Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is facing new fire from the press over observations that she steadfastly refuses to take any questions from the media while touring for her new book, “Hard Choices.”
Politico senior reporter Maggie Haberman said at a recent panel discussion on upcoming elections that Mrs. Clinton “has not taken a single question, that I know of at least from the events I’ve been to and the ones I’ve read about, from reporters who were attending,” Breitbart reported.
Ms. Haberman went on: “She is giving very controlled interviews. There are very controlled settings. There is very little that is sort of up in the air and unexpected about them.”
On top of that, Ms. Haberman said that Mrs. Clinton’s expansive security team “does not create the feeling of being able to reach out and connect,” she said, Breitbart reported.
Her statements come as former President Bill Clinton told CNN that his wife needs time to figure out not just if she’ll run for the White House in 2016 — but also to settle on just what benefits she could offer the country if she did seek the office.
“We’ve reached a point in our life when we think you really shouldn’t run for office if you don’t have a clear idea of what you can do and a unique contribution you can make and you can outline that,” Mr. Clinton said, during an interview with CNN in Vietnam. “Now that the book is done, she wants time to think about that and work through it. I think so much of politics is background noise, and we don’t need the background noise anymore.”
Mrs. Clinton has conducted at least one town hall type question-and-answer session in recent weeks — but that was on Facebook, in a controlled atmosphere.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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