“The View” co-hosts and Chelsea Clinton attempted Friday to defend Clinton’s mother, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for previously denying the results of the 2016 election.
Clinton and the co-hosts brushed off the former nominee’s remarks, which resurfaced when Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz came on the show Oct. 24. The senator whipped out a document containing quotes of Hillary calling former President Donald Trump an “illegitimate president” and blaming the now-discredited Russian collusion for Hillary’s loss.
“When we pressed him [Cruz] on the MAGA Republicans’ election denial … he argued that your mother did the same thing after the 2016 election,” co-host Sunny Hostin said. “What’s your reaction to that?”
“Well that’s funny, Sunny, I’m pretty sure that I remember that next day I was standing behind her when she conceded, and that she said while she campaigned very hard against President Trump, she hoped that he would be a president for all Americans. That, of course, is not what ultimately happened,” Clinton answered. “I think that Senator Cruz just might have a slightly different memory of that.”
“She went to the inauguration, as far as I recall,” Hostin said.
Clinton agreed, saying her parents went to Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 to show their support for a “peaceful transfer of power.” (RELATED: VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Who Denies Election Results?)
“They listened to that, you know, white nationalist screed and his painting of our country as this dystopian, horrific hell-scape of which only he could save us. He also admittedly envisioned a million people standing in front of him, so he was a little bit off that day, morally and numerically,” Clinton said.
In a September 2019 interview with CBS, the former Democratic nominee blamed Russian collusion and so-called voting restrictions passed by states before the election for her loss.
“I believe [Trump] knows he’s an illegitimate president,” Clinton said at the time. “He knows that — there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out they way it did … I know that he knows that this wasn’t on the level.”
She continued to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election in an October 2020 interview with The Atlantic, saying, “There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level. We still don’t know what really happened … But you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this [sic] other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, ‘Whoa, something’s not right here.'”
Clinton recently alleged in a video uploaded to Twitter on Oct. 25 that “right-wing extremists” are plotting to “steal the next presidential election.”
“I know we’re all focused on the 2022 midterm elections, and they are incredibly important, but we also have to look ahead because, you know what, our opponents certainly are,” she said. “Right-wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election, and they’re not making a secret of it.”