Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a rare appearance on Fox News’ Special Report on Wednesday evening, and host Bret Baier subjected Clinton to a thorough cross-examination that she doesn’t normally receive from the leftist media. Here are the seven best moments from that grilling.
1. Clinton stammering over why she didn’t want to talk to the State Department Inspector General. Baier asked Clinton, “You have said, ‘I’ll talk to anybody any time.’ But you didn’t talk to the State Department IG Neither did any of your aides. Why not?”
Clinton answered, “I’m not going to comment on ongoing litigation or, you know, make any legal points here,” and launched into her usual rambling talking points about how she’s already talked enough about her emails in public. But Baeir was undeterred.
“The State Department IG though wanted to talk to you, and you didn’t want to do that,” Baier pointed out.
Clinton being stammering, “It just didn’t even… What they wanted to ask we had already talked about.”
2. Baier asking Clinton if she remembered signing a non-disclosure agreement that explicitly laid out criminal penalties for “unauthorized disclosure” of classified information, regardless of it was marked at the time or not.
Clinton simply responded by saying she didn’t remember signing it, even though it’s a fact that she did sign it, and went into her threadbare defense that the emails weren’t marked as classified at the time.
3. Baier asking Clinton how she could possibly know that she wouldn’t face an indictment. Here’s the exchange:
BAIER: I want to ask you about specific things quickly. One, you’ve tried to calm Democrats’ fears that there isn’t going to be another shoe dropping. What basis did you tell this radio station, 1070 radio on Friday, that there is absolutely no possibility of an indictment? Has anybody from the DOJ talked to you or your representatives?
CLINTON: I will repeat what I said. That is not going to happen. There is no basis for it and I’m looking forward to this being wrapped up as soon as possible.
BAIER: Has anybody from the FBI talked to you or your representatives?
CLINTON: I know that they’ve been interviewing a number of people and I’ve told people to cooperate. And I’m looking forward to also participating. I’ve offered to do so since last August.
4. Baier asking Clinton if her investigations are going to harm her. Baier said, “The Clinton Foundation investigation, the FBI investigation into the email, you’re saying zero chance that this is a problem for you. In this election.”
To which Clinton responded, “Absolutely. That’s what I’m saying. That happens to be the truth.”
5. Clinton being unable to answer about how her economic policies would be different from President Barack Obama. Baier cited poll numbers showing that 65 percent of Americans feel like the country is headed in the wrong direction, meaning that the majority of Americans were not happy with the Obama economy. When Baier asked Clinton how her economic policies would differ from Obama, she responded, “Well I think that, uh, seventy, uh, six months of job creation is a good start,” in her standard staccato manner.
Baeir pointed out that Clinton wasn’t answering the question.
“Right but I think, what I want to establish is that we’ve gotten out of that deep ditch that we were dropped into, uh, it took awhile because it was a pretty severe recession and a lot of people haven’t recovered to where they were before the recession,” Clinton said.
She then launched into a filibuster about her plan to increase federal spending for infrastructure as well as encouraging the creation of renewable jobs, but nowhere in a her rambling, incoherent answer could she explain how her economic policies would be different from Obama.
(Partial transcript via Pam Keys)