Madeline Albright on MSNBC: I Would Never Have Allowed Private Email Server

[portlander23]

Mediaite: Former Clinton Secretary of State: I Would Never Have Allowed Private Email Server

Albright expressed admiration for Hillary Clinton and said she wasn’t concerned about the Democratic presidential candidate’s growing email scandal. “I think she has explained what she’s done. She’s turned things over.”

“If you were Secretary of State and your Deputy Secretary of State said, ‘I want to do all my email on a personal email server on a private email account,’ would you approve that?” pressed Geist.

“I would not, no,” she admitted.

Not the best surrogate.

[HereSince1628]

1. "not the best surrogate". We may be confusing expectations on a surrogate

with those the kamikaze.

[tularetom]

2. They're never the best surrogates

Which ought to tell us something about her choices for cabinet positions, white house staff, and judicial appointments, even SCOTUS judges.

Do we want the upper levels of government departments filled with the Sidney Blumenthals and Lanny Davises of the world?

[Fred Sanders]

3. Not the best bashing logic..or the best clipped quotes leading to more nothingness plucked from air.

Misused terms and creative speculation are the tools of propaganda.

Clinton is all the more remarkable and formidable woman to have knocked to the ground all the lies and innuendos hurled against her daily.

It is not drip, drip, drip, when all the drips are excercises in childish logic hurled by RW pathetic losers and accusers.

I suppose Clinton expected all the RW attacks - have they ever ended over 30 years? - but the LW so obviously and passionately volunteering to also help carry the heavy load of liquid manure spewed out by the RW propaganda factors must have surprised her a bit.

[jeff47]

6. Great, then quote the entire context instead of the awful clipped quote.

Show us how the entire context contradicts the clipped quote.

[JackInGreen]

7. 30 years ago

Would have been 1986, no? Or were these attackd during her tenur as first lady of Arkansas while bill started handing out hot cosbys?

[Fred Sanders]

9. You are not alone in having amnesia about the many RW attacks on Clinton. One example: health care.

Nothing I can do about rampant LW amnesia, always convenient to have around when deception is the goal, so all I can do is but point it out.

Folks are indeed entitled to their amnesia to attack a progressive hero of the Democratic Party.

Also helps if you are not a member.

[karynnj]

13. Many of us have excellent memories and what happened was far more mixed than Bill Clinton suggests

Before he even became the nominee, there was real baggage that surfaced. The two I remember best were his affair with Genefer Flowers and his ever changing story of how he avoided going to Vietnam. What I also remember - but see the importance only in retrospect - is the way he dealt with both. In both cases, he did - true to Carville's axiom - respond immediately within the news cycle (then 24 hrs). He then had to respond in several later news cycles as he repeatedly changed his story as points became challenged. This meant many days of attacks -- and finally the charismatic candidate biting his lip and essentially admitting a good part of the story.

We knew before we chose him over REAL PROGRESSIVES, like Jerry Brown and Tom Harkin or other more honest candidates such as Tsongus and Kerrey - that his first response to a bad story was to lie about it -- and continue lying until he had no choice but tell some version of the truth. Another thing he did was to attack the character of those speaking against him.

Now there WERE many unfair attacks on the Clintons - starting with Vince Foster and forming a long list that it does no one good to enumerate. I think these actually HELPED the Clintons as they were so over the top and provably untrue. (Consider them the equivalent of the birther nonsense.) This actually made other problems easier to write off as fiction. There was reason to question the cattle trades and it was mind boggling that Clinton never thought of the damage that any sexual misbehavior in teh WH could have - especially as he was being sued by Paula Jones and had a history of "bimbo eruptions".

I know people who had worked for the Democratic party (not at high levels) in 1996 who were extremely disheartened by the sleaziness and violations of campaign finance laws. Enough that they stopped being involved. I assume that - even though there is no connect to any 2016 candidate - they were unhappy to see the Chinese billionaire involved then in the news. http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/ng-lap-seng-macau-billionaire-lied-about-cash-he-brought-to-the-u-s-prosecutors-charge-1.10877729

The Democrats in 1992 made a fateful decision in going with flash and charm rather than looking at character.

[Fred Sanders]

14. Democratic Party members - I presume - remembering all the propaganda from the 90's..how special.

[karynnj]

16. You can call all Clinton's baggage "propaganda", but the fact is that some things were real

and when push came to shove, he admitted them.

You can argue that it was not relevant that Clinton was a womanizer and often a liar. On the Vietnam issue, the problem was not that he didn't go -- it was that he wrote a rather nasty letter once he no longer needed to fear being drafted to the National Guard col who gave him an out when he needed one. That was unnecessary and very hard to defend. Clinton is charismatic, charming and an excellent speaker, but he doesn't hold a candle to Obama in terms of being a good person.

[sabrina 1]

17. I remember them and remember fiercely defending both Clintons for years against them.

I remember the Paula Jones/David Brock literal war against the Clintons. Now I see Hillary joining forces with someone who was largely responsible for almost bringing down a presidency and I wonder, how on earth could she trust such a snake? Leopards don't change their spots, as we saw with Brock's latest slimy, dirty trick against Sanders. No surprise considering few dems every trusted that slimy opportunist who would return to work for the far right in an instant if it benefited him personally.

So now I wonder why I should go out of my way to defend people who let us go to bat for them against the Bush crowd, against people like Brock only to find out THEY are the best of friends all making money while we are left to wonder 'wtf'?

Taught me a good lesson. I knew that it was bad judgement on Clinton's part to get involved with other women, but refused to admit that to those who were attacking him, claiming it was none of their business etc.

Seeing the close relationship with the Bushes later, well, put it this way, it sure felt like a betrayal to a whole lot of Democrats. Especially when Hillary supported that obvious liar's demand that he be given the powers of a king. The Patriot Act, the Iraq War.

Seems to me amnesia has afflicted some on the Left regarding the history of all this. I despise the Bushes, David Brock, Evangelicals who joined in the war supposedly against the Clintons. I have ZERO amnesia regarding who the enemy is.

But the Clintons themselves appear to have developed quite a bit of amnesia in that department.

Now explain why people should simply ignore all this simply because someone has a D after their name?

[frylock]

12. You suppose Clinton expected all the RW attacks..

yet she set up this mail server anyway, knowing full well that the "VRWC" was going to jump on any perceived improprieties. She seems incapable of making sound choices.

[Divernan]

4. Albright has no personal knowledge of what Hillary "turned over."

Nor of the content of what Hillary and/or her attorney and/or designated IT guy (the one who's claiming the 5th) unilaterally, arbitrarily deleted, i.e., "wiped - like with a cloth".

[OKNancy]

5. Madeleine Albright says:

Madeleine Albright ?@madeleine 1h1 hour ago
Bottom line is @hillaryclinton will be an exceptional president. She has explained & apologized. Now Let's move on to the issues. 2/2

[artislife]

8. Yes, let move on to the issues!

[Orrex]

18. That's kind of a goofy chart

In this context, green almost universally means "positive" or "good," whereas red tends to mean "negative" or "no."

Giving Sanders a green check for the 2001 Patriot Act makes it look like he voted for it. Sure, the reader can figure it out readily enough, but what's the benefit? It would be like swapping the red and green lights on a stoplight; drivers could certainly figure it out, but why mess with the expected format, other than to cause confusion?

[karynnj]

10. She did as well as can be expected

She was honest and defended Clinton where she can be defended. (ie she did turn things over) When asked point blank if she would have approved a deputy setting up a private server in their home -- there was nothing she could do but answer as she did. First of all, this is asked with the backdrop of this being at least a contentious issue if not a scandal.

Do you prefer McCaskill as a surrogate - ignoring that she often goes too far and is called on it - making the story bigger.

The fact is, if you asked HRC whether she would approve of her Secretary of State doing all their private and business email in one account on a private server -- she would say no. (This based on her saying that she now sees it as a mistake.) Why expect SoS Albright to compromise her own reputation to blindly support this? If that is the expectation of a surrogate, you won't get many of the most credible people to take the job.

[portlander23]

11. I'd keep rolling out Howard Dean if I was calling that shot

[karynnj]

15. Howard Dean was not (to my knowledge) asked point blank that question

In addition, unlike Madeline Albright, he likely considers that if HRC wins, he will be included in the administration.

If genuinely pushed to answer whether or not he would allow a deputy of his (if he were in that position) to set up a private server, I assume he would not answer much differently.