Hillary Clinton Dishes Out a Big Bowl of Blame

Hillary Clinton spoke with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at Recode's CodeCon on Wednesday, and she did not hold back. In Vox's view, she spared her campaign but heaped plenty of blame on others, including Russia, the media, and the DNC. "I get the nomination, I'm now the nominee of the Democratic Party," she explained. "I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party," she says, emphasizing the word "nothing." Asked Mossberg, "What do you mean, nothing?" She continued, "I mean, it was bankrupt; it was on the verge of insolvency; its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it, the DNC, to keep it going." Donald Trump, on the other hand, did nothing himself related to data, she said, but inherited a $100 million "tried-and-true, effective" data foundation from the RNC. More:

• "I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that's not why I lost," Clinton said, per CNBC. "I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win." But that's not all.
• Politico reports she made the case, as she has done in the past, that former FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress was part of her undoing. "The overriding issue that affected the election that I had any control over—because I had no control over the Russians—was the way the use of my email account was turned into the greatest scandal since Lord knows when. This was the biggest 'nothing burger' ever." And yet the media covered it "like it was Pearl Harbor," she said.
• As for the Russians, "If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to—as we now know—the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages. They were connected to the bots that are just out of control." Vox points out that much of that statement is based on unconfirmed reports.
• Speaking of the Russians, "I thought it was a hidden message to the Russians," Clinton quipped about President Trump's "covfefe" tweet, reports Politico. "You’ve got all kinds of stuff happening. Why? To divert attention. It’s like 'covfefe'—trending worldwide. Maybe for a minute you'll forget the latest accusations about them conspiring with Russia or their trillion-dollar mathematical mistake in their budget or depriving 23 million people of health care."
• Mossberg asked Clinton why, if she knew she was going to run, she took on paid speaking engagements from Goldman Sachs. She shot back, "Why do you have Goldman Sachs here?" Replied Swisher, "Cause they pay us." Said Clinton, "They paid me."

(More Election 2016 stories.)