Clinton: Comey Letter, Continued Email Releases In Last 10 Days Cost Me Election
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Hillary Clinton says she is taking responsibility for her 2016 election loss but believes misogyny, Russian interference and questionable decisions by the FBI also played roles.
The former Democratic presidential nominee reflected Tuesday on the presidential contest during the Women for Women International's annual luncheon in New York.
Clinton said she was "on the way to winning" until a combination of events in the final days. She cited the FBI director's letter to Congress resurrecting questions about her email practices and WikiLeaks' repeated release of her campaign's internal emails that "scared off" people.
"If the election had been held on October 27, I'd be your president, and it wasn't. It was on October 28," Clinton said.
She also said misogyny "played a role in this election," won by Republican Donald Trump.
She conceded she made mistakes but said, "The reason I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days."
Clinton also told Christiane Amanpour that she supported President Trump's strike on Syria, but isn't sure how effective it was.
"I think it's too soon to really tell," Clinton said. "Yes, I did support it. I didn't publicly support it because that wasn't my role. But I did support it. But I'm not convinced it really made much of a difference and I don't know what kind of potentially backroom deals were made with the Russians."
Clinton said jets were moved off the runway prior to the strike.
"We later learned that the Russians and Syrians moved jets off the runway, that the Russians may have been given a heads up even before our own Congress was. So I think there's a lot that we really don't yet fully know about what was part of that strike and if all it was was a one-off effort, it's not gonna have much of a lasting effect."
Clinton said her current work on a book about the 2016 has been grueling.
"It's a painful process reliving the campaign as you might guess," she said.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
