Hillary Clinton worked to paint herself as honest and trustworthy in her first national television interview of the 2016 campaign, blaming Republicans for damaging questions about her time at the State Department and her family’s charitable foundation.
“This has been a theme that has been used against me and my husband for many, many years,” the Democratic presidential hopeful told CNN’s Brianna Keilar in Iowa, noting that she’s been “subjected to the kind of constant barrage of attacks that are largely fomented by and coming from the right.
”She added, “[A]t the end of the day, I think voters sort it all out. I have great confidence. I trust the American voter. So I trust the American voter 100 percent, because I think the American voter will weigh these kinds of accusations.”
Clinton’s honest and trustworthy ratings have taken a hit in recent months. In the most recent CNN poll, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said they didn’t believe she was honest and trustworthy. Democrats still maintain a positive view of her, but Republicans believe it will weaken her in a general election.
Some of that skepticism has been fueled by her use of a private email server while at the State Department. Clinton defended that decision, saying she has been transparent in calling for over thousands of emails to be released, the first of which came out last week.
“Let’s take a deep breath here,” Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, said in the interview. “Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation. I had one device. When I mailed anybody in the government, it would go into the government system. Now, I didn’t have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages, because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system.
”That echoed much of what Clinton said earlier this year before she got into the presidential campaign.
“This is being blown up with no basis in law or in fact,” Clinton continued. “That’s fine. I get it. This is being, in effect, used by the Republicans in the Congress.”
Read More –Clinton Blames ‘The Right’ For Trust Attacks