Hillary Clinton insisted this morning that “most voters have made up their minds” going into the Iowa caucuses and “a dispute about retroactive classification, quite a mouthful” shouldn’t sway them.
Fox News cited an anonymous U.S. government official as saying the 22 top-secret emails from Clinton’s private server withheld by the State Department in an email batch release Friday contain “operational intelligence” that could put “sources, methods and lives” in jeopardy on an unsecure server.
Clinton told CNN this morning that “there is nothing new” for voters to be concerned about.
“It’s a little bit like what the Republicans and others have tried to do with respect to Benghazi. Just a lot of innuendo, a lot of attacks. I just know that after I testified for 11 hours, answered every question, nothing new came up,” she said.
“Most voters have made up their minds. And I’m grateful for that. The same here. And I think most of the voters who have followed this know exactly what’s going on here. I never made any different explanation than the one that I have made over and over again. I take classified information seriously. I did not send or receive any material marked classified and I want all of these released. This is a dispute about retroactive classification, quite a mouthful.”
Clinton added that “what people talk to me about is how I’m going to get incomes up, how I’m going to make sure the Affordable Care Act works, and get prescription drug costs down, and make college affordable and relieve student debt.”
“That’s what’s on voters’ minds. And that’s what I’m talking about and that seems to be what is exciting and energizing people as they move toward the caucus tonight,” she said.
Pressed on the fact that the FBI is probing the server use and something very well may come out of it, Clinton charged that “people are selectively leaking and making comments that have no basis in anything I’m aware of.”
“I regret that that seems to be part of the atmosphere because we need to let this inquiry run its course, get it resolved. But I can tell you that is not on the minds of the literally thousands of people that I have seen in the last few weeks. And I’m glad it isn’t,” she added. “Because the facts are the facts. No matter how much selective leaking or anonymous sourcing and all that kind of stuff that goes on, what people want to know is what I can do to be the best possible president for them and their families.”
“…I’m looking forward to people coming out expressing their opinion about who can be the best president and commander in chief for the Democratic Party and then getting on to win the Democratic nomination and being successful next November.”
The two latest polls in Iowa show a close contest between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Bernie is up by 3 in a new Quinnipiac poll, while Hillary is up by 8 points in an Emerson poll with a third of Quinnipiac’s sample size.
The New York Times endorsed Clinton for the Democratic nomination and Ohio Gov. John Kasich for the GOP nomination over the weekend.
“In the end, though, Mr. Sanders does not have the breadth of experience or policy ideas that Mrs. Clinton offers,” the NYT editorial board wrote. “…Mrs. Clinton is a strong advocate of sensible and effective measures to combat the plague of firearms; Mr. Sanders’s record on guns is relatively weak.”
Clinton called that and other endorsements “very gratifying” because “there is a lot of static that goes on and the Republicans and their allies are determined to do everything they can to try to bring me down.”
“They don’t know me very well. Because I don’t quit when I’m fighting for what I believe in. And I believe that I can be the president who makes progress with people,” she said. “And I’m just going to stick with it.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member