I would be president if FBI letter, leaks didn’t happen
Six months after her stunning defeat in the run for the White House, Hillary Clinton has returned to public life. This time, she said on Tuesday, as a “citizen activist” and “part of the resistance”, a loose coalition of those opposing President Donald Trump.
She kicked off her new career with pointed criticism of Trump’s Syria bombing—which she supported but thought was not backed with a strategy—offer to talk to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and a swipe at his tweeting.
The former secretary of state was uncharacteristically blunt and unscripted, specially in her assessment of her defeat, which she was reliving for a book — a “painful process … as you might guess” — she was writing about the campaign.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton said in an interview-style public event in New York with CNN’s Christian Amanpour.
On October 28, FBI director James Comey sent congress a note, which promptly became public, that the agency was taking another look at the case about Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, which he had announced closed earlier. “I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” she said, but not for the first time.
This time, however, she went further and suggested collusion between Trump’s campaign and the release of hacked communications of her campaign chair John Podesta and the Democratic party’s computer network by the Russians.
Just as outrage was building on the release of a tape about Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women, came the WikiLeaks announcement — some “coincidence”, noted Clinton — of 50,000 hacked emails belonging to Podesta. FBI director James Comey said Wednesday he believed it would have been “catastrophic” to keep Congress in the dark about new developments in the Clinton email investigation. Comey, in the most impassioned and public defense of how he handled this case, also said it made him feel “mildly nauseous” to think his actions in October could have influenced the race won by Trump over Clinton.
Make budget savings of €60bn so that France sticks to the EU deficit limit of 3% of GDP (total output)
Boost purchasing power by cutting social security contributions
Allow firms flexibility on the 35-hour working week
Maintain retirement age at 62
Reform the EU by giving the eurozone a separate budget, finance minister and parliament
In Brexit negotiations, insist that EU Single Market rules apply
Make fluency in French the main qualification for obtaining nationality
Give all religious leaders comprehensive training in France's secular values
Create an EU defence fund to promote joint military projects and set up a permanent European headquarters
Create 15,000 extra prison places