let’s just be honest, you know, people who have a set of expectations about who should be president and what a president looks like, you know, they’re going to be much more skeptical and critical of somebody who doesn’t look like and talk like and sound like everybody else who’s been president.”
She then attempted to explain Barack Obama’s success and her failure by complimenting his looks.
“And you know, President Obama broke that racial barrier, but you know, he’s a very attractive, good-looking man with lots of —”
“Well, he’s likable enough,” Swisher quipped, a reference to a remark Obama made in a debate during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.
“He’s likable enough, absolutely!” Clinton responded.
Clinton’s remarks are reminiscent of then-Senator Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, describing Obama in 2007 as a candidate who is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Biden later apologized.
Top photo: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center in New York on April 6, 2017.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
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