Hillary Clinton was booked as a guest on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” well in advance of her appearance on Monday night’s episode. So it was just a grimly ironic coincidence that she happened to be on just moments after Donald Trump was indicted for the 4th time.
Naturally, Trump’s latest criminal charges took precedence over any other topic and Maddow had to start the interview by asking his 2016 presidential race opponent her feelings about the indictment.
“Do you feel satisfaction in that?” Maddow asked. “You warned that the country, essentially, that he was going to try to end democracy, but the most of the country didn’t believe you.”
“Well, it’s hard to believe. I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Clinton replied, adding that she feels,” just great profound sadness, that we have a former president who has been indicted for so many charges that went right to the heart [of] whether or not our democracy would survive.”
Watch the clip here:
A Georgia grand jury said in the 41-count indictment that Trump and 18 of his key associates — including Rudy Giuliani — “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
They are accused of a range of crimes, including the literal hacking of voting systems in the state. Read the full indictment here.
At the time Clinton spoke to Maddow, the charges had not yet been made public, but the former Secretary of State and First Lady noted that, “if you stop and think about what the public evidence is… he set out to defraud the United States of America and the citizens of our nation. He used tactics, harassment, intimidation, he made threats, he and his allies went after state officials, local officials responsible for conducting elections.”
“I don’t know that anybody should be satisfied this,” Clinton continued. “This is a terrible moment for our country to have. A former president accused of these terribly important crimes. The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy, have been brought into the light and justice is being pursued.”
