Why Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a killer, ruthless and merciless. Offended wife or independent figure

Exclusive interview with a loser

Nils Thorsen

In fact, she was in the mood to talk more about politics. But when a Politiken correspondent met her in Amsterdam, we were interested in something else: how do you manage to force yourself to get out of bed in the morning when the dream of your life is shattered in the face of the whole world. How do you convince yourself that what little you can achieve now is also worth a lot? Hillary Clinton's book What Happened? ("What Happened?") has just been translated into Danish. We sat down with her author to discuss why she lost to Donald Trump, why so many Americans hate her, and what a dilemma she says confronts every woman with ambition. Yes, and she also loves the Danish television series "Government" ("Borgen")

Finally this day has come. After years of preparation, humiliation and failure. For a whole decade, she stood at the head of the unofficial line of women contenders for the most powerful office in the world. The triumph was delayed eight years after Obama's victory, but the moment is near when the way seems to be open. Here is the day when Americans will elect a woman president for the first time, the proverbial glass ceiling will be broken, and Hillary Clinton will secure her place in history.

Hillary Diana Rodham Clinton

Born October 26, 1947 in Chicago. His father is a textile merchant and a staunch conservative. Despite this, the parents believed that their daughter should succeed.

In her youth, Hillary supported the Republicans, but went over to the Democratic camp in 1968 under the influence of presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy (Eugene McCarthy), who was against the Vietnam War.

Hillary Clinton holds a political science degree from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and a law degree from Yale University, where she met Bill Clinton in 1971. Four years later they got married, after which their daughter Chelsea was born.

While Clinton had a successful career as a lawyer, Bill Clinton served twice as Governor of Arkansas (1979-1981 and 1983-1992).

Clinton served as first lady from 1993 to 2001.

From 2001 to 2009 - Senator from the State of New York.

In 2008, she lost to Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

From 2009 to 2013 - US Secretary of State

It seemed that even this moneybag and reality TV star with extensive media support could not interfere with her triumph. And Hillary herself had no doubts about her victory, having arrived with her husband on the evening of November 8, 2016 at the penthouse of the Peninsula Hotel in New York, in order to watch with friends and associates how the results from different states gradually add up to an unconditional victory.

“It never crossed my mind that we could lose,” Hillary says.

Here she is sitting in front of me in the middle of a large conference room in an Amsterdam hotel at a small square table with a white tablecloth. She came to our continent to give lectures, and I have only 20 minutes at my disposal. Obviously, we will talk more about politics than about emotions. A candle flame flickers between us. Nearby is a vase with tulips, and around us here and there are the shadows of guards and bodyguards - they are silently watching us.

“According to all our data, and to all available information, the victory was in our pocket,” she explains.

However, disturbing reports began to arrive from North Carolina, and Bill Clinton nervously paced the room, chewing on an unlit cigar. Hillary, on the other hand, reassured herself that it was not at all necessary to win all the states, so she decided to take a nap - and let the elections go on as usual.

While she slept, things took an unexpected turn. The world seemed to pass her by. When she woke up, they were still waiting for results from Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It seems that nothing has been decided. But Michigan caught fire in red. And when Pennsylvania went to Trump at 1:35, it was all over.

According to Hillary Clinton, it became difficult for her to breathe, as if all the oxygen was pumped out of the room.

“I was in real shock. It was very painful".

People gathered around the buffet table - family, friends and old colleagues.

“And they were all as discouraged as I was.”

How to say "I'm sorry, I lost" and "Where the hell have you been?" at the same time. Hillary Clinton responded with a 478-page book she co-authored with two speechwriters. This book is filled with personal, blood-soaked experiences - from grief and rage to feelings of guilt and outright bewilderment.

The other day the book "What happened?" published in Danish. And the account of Hillary Clinton's defeat from her own lips came out much more unsmoothed, angry and straightforward than her previous autobiographies, respecting the limits of decency. But, in addition, this is a sincere attempt to figure out what really happened, because, as she herself writes: “It still seems incredible to me.”

Politiken: They say Americans don't like losers. Why did you decide to write a book anyway?

Hillary Clinton: On the one hand, to make amends with myself. But I also wanted to draw attention to many issues that continue to be relevant. After all, other forces were involved in our defeat, which I could not influence. We have only recently begun to think about them. Now our intelligence says that Russia is constantly interfering in our elections, and we have new elections in November. We did not take into account the big prospect, but a perfect storm was approaching, staged according to the laws of a reality show. We need to keep talking about it, and that's what I'm going to do. If no one else, so am I.

strange moment

Hillary Clinton began her campaign evening by discussing her future victory speech with speechwriters. They decided how to bring the nation together and how to reach out to those who voted for the loser. That is for Donald Trump.

At the end of the evening, she took the time to open thick folders with a transition plan and the first issues she would deal with as president. Here is an ambitious program of new infrastructure that will create new jobs. Is everything ready. When the victory is officially announced, she will take to the luxurious stage of the glass Javits Center in Manhattan, where the floor is made in the form of a map of the United States. That's where she'll be standing, in the middle of Texas, in a white suit, the first woman to become president of the United States. White color as a sign of the importance of the historical moment. She and Bill even bought a house next door in the suburbs of New York, so that guests and servants would be more comfortable.

But when she woke up after a short sleep, the world changed irrevocably.

“Questions rained down one after another,” says Hillary, “What happened? How could we miss this? What the hell is going on?"

The White House said that Obama fears that the result will be controversial, and that a long trial will break out.

"You know, I had to talk to Trump." A smile crosses his face. "I still have a lot of questions, but the TV channels have already declared him the winner."

We sit on opposite sides of the white tablecloth and are silent. According to Hillary, it was the strangest moment in her entire life. Donald Trump bonfired her "corrupt Hillary" for months. During a televised debate, he promised to put her behind bars. And at rallies he conducted a crowd chanting: “Jail her!”. And then all of a sudden these antics became decent. And at the same time, writes Clinton, "there was a terribly mundane feeling, like calling your neighbor and saying you couldn't come to his barbecue."

The servants for the failed celebration were sent home. And while Bill sat and watched Trump's jubilation on television, Hillary went off to prepare tomorrow's address. She asked her team to prepare a speech of conciliation. Little by little people dispersed. In the end, she and Bill were left alone. They lay down on the bed and he took her hand.

“I just lay there and stared up at the ceiling until it was time for the speech,” Hillary writes.

Blame others

The fact that this world is sometimes ridiculous and more like someone else's fiction than the well-trained choreography that we consider reality, I had to remember in my modest hotel room in Amsterdam, where I saw a CNN report about how the President of the United States declared a world trade war.

An elderly, slightly overweight gentleman with orange hair and sharp gestures on the flat screen looked more like a nightmare than a character from real politics. This is more of an eccentric Batman movie villain than a typical member of the political elite.

And as I walk a few hundred meters to the luxurious Krasnapolsky Hotel, where I will spend 20 minutes alone with Hillary Clinton, I feel like something has changed somewhere. The woman who got more votes than any white man gave her time to me, a small newspaper journalist from a tiny country. It simply does not fit into the boundaries of what we used to call reality.

When "What happened?" hit stores in the fall, some reviewers found the book to be smart and witty, and that Hillary was sharp-tongued and didn't spare anyone, not even herself. Others seemed to be reading a completely different book. “An ill-conceived text that speaks most eloquently about the reasons for the defeat,” said The Guardian (The Guardian), calling the book “a pathological study of a failed campaign.” According to The Guardian, the masses didn't follow Hillary because her cold calculation failed when she mistakenly assumed that American politics still revolved around political agendas. But Trump perfectly understood that now this is nothing more than a continuation of show business.

According to the New Yorker, Hillary lost because she "couldn't find the right language, topics of conversation, or even facial expressions to convince enough American proletarians that she was their true hero," not a caricature rich man." And while reading, you notice how she tries to put herself in a favorable light in the face of history - after all, in this way she creates her legacy.

As she herself repeatedly emphasizes, the responsibility for the defeat lies with her alone. But at the same time, he does not hesitate to shift part of the blame onto others.

Bernie Sanders for fueling the Trump campaign with her accusations that she is a creature of Wall Street. On the Russians - for throwing fake news. Trump for turning the presidential race into a clan war. Former FBI Director James Comie for promising to reopen her work email case eleven days before the election, which, in her opinion, cost her the win.

And, of course, the media. In her words, they "led to the victory of the most inexperienced, most ignorant and most incompetent president in the history of our country, making a gaffe I made using my personal mail as Secretary of State into a key campaign topic."

What does Hillary Clinton know that we would also like to know? In other words, what to ask her? What is happening in the White House, we see for ourselves. And how the Democrats quickly recover after her defeat is already a task for the new growth.

Complaining about the fact that it did not work out to become the head of the world's greatest superpower is already too late, no matter how much you want to. On the other hand, this defeat stunned the whole world. And we started to notice its consequences only recently. Then maybe this is what it feels like when you lose so that the whole world collapses? And how do you manage to get out of bed in the morning and convince yourself that what little you can achieve now is also worth a lot?

"Who are you really?"

In a bright conference room, a middle-aged journalist from a Dutch newspaper perseveres with the small talk about submarines while I reread my questions for the umpteenth time. Suddenly, there is a stir in the corridor, the Dutchman is asked to leave, they nod to me, and in a second she appears on the carpet, a radiant blonde in a golden yellow kimono. She smiles broadly, and everything but defeat is written on her face.

"Hello, Niels. Nice to meet you. I kept hoping I could make it to Copenhagen,” she says as we shake hands. “I love your country.”

That's where we started. She's here and ready to chat. And although even here, in a corner of the old world, she continues to work on her image, she still seems more sensitive, lively and real than I imagined - she seems to be improvising. In just a few sentences, her voice can jump from a joyful chirp when it comes to the personal, to a dark undertone when it comes to politics and global issues.

Like many, I imagined Hillary Clinton as a person whose image is choreographed, and whose real face one can only guess when she, like a sunny blonde or rather an elderly teletubby dressed in primary colors, appears in the stands around the world, winking merrily and waving his hand to seemingly random people in the crowd.

Apparently, none of this is new to her. She herself admits in her book What Happened? that it is strange for her to hear the questions “who are you really?” and “why do you want to be president?”. It is understood that something bad must be behind this - ambition, vanity, cynicism. It seems strange and widespread to her that she and Bill have, in her own words, "some special arrangements." After which she admits that they, too, are ashamed, “but this is what we call marriage,” she writes.

With the fact that millions of people can not stand her, she reconciled. “I think part of that is because I was the first female presidential candidate. I don't think my followers will have to endure the same. Although we'll see, - she answers my question about the reasons for such a massive dislike. “I was the first woman of the Baby Boomer generation and a working mother to become First Lady. I think people thought: uh, no, something does not pull her to just the wife of the president, rather, to part of his headquarters. Hence their anger."

And yet it is Hillary Clinton that most Americans consider a woman worthy of emulation, according to a Gallup poll. “That's what's weird. When I do something, people respect me and praise my work. But when I look for a new job, everything changes. So it was when I first was a senator, and then became secretary of state. And when I ask people for support, it always causes conflicting feelings, as it always happens with women who have achieved power.”

- Why is this happening?

“It seems to me that people think that there is something wrong with women who want to become president. Like, what normal woman would want that? And others will say: Yes, I don’t know any such. Here my wife does not want, the daughter does not want. And neither do my subordinates. So something is wrong here.

Perhaps all this hype, all the intrigues that were woven around her during the election campaign, drove a wedge between her and the voters.

“Various fables were chatted about me, we considered them ordinary nonsense, but, as it turned out, later, it was because of them that many put a tick in front of a different surname. They told me that I was seriously ill and on my deathbed,” Clinton laughs. - Like I'm the leader of a gang of pedophiles that keeps children in the basement of a pizzeria. And other wildness, which was immediately picked up by the Russians, Trump and the right-wing media. Some thought: maybe she really is dying, but she is fooling us.”

Yoga, white wine and anger

The day after the election in New York was cold and rainy. As she drove through the crowd of her supporters, many wept, others held up their fists in solidarity. Hillary Clinton herself felt as if she had committed a betrayal. “In a sense, it was,” she writes. And he adds - I carried my fatigue like armor. After a speech in which she admitted defeat, she and Bill drove to their old house in suburban New York. Only in the car did she allow herself to smile. “The only thing I wanted was to go home, change into home clothes and never pick up the phone again,” recalls Hillary. Then it was time for yoga pants and a fleece shirt. For the next few weeks. To them were added relaxing breathing exercises, yoga and plentiful portions of white wine. But at times, Clinton admits, he felt like screaming into his pillow.

She watched TV shows that her husband recorded for her. Prayed to God. I was mentally transported on vacation to the “Neapolitan novels” of Elena Ferrante (Elena Ferrante), swallowed packs of detective stories and texts by Henry Nouwen (Henri Nouwen) about spirituality and the fight against depression. And she cried when actress Kate McKinnon, dressed like Hillary, sat down at the piano and sang the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen (Leonard Сohen) on one of the TV shows - "Though I did only what I could // And I walked the path of mistakes, trials / But I did not lie, I did not become a jester in a plague feast.

She almost maniacally dusted all the closets and went on long walks with Bill, but still, every time she heard the news, the same question rolled over, unstoppable, like tears - how could this happen?

For several days, it was simply impossible to think about anything else, she admits.

And there was also anger. She found it difficult to contain herself when Trump began hiring the same Wall Street bankers he had recently accused her of colluding with. And even more difficult when people who didn't vote came to apologize. “How could you?” Clinton muses in the book. “You neglected your civic duty at the most inopportune moment for this!”

“It was just awful! she exclaims in response to my question about the first weeks after the election. “I warned our country about the danger posed by Trump. I saw clearly that he was a serious threat to our democracy and its institutions.” She catches my eye: “I was hoping I was wrong, Niels, you understand?”.

For Americans, it works flawlessly. Hearing their name, any of them seem to take off half a centimeter above the chair, filled with importance and self-confidence.

“I hoped,” she chooses words, “that no matter how he behaved before and no matter what he said during the election campaign ... he would feel the duty and responsibility of his post and would behave ... appropriately. But the weeks went by and nothing happened.”

I ask if she has anything to blame herself for.

“For various particulars,” she replies quickly. “For not explaining our agenda clearly enough to people.” I suppose this must mean: failed to reverse her image as a protege of the system in the eyes of a disillusioned working class. “And,” she adds, “for not handling Trump during the televised debate.”

Is that when he went straight for you?

- Yes. He just followed me around the stage. I immediately figured out what he was trying to achieve, and decided to simply ignore him. Now I'm not sure that I did the right thing, because he turned the televised debate into a reality show.

“I thought people want the president to be a modern person who can be relied upon, who would act like an adult: not lose his temper and not behave like a child. I constantly scroll through these moments in my head and, I think, now I would try to do things differently. ”

“I had a world-class team, they helped Obama become president twice and were real political strategists. We planned a modern campaign, a kind of "Obama 2.0". And we succeeded. But Trump and his allies changed the script, and the campaign turned into a TV show. In my camp, unfortunately, they were not ready for this.

“During my meeting with Putin, he reminded me of the type of men who sit down in the subway with their legs wide apart, getting in the way of others. They seem to say: “I will take as much space as I see fit” and “I have no respect for you and will behave as if I am sitting at home in a dressing gown.” We call this "manspreading".<…>Putin does not respect women and despises anyone who contradicts him, so I am a double problem for him.”

Hillary Clinton on Vladimir Putin

“We saw that the Russians were up to something. But they did not understand their intention. We understand a lot just now. And then we couldn’t understand where all this dirt on me comes from, ”she says, referring to subsequent reports of a whole cyberarmy of bloggers and fake social media profiles that put Clinton in a bad light.

I ask which of her actions she would be most willing to "react."

“Well, I would never use personal mail as the head of the State Department,” she laughs, and then immediately adds, “despite the fact that it is completely legal, my predecessor and my successor did it.”

Alpha male advantage

In the book there was a place for other claims to himself. For the fact that, unlike Bernie Sanders, she did not make grandiose promises, simply because their fulfillment could take many years, although voters would certainly be seduced by this. During her campaign, Clinton seriously considered offering Americans a guaranteed minimum income, a small, fixed income for everyone (like the one introduced in Finland as an experiment in 2017 - approx. trans.), but abandoned this idea, weighing all the pros and cons.

Now she thinks she should take the risk.

Clinton writes that her worst fears about her own “flaws” as a presidential candidate have come true.

“Some of them are congenital,” she explains in response to my question. “I'm a woman and I can't change that. And in our country there are many people who will never dare to support a woman in such a post. This was what all our research was saying, but it seemed to me that I could still break through thanks to my experience.

Barack Obama's mother was very young, and his father returned to Kenya, so the boy was raised by his grandparents. He grew up to become a civil rights activist and a law professor. An excellent biography to start a political career. Bill Clinton's father died before he was born. The family lived for years on a farm with no running water and an outdoor latrine. In addition, Bill had to appease his stepfather every now and then, who spread his hands on his mother. And yet he became the first in their family to graduate from the university. Hillary Clinton, by her own admission, cannot boast of such a dramatic biography. She grew up in an ordinary white middle-class family in suburban Chicago and had a happy childhood. In retrospect, she only regrets that she did not emphasize enough that she belongs to a generation of pioneer women who changed the world.

When she competed with Obama, the first black presidential candidate, she did not accentuate her gender. But this time it was different, she explains.

“Perhaps I should have conveyed this idea in a different way, more effectively. I dont know. But I am sure that the next woman in my place will face the same dilemma.”

Opinion polls showed that many Republicans and Republicans were opposed to a woman president. Even in the Democratic camp, skepticism reigned. In addition, there was "the inevitable barrier of derogatory sexist comments."

— What did it mean?

- Well, for example, they say that women have too shrill voices. Although I have known quite a few men who literally scream their lungs out. In any case, this criticism does not apply to them. It is addressed not only to me personally, but to any woman who dares to stick her head out and say: "So, I'm going to become a governor or president." There are many sexist misconceptions that many, I'm sure, don't even notice.

When her husband lost the gubernatorial election in Arcasas in 1980, it was partly because she ran under her maiden name, Rodham. When Bill decided to run for the presidency 12 years later, she added his last name to hers, but then she got it for pursuing a career as a lawyer. And when she replied that she could “go home and bake cakes and have tea parties,” she was seen as a self-righteous careerist who looks down on American housewives.

When Hillary Clinton read a "deep analysis" of her televised debates with Trump after the election, she was surprised. “After the elections, I studied everything that was written about them,” she smiles. “And so I read: maybe she really looked more convincing and caught him more than once, but you still couldn’t take your eyes off Trump.”

She looks into my eyes.

“He behaves like an alpha male. He wants to be seen as such. And what's more, deep down in our DNA, we also believe that the president should be like that. I've broken many barriers, but this last one was too much for me. But I think I managed to clear the space for debate, and next time people will be more attentive.”

For a moment we sit in silence. Suddenly she says:

“But I love the TV show Borgen, I just love it.”

Here she embarks on a detailed analysis of the plot, acting and, last but not least, the trials that befell the main character.

“Balancing family and work is just one of the tasks that fall on the shoulders of women,” says Hillary, adding that if work is fraught with power, then dilemmas cannot be avoided.

“On the one hand, no one wants to become a stranger to himself. On the other hand, you must be able to remain yourself in a situation where others consider you a leader. And it's not easy."

Too many opponents

Hillary Clinton thought for a long time about whether to participate in Trump's inauguration - she was afraid that she would be booed and greeted with shouts of "Jail her!". She agreed when she learned that Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush would be there. Little by little, she began to think about how much it hurt past losers when they got into the same situation.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

She calls Trump's inaugural speech "a roar from the abyss of white nationalism."

“It’s dark and dangerous and disgusting,” she says. “I kept thinking: wow, we really have hard times ahead - and my fears were justified.”

"Niels!" - one of the shadows, sitting a few tables away from me, tactfully makes it clear that time is coming to an end.

“Two more minutes,” I ask, and turn the conversation to the last questions.

- I have always been interested in what people do after they have been president ...

- And you were the first in line for so long, and suddenly it all ended, and you never became president. How do you adjust to a new life?

— I spent a lot of time walking in the woods with friends to look into my future. I really was sure that I would become president and do so much for our country. However, I didn't succeed. But I'm not used to giving up. So I started looking for new ways to contribute.

She looks up.

“This is not one comprehensive work, but many different interesting challenges. I support new political organizations and young candidates challenging Trump's manners and Republican order to restore the balance of democratic power."

What is your goal in life now?

— Fortunately, I have a lot of things that I have been doing for many years. This includes health insurance and all sorts of conflicts in our society. And I also help the struggling side to rise.

“I do what I can to protect and defend our democracy,” she says, apparently unaware that her “defend and protect” unwittingly quoted a presidential oath that she never had to take (“…to the fullest extent my forces will uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States ... ”- approx.translator).

- And yet, how do you answer the question "what happened"?

“It happened that there were too many opponents in front of me. A Trump campaign unlike anything we've dealt with before. Sexism. Russians who constantly influenced the outcome of the elections. Information has been used as a weapon, and we are only now beginning to understand the danger it poses to democracies around the world. I couldn't get over it, and I'm really, really sorry," she replies.

And he adds with a half smile:

"Because I think I would make a good president."

Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Image caption Hillary Clinton received more votes, but lost in key states and did not get the required number of electoral votes

This election - by far the most unusual in American history - has become something of a revolt against the political establishment. Hillary Clinton, like no other, is the personification of that same political establishment.

Throughout the campaign, to millions of angry voters, she was the face of America's "broken politics."

Donald Trump has managed to convince enough voters in enough states that he knows how to fix it.

The billionaire has successfully positioned himself as a "person outside the system" who opposes the one who is the embodiment of this system.

Image copyright getty Image caption Clinton supporters are disappointed with the results. Some even cried when they saw their candidate lose.

He became a protest candidate, and she personified the preservation of the status quo.

Hillary Clinton has often stressed that she is the most qualified candidate. The politician constantly referred to her resume - the experience of the first lady, work as a senator and secretary of state.

However, during this "hellish" election, in which there was so much anger and discontent, Donald Trump's supporters perceived her experience and qualifications absolutely negatively.

Many of those with whom I spoke during this campaign - especially those living in small steel towns - wanted to see a businessman in the White House, not a career politician.

Their hatred of Washington was very clear. As well as the hatred for Clinton, which is so deeply embedded in their souls.

I especially remember a conversation with a middle-aged woman from Tennessee. She was the absolute epitome of the politeness and charm of the American South. But when it came to Clinton, there was no trace of her excellent manners.

Hillary Clinton was not credible, which is why her e-mail scandal resonated so much. She was perceived as a member of the East Coast elite, one of those who look down on mere mortals.

Image copyright getty Image caption Donald Trump managed to win over the white representatives of the working class

The former presidential couple were considered hypocritical liberals who teach modesty to others, while they themselves bathe in luxury.

Again, their wealth played a cruel joke on them and alienated the representatives of the proletariat, despite the fact that the latter quite calmly voted for the real estate magnate and billionaire.

However, even during the primaries with Bernie Sanders, it became clear how difficult it is to attract women, especially young women, to vote for the country's first female president.

Many women did not have warm feelings for her. Some recalled her disdainful remarks as First Lady, who did not want to be a housewife.

When Donald Trump accused her of pandering to her husband's love affairs and attacking women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, many women agreed.

Undoubtedly, old-fashioned, ineradicable sexism played a role. Many men refused to vote for a woman as president.

Image copyright getty Image caption Voters did not take into account the professional experience of Hillary Clinton

At a time when Americans are in dire need of change more than ever, she has failed to offer them anything new. The situation when a party owns the White House for three terms in a row is extremely rare. Democrats haven't achieved that since the 1940s.

The problem was compounded by the fact that many voters were simply tired of the Clinton family, because Bill ruled the country from 1992 to 2000.

Hillary Clinton was somewhat of an "artificial" candidate. Her speeches often sounded unnatural and insincere.

The re-emergence of her email scandal took her attention and forced her to end the campaign on a negative note.

Image copyright getty Image caption Banal sexism is one of the reasons for the defeat of Clinton

During her election campaign, dozens of different slogans were used, in which the main idea "drowned".

There were also tactical errors. She wasted resources and time on the states that already supported her, in particular, on North Carolina and Ohio, overlooking the so-called "blue wall" - the states that traditionally vote for the Democrats.

Donald Trump, with the help of white working-class representatives, partially tore down that wall, "winning" Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which had not supported the Republicans since 1984.

This was not just a rejection of Hillary Clinton, it was a rejection of half the country's population by Barack Obama.

Perhaps the best description of the current American political system was given by users of one of the social networks, discussing why the brother of the US National Committee employee Seth Rich, who was killed under suspicious circumstances, wants to drop the investigation.

"Why would Seth's brother want to kill the investigation, why wouldn't he want to know exactly who killed his brother?" one of the bloggers asked.

"Perhaps he was paid for by the machine,"- answered another, referring to the political machine that serves the US Democratic Party.

"Or intimidated by the machine"- expressed the conviction of the third.

Rich, Clinton and the Bizarre Murder

Either one or the other could be true, as observers have repeatedly pointed out in cases of bizarre and terribly consistent killings of those who somehow got in the way of former US presidential candidate and wife of former US President Hillary Clinton. There, too, things were not carried through to the end, or the results were made public such that even a cat would not be convinced if this animal were interested in politics. But nevertheless, the sheer number of deaths and open killings around Clinton should long ago have alerted any police force in the world, if they wanted to do their job right.

In addition to the American police.

For some reason.

Why? Perhaps the “silence of the police lambs” is due to the same reason as the strange, if not frightening, indifference to this case of the American media, which, with amazing reluctance, spoke about the Seth Rich case.

And in it, meanwhile, there was something to discuss. Especially against the backdrop of the fury that seized the American press with hints of the participation of "Russian hackers" in discrediting Clinton. Hints, we recall, have never been confirmed at least on any convincing evidence base.

So, a certain Seth Rich, a 27-year-old employee of the US Democratic Party apparatus during the 2016 election campaign, was killed on the night of Sunday, July 10, in Washington. Several bullets were put into him, one of them in the back, but he either resisted or tried to escape by crawling away. Either - since the face, hands and knees of the victim were covered with bruises, he became a victim of "express interrogation", either immediately after being injured, or, rather, shortly before them.

The version of the robbery was not confirmed, since neither the watch nor the wallet were stolen.

The second "someone", the well-known founder of the Wikileaks revealing portal Julian Assange, did not name Rich as his source of information leak from the servers of the Democratic Party, from which data it followed that Hillary Clinton fought with the dirtiest methods against her fellow party member, but a competitor in the race in Presidents Bernie Sanders.

But on the other hand, Assange was too transparent to "name" Rich in one of his interviews: "Sources try very hard to provide us with information and often take great risks. There was one man, 27 years old, who worked for the Democrats, he was shot in the back and was killed a few weeks ago for unknown reasons while walking down the street in Washington." And further in answer to the question, "why do you then allude to the 27-year-old man who was killed in Washington?" - " Because we need to be aware of how much is at stake in the US game and that our sources are at serious risk."

In general, you can’t say more clearly that Hillary’s security service figured out the “mole” in her apparatus and quickly eliminated it. About the "tasty" "mole" said his position: director of electoral base capture (director of voter expansion) in the National Committee of the Democratic Party.

Access to the server with imitation of "Russian hacking"

It is curious how this story echoes the one that was recently reflected in the materials of Constantinople.

By virtue of his position, Rich had access to both email and the server that hosted the material that WikiLeaks then published. In turn, the results of a forensic investigation conducted by experienced, retired, however, professionals of the American intelligence services (which results amazed them so much that they sent a letter to US President Donald Trump with a story about them), irrefutably testify that ...

However, what follows is so significant that it is better to state it in order.

So, according to ex-spies who occupied serious positions related to technology, electronics and, in general, professional hardware surveillance, "a forensic investigation into the 'Russian hack' of the computers of the Democratic National Committee last year shows that on July 5, 2017, the information was copied (not hacked) by a person who had physical access to the computers of the National Committee, and then faked traces in such a way as to blame Russia."

Underline made by the authors of this letter-memorandum. But let's pay attention to the date: July 5th. Some a man with the nickname "Guccifer 2.0" on July 5, 2016 invades the server of the National Committee of Democrats and copies data from there to external storage device.

Bloody Hillary: 5 Mysterious Clinton-Linked Murders

Founder WikiLeaks Julian Assange On August 9, he gave a sensational interview to Dutch television. In it, he talks about a large-scale investigation into the financial activities and connections of the Clinton couple, as well as election fraud, in which Hillary is involved. It follows from Assange's words that the source of the leak was not Russian hackers, but the device itself Democratic Party of the USA (DPS), and also that Hillary, in achieving her goals, may not stop at massacres.

Prior to this, the American public was diligently looking for a trace of Russia in the hacker hacks of the traffic police servers, as a result of which the truth came to light about how Bernie Sanders was "drowned" in the primaries in order to give way to Hillary. Tens of thousands of letters from internal correspondence, which spoke for themselves, were published by the WikiLeaks website. Blaming the scandal on the elusive "Russian hackers" who are intriguing against the United States was easy and convenient, and the investigation and the search for the perpetrators in this case could be calmly put on the brakes, again referring to the evil totalitarian Russia, which refuses to cooperate.

Seth Rich

However, in the interview mentioned, Assange explicitly hints that there was an internal leak, and its source was a member of the Democratic apparatus. Seth Rich(Seth Rich), who was shot in the back on July 10 right on the streets of Washington during a telephone conversation. The police reported a robbery, but the phone, watch, and wallet remained with the victim, although he was probably searched (the dying man was hit several times).

Surprisingly, the investigators did not find any witnesses or evidence, although the murder took place in one of the respectable districts of the city. So Rich's parents had to hold a press conference and urge anyone with information to contact them directly. WikiLeaks, in turn, is offering $20,000 to anyone who brings any information about Rich's murder. Assange said other WikiLeaks sources were extremely concerned about the risks. " We need to understand how high the stakes are in the US right now.", Assange stressed.

Sean Lucas

This is not the first nor the last mysterious death of people connected in one way or another with the Clinton campaign. So, literally three weeks after the murder of Rich, a supporter of Bernie Sanders was found dead. Sean Lucas, who is named by American sources as the lead lawyer in the case of fraud to promote Clinton and "drown" other candidates. Most recently, a viral video circulated on the Internet in which Lucas is filing a class action lawsuit against the Democratic Party by Sanders supporters and accuses campaign staff of rigging the primaries. On August 2, Lucas' body, without signs of violent death, was found in the bathroom of his own house. Despite the fact that more than a week has passed, the causes of Lucas' death have not yet been named, he did not experience any health problems. The relatives of the deceased have staged a fundraiser for an independent investigation, and the case of rigged primaries is now likely to fall apart.

Victor Thorne

The day before Lucas' body was discovered in the bathroom, on August 1, a best-selling author exposing Bill and Hillary Clinton was gunned down outside his home. For decades Victor Thorne was the "anti-biographer" of the political couple and took out a lot of skeletons from their family closet.

At the beginning of the year, Thorne published another book called The Clinton Coronation: Why Hillary Shouldn't Get Into the White House and, shortly before his death, launched a number of foreign translations of it. Did Thorne find any new facts in the course of his constant research? This is no longer known. The police are classifying his death as a suicide, which does not fit well with the reputation of a purposeful author at the peak of success and on the eve of the presidential election.

John Ash

Former President of the UN General Assembly John Ash was involved in a corruption scandal. He was convicted of taking bribes from Chinese investors, and on June 27 he was supposed to testify in court about his cooperation with a Chinese businessman. Ng Lap Sengom.

Seng previously featured in "Chinagate"- presidential campaign sponsorship case Bill Clinton and the illegal infusion of funds into the US Democratic National Committee. Given that Seng maintained close ties to the Clintons, many believe that Ash could have uncovered shady financing schemes for Hillary's current campaign, as well as bribery mechanisms to rig the primaries. But alas, three days before the trial, Ash unexpectedly dropped the barbell on his throat while training alone at his home and died. According to the police, it was an accident.

Joe Montano

July 25 died Joe Montano, former Chairman of the US Democratic National Committee, who was replaced at the post Debbie Wasserman-Schultz- it is she, in accordance with the data of the "mail leak", that is one of the key defendants in the falsification of the primaries. In addition, Montano was an aide to Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine. He was a very knowledgeable person in the affairs of the party, and his death in the midst of the congress, literally the day after WikiLeaks stuffed campaign correspondence, led many to think. One way or another, Montano's knowledge went with him to the grave. The cause of death of the 47-year-old politician is called a heart attack.

WikiLeaks promises new batch of revelations

A series of deaths of people who were somehow well informed about the activities of the Democrats and Hillary Clinton, in such a short period, gave experts and journalists a reason to link them into a kind of chain. However, all this did not frighten WikiLeaks at all, although their sources are concerned about the hunt for witnesses. In his interview, Julian Assange promises to soon publish new documents related to the DPS, the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's presidential campaign.

Fox News: Killed Seth Rich was a WikiLeaks whistleblower

Mysterious death: Republican investigating Clinton correspondence dies

Pizzagate - US online community against pedophiles in politics

More detailed and a variety of information about the events taking place in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of our beautiful planet, can be obtained on Internet conferences, constantly held on the website "Keys of Knowledge". All Conferences are open and completely free. We invite all interested...

American researcher Clinton Erlich, who works at MGIMO, explains in Foreign Policy magazine why Putin and his team support Trump. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, the world will remember August 25 as the day she started the Second Cold War.

Last month, in a speech that was actually nominally about Donald Trump, Clinton called Russian President Vladimir Putin the godfather of extreme far-right nationalism. For those who follow the Kremlin's politics, this is not an accidental epithet. Two years ago, in the most famous speech of his career, Putin accused the West of supporting an armed takeover of power in Ukraine by “people of extreme views, nationalists, right-wing, including neo-Nazi, beliefs.” Clinton didn't just stab the Russian president, she did it in his own words.

Even worse, these were words that were originally addressed to neo-Nazis. In Moscow, this was perceived as a repetition of Clinton's statement, in which she compared Putin to Hitler. This added an element of personal animosity to an already strained relationship, but more importantly, Clinton described Putin as representing an ideology fundamentally opposed to the United States.

Even after the events of 2014 in Ukraine, when relations between Russia and the West became worse than ever before, the Kremlin has long argued that a new Cold War is impossible: while there may be disagreements over, say, the fate of Donetsk, there is no longer a fundamental ideological struggle separating East and West. But now, from the Russians' point of view, Clinton's statement looks like she added that missing ingredient to bipolar feuding by presenting Moscow as the vanguard of racism, intolerance and mercy on a global scale.

It is difficult for Russians to recognize their country in Clinton's description.

Discrimination against women? The Putin government provides working mothers with three years of paid parental leave. Intolerance? The President personally attended the opening of a large mosque in Moscow. Racism? Putin often touts Russia's ethnic diversity. To Russians, Clinton seems to be trying to come up with an explanation for his hostility.

As the only Western scholar at MGIMO—in Henry Kissinger’s phrase, the “Russian Harvard,” the “jewel in the crown” of the Russian national security think tank—I had to face the daunting task of finding a more reassuring explanation for Clinton’s behavior. In fact, however, the institute looks less like Harvard and more like a West Point hybrid. (US Military Academy - Open Russia) and the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University: MGIMO trains the elite of the Russian diplomatic corps, while the most influential expert centers of the country work under its roof. There is no better place to assess how Moscow feels about a possible future Clinton administration.

To be clear: Moscow perceives the former secretary of state as a threat to its very existence. From Russian foreign policy experts with whom I spoke, it is impossible to hear even the most meager praise of Clinton. They believe that during her time as secretary of state, she did a lot of harm, and the most destructive moment was the NATO intervention in Libya, which Russia could have prevented by using a veto in the UN Security Council. Moscow gave permission only because Clinton promised not to use the no-fly zone as a front for regime change.

Understandably, Russian leaders were furious when they not only toppled former Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, but a phone video of his final moments surfaced showing U.S.-backed rebels raping the former president with a bayonet. And the Kremlin was even more infuriated by Clinton's reaction to this news: “We came, we saw, he died,” the secretary of state said and laughed. This solidified her reputation in the eyes of Moscow as a duplicitous warmonger.

When Clinton became the candidate, Moscow felt something like déjà vu: it again demanded the establishment of a humanitarian dead zone in the Middle East - this time in Syria. Russian analysts are convinced that this is yet another pretext for regime change. Putin aims to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad safe from the fate of Gaddafi, and he has brought Russian air force, navy and special forces into Syria to crush anti-Assad rebels, many of whom are American-trained and supported by Americans.

Given ongoing Russian operations, “no-fly zone” is a polite euphemism for permission to shoot down Russian aircraft if Russia does not abandon its air campaign. Clinton understands this. When asked during the debate whether she was going to shoot down Russian aircraft, she replied: “I don’t think it will come to that.” In other words, she is sure that Putin, if he is cornered, will falter before the US starts a real war with Russia.

This is a dubious assumption; for Moscow, the stakes are much higher than for the White House. Syria has long been Russia's strongest ally in the Middle East, hosting the only Russian military base outside of the former Soviet Union. When relations with Turkey soured, the naval garrison at Tartus took on a special strategic importance because the base allows the Russian Black Sea Fleet to operate in the Mediterranean without passing through the Turkish-controlled straits.

Two weeks ago, Putin doubled his military presence in Syria, launching airstrikes using strategic bombers from an air base in northwestern Iran. Russia paid for this privilege with considerable diplomatic capital. After that, there is no longer an acceptable scenario in which Moscow will retreat and allow anti-Assad forces to take Damascus, which Washington, judging by publicly available intelligence reports, considers its ultimate goal.

Clinton justifies his threat to attack the Russian air force by saying that it "gives us some leverage in our negotiations with Russia." This sounds suspicious, just like the "madman strategy" attributed to former President Richard Nixon, who tried to maximize his "leverage" by convincing Soviet opponents that he was crazy enough to start a world war.

Nixon's bluff was a failure; even when he invaded Cambodia, Moscow did not for a moment doubt his mental health. But now Russian analysts don't have that much confidence in Hillary Clinton's sanity.

Her temperament became legendary in Moscow when she broke diplomatic protocol and walked out of a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov immediately after an exchange of pleasantries. The impression that she was unstable was reinforced by reports that she drank heavily during her State Department years; this charge is especially weighty in a country where many of Boris Yeltsin's failures are blamed on his alcoholism.

External cultural differences made the situation even worse. In Russia, where a smile addressed to a stranger is considered a sign of mental illness, leaders are expected to behave sternly and coolly. From this point of view, Clinton's behavior during the election campaign looks annoying: she barks doggy style is funny shakes head, then grimaces. In my opinion, there are no signs of mental damage, but in Moscow, many people perceive it that way.

Another factor irritating Russian analysts is that, unlike former hawks like John McCain, Clinton belongs to the Democratic Party. This allows her to silence the voices of those who normally oppose intervention, even though "the architect of the Iraqi war" Robert Kagan boasts that Clinton is pursuing a neocon foreign policy under a different name. Now the only one who advocates rapprochement with Russia is Clinton's opponent Donald Trump. If she wins, her hands will be free for any aggressive actions against Russia, which the Republican "hawks" traditionally like.

Moscow prefers Trump not because it thinks he can be easily manipulated, but because his America First strategy matches its own views on foreign affairs. Russia is striving to return to classical international law, in which states negotiate with each other on the basis of equally understood interests without any ideology. From Moscow's perspective, only the predictability of Realpolitik can provide the coherence and stability needed for a lasting peace.

For example, Crimea actually became part of Russia. The offer to officially recognize this fact is the most powerful card that the next president will be able to play in future negotiations with Russia. But Clinton scourged Trump too hard for putting that card on the table. For ideological reasons, it prefers to pretend that Crimea will one day return to Ukraine — even if Moscow builds a $4 billion bridge connecting the peninsula to its core territory.

Moscow believes that Crimea and other major points of bipolar tension will evaporate if America simply elects a leader who will pursue the country’s “primary interests,” from supporting Assad against ISIS to shrinking NATO by getting rid of freeloaders. Russia respects Trump for taking these realistic positions on his own initiative, even if it is not politically expedient.

In Clinton, Moscow sees the complete opposite - a progressive ideologist who stubbornly maintains a high moral position, not thinking about the consequences. In addition, Clinton has financial ties to George Soros, whose Open Society Foundation Moscow considers one of the strongest threats to Russia's internal stability, suggesting that he is involved in the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe.

The Russian security apparatus is convinced that Soros wants to overthrow Putin, using the same methods he used against Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine: by secretly organizing a mass protest involving armed provocateurs. The only question for the Kremlin is whether Clinton is reckless enough to support these plans.

Putin condemned the US for planning such an operation in 2011, when Secretary of State Clinton spoke approvingly of a mass protest against his party's victory in parliamentary elections. And her recent rhetoric does not give him reason to believe that she has abandoned the idea of ​​the Maidan in Red Square.

That fear was heightened when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a politician close to Clinton, recently accused Putin of trying to influence the outcome of US elections through cyber attacks. This is a heavy accusation - President Hillary Clinton could repeat something like this to justify a war with Russia.

Original article: Clinton Ehrlich,“The Kremlin actually believes that Hillary wants to start a war with Russia” , Foreign Policy, 7 September. Translation:

The set of qualities possessed by Hillary Clinton until recently seemed to be the optimal characteristic of a potential presidential candidate - in fact, that is why it is customary to say about her that no one has ever been so prepared for the presidency. But in 2016, most of these seemingly positive characteristics in a personal file sound more like an accusation than a compliment.

In 2016, American citizens have a unique chance to elect as their leader a man who has been preparing for this job for the past several decades, and who is, in general, the most competent presidential candidate in US history. Plus, her election will also be another breakthrough towards the dream of truly universal equality: more than two hundred years after the signing of the Constitution, a woman will occupy the highest post in the country for the first time.

This woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, served as the first lady of the United States and proved herself in that role not only as a devoted wife, but also as a successful politician, making an important contribution to health care reform and the emancipation of women. Hillary is considered perhaps the most successful presidential wife since Eleanor Roosevelt. This woman was a senator from the state of New York during the most difficult period for the main city of the country after the September 11 attacks. This woman was in charge of American foreign policy during the years when the Arab Spring happened in the Middle East and hope for a long-awaited democracy seemed to dawn. This woman has fought for gender equality and minority rights all her life; her current presidential agenda promises to fundamentally improve the medical system, continue the battle against prejudice and discrimination, help legalize illegal immigrants, rein in Wall Street oligarchs, and even tackle the problem of sexual assault in universities. In general, God forbid such a candidate to everyone.

There is, however, one nuance. This is how the situation looks in the eyes of Hillary Clinton herself and her team, but not in the eyes of most Americans. And although for now, according to all forecasts, Clinton should emerge victorious in a future fight with Donald Trump (after yesterday's last round of primaries, Hillary finally formally secured her status as a Democratic presidential candidate), for millions of voters it will be a choice of the lesser of two evils. Now more than half of fellow citizens have a rather negative attitude towards Hillary Clinton.

In other words, America found itself in a position where even the initial euphoria caused by a new leader and new hope does not threaten the country - Hillary Clinton will most likely be in the status of an already unloved leader to swear allegiance to the nation. The question is, how did she come to such a life.

Dislike on the right

On May 3, when it was finally clear that the presidential nomination would not go anywhere from Donald Trump, the head of the Republican National Committee with the name of Quidditch coach Rins Priebus published a tweet in which, albeit with a slight misprint, he stated the following: Donald Trump is our candidate we all need to come together to fight Hillary Clinton.

If we consider American politics solely in terms of views and platforms, such a position of Priebus, one of the main representatives of the Republican establishment, may seem paradoxical. After all, it was Priebus who proclaimed that it was time for the Republicans to modernize and work to ensure that youth, women, and people from Latin America went under their banners - three large groups of voters with whom the conservatives have somehow had trouble in recent years. getting along. It was he who worked long and hard to restart the image of the Republicans. Until Trump came along and relaunched that image in a very unexpected way; according to the candidate's latest statements, he would like to turn the Republicans into a "workers' party." In theory, it would be easier for the Republican establishment to talk to Hillary Clinton than to Trump. And from the point of view of finding a compromise, and simply from the point of view of a common political language. But that's in theory. In practice, the split between the two main American parties is as strong as ever, and Hillary for the Republicans is the main personification of enemy power, an absolute evil that must be stopped at all costs. These feelings, I must say, are mutual.

After listening to the debates of Republican presidential candidates, one could come to the conclusion that it was Hillary Clinton who ruled America for the last eight years - in any case, they persuaded her in different ways and blamed almost all troubles almost more than Barack Obama. However, the fact that Clinton worked in the Obama administration for only four years and parted ways with the president on bad terms does not bother Hillary herself, who builds her rhetoric more and more on the idea of ​​continuing Obama's liberal course. If Trump’s slogan is “Make America great again,” then Clinton counters this with the thesis that America has never ceased to be great, and the Republicans, on the contrary, will ruin everything.

Actually, she tries to turn this extreme hostility of her opponents in her favor, constantly emphasizing: do you see how they hate me? And it’s been like this for more than twenty years, and I’m still here - and since I was able to repel the attacks of adversaries before, I can in the White House. In this sense, Clinton's rhetoric is exactly perpendicular to what Obama initially came to office with, advocating the unification of various political forces on a platform of common sense. On the other hand, in America, where Donald Trump becomes a full-fledged presidential candidate, it’s somehow not necessary to talk about common sense, as well as about any association between Republicans and Democrats.

The story of the demonization of Hillary Clinton by conservative forces is indeed not the first freshness. Back in 1998, the then first lady famously uttered the phrase about a “huge right-wing conspiracy” against her husband in connection with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Republicans had little reason to like Bill Clinton, even though his presidency was marked by a fair number of bipartisan reforms. Bill still irritated: after all, before that, the Republicans had spent almost a quarter of a century in the White House with a break for Carter, and the centrist restart of the Democratic Party carried out by Clinton did not please opponents.

The President's wife irritated even more - too independent, too influential, too unlike Nancy Reagan's national grandmother. She, perhaps, gave her husband advice on the publication of presidential decisions, based on the location of the stars, but, in any case, did not get into politics. And Hillary, when asked during the 1992 election campaign if there was a conflict of interest between her law practice in Arkansas and her husband's governorship, snapped: they would probably like it better if I sat at home and cooked pastries, but I'm not like this. Hillary was doubly first lady: the first wife in the White House with a degree (Juris Doctor); the first with its own professional career; the first to dare to set up an office in the West Wing. The traditionalists, of course, did not like all this. Although the degree of misogyny here cannot be measured mathematically, it is generally believed that she also played a role: people who believe that a woman’s place in general is at the stove, logically perceive a woman aiming for the White House as an enemy.

The conflict was also fueled by the relatively free behavior of the Clintons in power and after power. The case of Monica Lewinsky, popular in Russia, is only one, the most famous episode. But there was also the case of Whitewater and Madison Guaranty, when Hillary was accused of using family ties to protect investor friends from government regulators. And Travelgate, when Hillary was accused of firing several employees of the White House travel department to replace them with her Arkansas contacts. And the suicide of Vince Foster, an adviser to Bill Clinton, which gave rise to a lot of a wide variety of conspiracy theories.

There were enough controversial episodes in Clinton's further political biography - for example, the terrorist attack in Benghazi, in connection with which Hillary, then Secretary of State, is usually reproached for knowing about the threat to the security of the American embassy in Libya and did nothing. Or the endless scandal surrounding Clinton's use of a private mail server instead of a public one as secretary of state. Or conflicts of interest between Clinton's civil service and donors to her husband's foundation. Last year, Clinton Cash, a GAI-sponsored investigation into how money received by the Clinton Foundation and personally by the former president and his wife, could influence questionable business transactions around the world, made a splash. For example, Canadian coal tycoon Frank Giustra, having donated tens of millions of dollars to the fund, took Bill Clinton to dinner with Nursultan Nazarbayev - and as a result received an extremely lucrative contract for the development of Kazakhstani uranium mines.

Who sponsored the publication of Clinton Cash is not an idle question. It's hard to deny that in her decades in politics, Hillary Clinton has done a number of controversial things. But various Republican organizations spend millions of dollars investigating these acts; there are those whose only goal is to prevent Clinton from power by showing the American people her true nature. It comes down to information about how much the hotel rooms cost, where Clinton stayed as part of a promotional tour in support of her book. Or books that claim that the Clinton White House decorated the Christmas tree with crack pipes, and films where one of the women Bill allegedly slept with accuses the Clintons of contract killing her cat.

Of course, this does not mean that all the accusations of conservatives against Clinton are unfounded. But the feeling that a well-coordinated counter-propaganda machine is operating against Hillary does arise. In the face of Trump, this machine also has a very loud mouthpiece - the Republican nominee is not provided with a noticeable sense of shame and will certainly not fail to repeatedly list all possible claims against Hillary, including fictitious ones. After all, Trump's political career began with claims that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya. In fact, Trump is already accusing Clinton with might and main of condoning her husband's sexual promiscuity - and this despite the fact that a sex scandal has long been considered a particularly productive way to attack the family of the 42nd US president. Most likely, Trump simply does not really know about all the other dark places in Clinton's political biography, but he has four months to fill the gap. Get ready: it's going to be pretty ugly.

Dislike on the left

The extent to which American liberals and conservatives now exist in different worlds can be seen at least from the claims of both of them against Hillary Clinton. “All of America is already sick of your damn email!” roared Bernie Sanders this winter during the Democratic presidential debate, to a flurry of applause. Leftists who doubt that Hillary is a good candidate for the presidency care little about congressional scrutiny of her mistakes in Benghazi, and certainly do not care about idle theories about Whitewater or the suicide of Vince Foster (especially since in none of these cases formal charges Hillary was never presented). Like conservatives, however, they really care about money, or rather, from whom and for what Hillary Clinton receives it.

The most notable story about the vicious connection between the Clinton family and the financial industry (tentatively referred to as Wall Street), which is usually blamed for wealth inequality in general and the 2008 crisis in particular, was this year's story about Hillary Clinton's speeches at events organized by investment banks. like Goldman Sachs. First, for these speeches, both Hillary and her husband are paid exorbitant money - $ 265 thousand per speech, more than Bernie Sanders earned in all of 2014. Second, despite calls to make public the contents of her speeches, Clinton has not yet done so and, apparently, will not do so again. The former secretary of state set a strange condition: they say, I will publish the transcripts of my speeches when the rest of the candidates publish theirs, meaning by "the rest" of the Republicans.

Thirdly, these very speeches are just the tip of the iceberg. By some accounts, since Bill Clinton left the White House, his and his wife's public speaking fees alone have totaled more than $125 million. That's not counting the million other ways businesses try to befriend the former and possibly future presidents. USA. Here and direct multimillion-dollar contributions to political committees in support of Clinton, and all the same investments in the Clinton Foundation, which, according to a number of sources, are a disguised form of bribes for connections at the top. In principle, there is nothing supernatural in the fact that the former powerful of this world are paid big money to shine their faces; it is quite a common source of income for former presidents. However, the Clintons are in a special position here precisely because their family has never left politics - the foundation, from this point of view, is just a beautiful wrapper in order to influence another Clinton with the help of one.

Although there is no direct evidence that donations to the Clinton Foundation bring any political results, circumstantial evidence is at least enough to cast doubt on the sincerity of Hillary's impulses to fight moneybags. There is also a suspicious correlation between corporate contributions to the fund and lobbying for the interests of the same corporations in the State Department when Clinton was its head. And a sharp increase in arms sales to those dubious states that sponsored the fund. And the fact that the head of Goldman Sachs (to the left, a symbol of a corrupt financial industry) directly invested in a not-so-successful hedge fund founded by Bill and Hillary's son-in-law Mark Mezvinsky, who also worked at Goldman Sachs in the past.

The Clintons themselves are clearly in that one percent. They have the closest blood, financial and friendly ties with the mass of the richest entrepreneurs. It was under Hillary's husband that the final deregulation of banks was carried out and the Glass-Steagall act, which prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment activities, was repealed. Bill and Hillary even went to the wedding of Donald Trump at one time - well, why then think that, once in the White House, the second Clinton will begin to behave progressively?

What happened under Hillary's husband is another important article of claims against the current democratic candidate: the wife does not seem to be responsible for her husband and is generally an independent unit, but in the end she still answers, because she supported, campaigned and spoke out. In particular, for the package of laws adopted in 1994 to combat crime, which resulted in an exorbitantly bloated and completely inefficient penitentiary system, which is particularly injustice to African Americans. It is now Hillary who advocates for her reform, but then she herself forced racial stereotypes, describing (black) criminals as "super predators" who should be isolated from society.

Clinton generally tends to change his views on various burning issues. But in America they do not like this, considering it a sign of insincerity and opportunism. And even more so, supporters of Bernie Sanders do not like this, who really has been talking the same thing for forty years. Back in the 2000s, as a senator from the state of New York, Hillary spoke in the sense that LGBT rights are, of course, important and necessary, but marriage is still a union of a man and a woman. Now she actively welcomes the legalization of gay marriage. In the 90s and in the Obama administration, she supported free global trade in general, the NAFTA agreement and the Pacific Partnership in particular. Now she disapproves of him.

In 2002, Clinton voted in the Senate for the deployment of troops to Iraq, in 2008, when a previous opponent (who is also the current US president) criticized her for this decision, she insisted that it was correct. Now Hillary considers it a mistake. Well, and so on; those who like to dig deep may also remember that Hillary Rodham began her life in politics as a volunteer for the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, the man who in 1964 began to turn the Republican Party towards hardened conservatism. To be fair, Hillary was 17 at the time.

The leftists also have complaints about Hillary Clinton in terms of her foreign policy platform - too hawkish, too impulsive and aggressive, too fond of relying on military intervention, friends with Henry Kissinger, believes in American exceptionalism, which brought misfortune and deprivation to dozens of nations around the world. Her tenure as secretary of state is also not convincing: she supported an increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan, missed the emergence of ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation), traveled a lot, but did not really achieve anything diplomatically, she still believes that the invasion of Libya in 2011 ( it was she who then convinced Obama to make the decision to send troops) was the right thing, despite the fact that the country is now in complete chaos.

Paradoxically, not all is well with the feminist message of the Clinton campaign. First, she and her supporters like Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright go too far, accusing Bernie voters of sexism and appealing to female mutual aid as a political argument. Secondly, no matter how much Hillary has positioned herself as a tireless fighter for women's rights, her political summary does not really confirm this: behind the famous slogans like "women's rights are human rights" there were not so many real cases behind the famous slogans like "women's rights are human rights". In the aforementioned baking quote, feminism was used to evade a legitimate conflict of interest question. Indeed, it is unclear to what extent the election of a woman in itself guarantees an improvement in the position of women: the life of African Americans under Obama, for example, has become in many ways worse.

The list of liberal grievances against Hillary Clinton goes on, but by and large, the feelings that people of various ideologies have for the most likely 45th US president are best described by a phrase I recently heard from an air inspector in the city of Portland: “She's a f ***ing politician.

man in a case

Manager and fighter with great experience; a prominent figure in the political establishment, familiar with all the right people and able to achieve results through compromises; a politician who knows how to feel and saddle the social situation; a sincere supporter of progressive ideas who knows that great social changes do not happen overnight. Until recently, this whole set of qualities seemed to be the optimal characteristic of a potential presidential candidate - in fact, that is why it is customary to say about Hillary Clinton that no one has ever been so prepared for the presidency.

But in 2016, most of these lines in a personal file sound more like an accusation than a compliment. The word “establishment” has turned into a curse word to the point that Hillary even tried to fight it off (which, of course, is absurd - she might as well try to declare that she is not a woman). In 2016, the ability to dream is valued above realism, and the ability to slash in the shoulder is above diplomatic tricks. In 2016, a person who has already worked in the system is automatically endowed with all the sins of this system. In 2016, in all seriousness, there is talk that some supporters of Bernie Sanders may eventually vote for Trump - based on the logic that if he comes to power, the desired "political revolution" will inevitably occur, albeit in a rather ugly way, but if Hillary is elected, it is unlikely. This, of course, does not mean that Clinton will not be president after all. But this means that they will no longer love her in any case.

Hillary Clinton herself should be blamed for this. She is, of course, a very professional official, but not a very talented politician. It is possible that she knows how to run the country no worse than Barack Obama, her own husband or George W. Bush, but she has neither the rhetorical artistry of the first, nor the white-toothed charismatics of the second, or even the sincere nationality of the third. Her smile almost always looks strained, rubbery. When Clinton frowns, she seems much more natural.

She's not very good at debating, or at public speaking in general (special hello to Goldman Sachs). Due to her family and official status, she travels on her own plane and is always surrounded by security. Hillary, like Bernie Sanders, is not the place to exchange jokes in a hotel lobby. She does not like the press and rarely opens up to journalists, hence the media's desire to inflate any of her reservations. Hence, from the inability to clearly explain their own views, the media's inattention to the really important content elements of the campaign for Hillary: like Sanders, Clinton advocates the introduction of mandatory maternity leave; in early May, she launched initiatives on childcare subsidies and on the exclusion of bank employees from the leadership of the regional offices of the Federal Reserve (an initiative quite Sanders in spirit), but they write about it little and reluctantly.

Clinton, whose every step has been endlessly examined under a magnifying glass for a dozen years, wildly values ​​the remnants of her private life, and therefore the public does not really know anything about her hobbies and addictions. However, when something does come to the surface, it also looks more creepy than charming: according to a recent profile in New York Magazine, Hillary and Bill Clinton love to watch House of Cards and The Good Wife at their estate - series , which to a certain extent are made based on their own lives and public images.

When and if, in January 2017, Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office as President of the United States, she will, of course, be welcomed, but rather on the contrary. In any case, she will be the president of disappointment, the fatigue of the system, which has overcome the resistance of revanchists and populists with the last of its strength. Overcoming this emotional background will be one of its most important tasks. But at least one feeling she and her constituents will definitely have in common is a sense of relief. She has it because long years of campaigns, struggles, intrigues, alliances, defeats, victories, mistakes and discoveries have finally culminated in a cherished historical goal: the inauguration of the first woman at the head of the most powerful country in the world. The voters - well, if only because she is not Donald Trump.

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