Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday added the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the New York Times to the list of reasons for her loss to Donald Trump in the November 2016 presidential election. Her claim led to a Twitter spat with Mr. Trump, who revived his campaign-time aggression.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton now blames everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate. Hits Facebook & even Dems & DNC,” the President tweeted. Ms. Clinton responded on Twitter saying: “People in covfefe houses shouldn’t throw covfefe,” playing on a typo made by Mr. Trump in a Twitter post a day earlier that triggered a snowstorm of meme.
Speaking at a conference in California, Ms. Clinton said the word ‘covfefe’ could be “a coded message” to the Russians from the American President. Ms. Clinton also suggested that the President was coordinating with Russia during the election campaign. “I think it’s fair to ask how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know what messages to deliver. Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding with? I’m leaning Trump,” she said.
Ms. Clinton said former FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen an investigation against her in connection with maintaining a private email server while being the Secretary of State a week ahead of polling was another reason for her defeat. But naming the DNC and NYT in the category came as a surprise to observers.
NYT endorsement
The NYT had endorsed Ms. Clinton and wrote several editorials questioning Mr. Trump’s eligibility to be President. The DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign after Wikileaks revealed that she was trying to rig the nomination contest in favour of Ms. Clinton.
“I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,” Ms. Clinton said. “It was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, non-existent, wrong. I had to inject money into it — the DNC — to keep it going.”
Ms. Clinton said the NYT coverage of her private email server — the paper broke the story — was disproportionate.
