A Democratic lawmaker argued Wednesday that “right wing” criticisms of Hillary Clinton are “totally without cause.”
“She’s been beaten up for more than 30 years as a first lady of the United States of America, United States senator and secretary of state, two-time presidential candidate. She’s been subjected to attack after attack from the right wing,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, said on CNN when asked why Clinton is disliked by so many voters.
Jeffries described Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state as merely a “mistake,” to which CNN host Chris Cuomo responded, “That’s the cause, congressman. The email server, her choice. Wrong. Arguably illegal.”
“When you choose to have a server in your basement. Not a mistake. When you say you got approval for it and you did not. Not a mistake,” said Cuomo, arguing that such behavior is better described as an “intentional choice” by Clinton.
But Jeffries said in response that because FBI director James Comey did not find a reason to prosecute her, that means what she did “certainly wasn’t illegal.” He argued that Clinton’s admission of her “mistake” is a testament to her “character strength.”
“I think it’s a mistake that she’s acknowledged and that’s the test of character strength. Because we’re all imperfect as human beings, but as leaders you need to acknowledge when you make a mistake and then move forward,” he said.
By comparison, Jeffries said her Republican opponent Donald Trump is “running around the country like a Tasmanian Devil, a cartoon, totally out of control, harming everything that is in his path, and just waiting for the American people to pull the plug on November 8th and hopefully relieve us of our long national nightmare.”
