Hillary Clinton compared herself to Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere on Tuesday, saying that she is “Paula Revere” sounding the alarm on Russian active measures during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I don’t think anybody can with a straight face say that the Russians did not set out to influence our election, and they did so,” Clinton said during an interview on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Clinton appeared on the CBS show to promote her latest book, “What Happened,” a retrospective about how she lost to Donald Trump and who — besides herself — is to blame.
In her interview, Clinton suggested that she has led the push to call out the Russian government and Russian president Vladimir Putin about their involvement in the U.S. election.
“I am saying as clearly as I can — I feel like I’m a bit of a, you know, Paula Revere — I’m trying to sound the alarm about this,” Clinton said to a smattering of laughter and applause.
Clinton’s reference is to Paul Revere, the Massachusetts silversmith who, as legend has it, rode through the Massachusetts countryside on April 18, 1775 to warn American patriots that “the British are coming.”
“You’ve got to understand what Putin’s strategy is. He really doesn’t like democracy. He thinks it’s an inconvenient, messy process, and he doesn’t like us, and he wants to destabilize our country, sow doubt about our democracy,” Clinton told Colbert.
Despite her self-adulation, Clinton actually has a history of downplaying the Russian threat.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the then-secretary of state criticized Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was the U.S.’s main “geopolitical foe.” Clinton called Russia an “ally” and said that Romney’s remarks were “dated.”
“If you take a look at the world today, we have a lot of problems that are not leftovers from the past, but are of the moment,” Clinton said in an April 1, 2012 interview with CNN. “In many of the areas where we are working to solve problems, Russia has been an ally.”
WATCH:
