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Hillary Clinton Addresses a Rare Audience: Journalists Hillary Clinton Addresses a Rare Audience: Journalists
(about 3 hours later)
In an address to thousands of black and Hispanic journalists, Hillary Clinton pointedly criticized Donald J. Trump Friday as someone who would be a dangerous president and urged the news media to be tough on his candidacy. WASHINGTON — After more than 200 days without holding a formal news conference, Hillary Clinton took her most extensive questions from journalists in months on Friday — and it wasn’t so bad after all.
“We have a Republican nominee who has been virulently anti-immigrant,” she said, expressing her hopes that Democrats would not only take the White House but also the Senate in November. “We have to reject and stand up against the appeals to the kind of bigotry” coming from the Trump campaign, she said. Mrs. Clinton said she took “seriously” the problems she has had winning voters’ trust. She clarified recent remarks about the F.B.I. investigation into her private email server. And she explained that the economic frustration driving many of Donald J. Trump’s supporters should be taken as seriously as his “bigotry” that appeals to some.
Mrs. Clinton made the remarks at a convention jointly hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, which are holding a five-day conference largely focusing on newsroom diversity. She even had some words of encouragement for the Fourth Estate: “We need you to keep holding leaders and candidates accountable,” Mrs. Clinton told the hundreds of journalists attending the five-day conference here of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Mrs. Clinton, who has only held a few news conferences in the entirety of her campaign, spoke for about 10 minutes before taking questions from some of the 1,500 journalists who attended the event. Mrs. Clinton joins a long list of political leaders who have spoken at the groups’ conventions, which often focus on increasing diversity in newsrooms. President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former president George W. Bush, Bob Dole and former Vice President Al Gore have all addressed past conventions. The groups invited Mr. Trump to speak, but he declined, according to the organizers.
Organizers at this event welcomed her presence. Before taking questions, Mrs. Clinton delivered a 15-minute address focused mostly on how her plans to improve the economy would especially benefit blacks and Latinos. “Rosa Parks opened up every seat on the bus,” she said. “Now we’ve got to open up every opportunity.”
“Throughout her campaign, Hillary Clinton has placed an emphasis on inclusion and shown support for communities of color,” said Mekahlo Medina, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Hovering over the address was the image of Mrs. Clinton addressing a room full of journalists. Although she occasionally holds informal sessions with the news media on campaign stops, Clinton aides have spent months explaining why she hasn’t held an official news conference, as most candidates, particularly Mr. Trump, do regularly.
Mrs. Clinton joins a long list of political leaders who have spoken at the convention. President Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former president George W. Bush, Bob Dole and former Vice President Al Gore have all addressed National Association of Black Journalists conventions. “We’ll have a press conference when we want to have a press conference,” Joel Benenson, the campaign’s chief strategist and pollster, told ABC News last month.
In her speeches to the news media as a candidate, Mrs. Clinton has sometimes woven in some self-deprecating humor. In her appearance, Mrs. Clinton, confident after recent polls show her with a healthy lead over Mr. Trump, seemed comfortable and at ease even when pressed on uncomfortable topics.
Last year, at a journalism awards dinner to honor the New York Times reporter Robin Toner, who died in 2008, Mrs. Clinton proposed starting a “new relationship” with the news media. Mrs. Clinton was asked about the latest flare-up involving her use of a private email server as secretary of state, namely her comments Sunday on Fox News that the F.B.I. director, James Comey, had found her earlier remarks that she had never sent or received classified email on the server to be “truthful.” Mr. Trump’s campaign jumped on the assertion, calling it “pants on fire.”
“So here goes, no more secrecy, no more zone of privacy,” she said. “After all, what good did that do me?” On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said she “may have short circuited” in two recent interviews in which the email issue came up and offered further clarification.
Then she told the audience of political journalists and editors to look under their chairs. “I was pointing out in both of those instances that Director Comey had said that my answers in my F.B.I. interview were truthful,” she said. “That’s really the bottom line here.”
“You’ll find a simple nondisclosure agreement,” Mrs. Clinton joked. “My attorneys drew it up. Old habits.” Mrs. Clinton reiterated her earlier explanation that the classified emails the F.B.I. had identified as having passed over her private server were not marked classified at the time.
The explanation didn’t appease Republicans.
“It’s not hard to see why she hasn’t held a press conference in 244 days,” said the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus. “Hillary Clinton is once again proving herself incapable of telling the truth.”
Questioned about why a majority of voters don’t trust her, Mrs. Clinton referred to her high approval ratings when she was secretary of state and a senator from New York.
“Were 67 percent of the people in New York wrong? Were 66 percent of the American public wrong?” she asked. “Just maybe, when I’m actually running for a job, there is a real benefit to those on the other side with trying to stir up as much trouble as possible.”
When asked about what Mr. Trump’s millions of supporters, who are often drawn to language she and others have called racist and sexist, says about the electorate, Mrs. Clinton said that while some people were backing the businessman because of his “bigotry,” she acknowledged that many were motivated by economic hardships.
“We have to recognize that of course some of the appeal is xenophobic and racist and misogynistic and offensive,” she said. “We have to acknowledge that — but let’s not lose sight of the real pain that many of Americans are feeling because the economy has left them behind.”
Mrs. Clinton also criticized Mr. Trump on Friday as someone who would be a dangerous president and stressed that if elected, she would work on issues related to systemic racism and economic struggles that often hit black and Hispanic communities the hardest.
“He is harkening back to the most shameful chapters of our history and appealing to the ugliest impulses of our society,” she said. “We need to stand up as a country and say that Donald Trump doesn’t represent who we are and what we believe.”
Mrs. Clinton also vowed to push hard to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill with a path toward citizenship for those in the country illegally, and said she would make the issue a priority during her first 100 days in office.
Toward the end of the event, Mrs. Clinton talked about her cadre of African-American girlfriends, something she rarely mentions in public. Asked what the most meaningful conversation she has had with one of them, she said she was “blessed to have a crew of great friends.” These include some of her most senior aides, including Cheryl D. Mills, Maggie Williams and Minyon Moore.
“I can’t compress it into one conversation,” Mrs. Clinton said. “They’ve supported me. They’ve chastised me. They’ve raised issues with me.”
And, she added, “they’ve tried to expand my musical tastes.”