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      Huma Abedin says kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assault

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      BooksHuma Abedin says kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assaultClinton aide gives first interview for memoir Both/AndAbedin also discusses 2016 election and Anthony Weiner Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 31 Oct 2021 10.13 EDTFirst published on Sun 31 Oct 2021 08.11 EDTIn her first interview to promote her new book, Huma Abedin said she did not think an unnamed senator sexually assaulted her when he kissed her at his apartment, some time in the mid-2000s.Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin describes sexual assault by US senatorRead moreShe also said she would “take to her grave” her part in the emails investigation which cost Hillary Clinton dearly in the 2016 presidential election, which the candidate lost to Donald Trump, though she knew it was not all her fault.Abedin describes the incident with the senator in Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds, which will be published on Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy and reported Abedin’s description of the kiss.After making coffee, Abedin writes, the senator sat next to her on the couch, “put his left arm around my shoulder, and kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth, pressing me back on the sofa.“I was so utterly shocked, I pushed him away. All I wanted was for the last 10 seconds to be erased.”Abedin does not give clues to the senator’s identity.She also writes that memories of the kiss came back in 2018, during Brett Kavanaugh’s supreme court confirmation hearings, when the judge was accused of sexual assault. In Abedin’s description, Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was accused of “conveniently remembering” details. Kavanaugh denied the accusations and was confirmed to the court.The pressure group Rainn (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) defines sexual assault as “sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim”.Speaking to CBS Sunday Morning, Abedin said: “I did go back to a senator’s apartment, a senator who I knew and I was very comfortable with, and he kissed me in a very shocking way because it was somebody who I’d known and frankly trusted.”Her interviewer, Norah O’Donnell, asked: “Are you suggesting that senator assaulted you?”Abedin paused, and said: “I’m suggesting that I was in an uncomfortable situation with … I was in an uncomfortable situation with a senator and I didn’t know how to deal with it and I buried the whole experience.“But in my my own personal opinion, no, did I feel like he was assaulting me in that moment? I didn’t, it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I needed to extricate myself from the situation. And he also spent a lot of time apologising and making sure I was OK and we were actually able to rebalance our relationship.”Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that senators from both parties expressed concern that the unnamed senator may have assaulted others.On CBS, Abedin was also asked what she thought Clinton most valued about her.“I think she would say her loyalty,” she said. “And I would say the same about her. I have tested that. Not intentionally, but I have tested it … I’ve made her life difficult with things that have happened in my personal life.”Abedin is estranged from her husband, the former congressman and New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who served time in prison for sending explicit text messages to a teenage girl.A laptop belonging to Weiner and Abedin became part of Clinton’s 2016 presidential election defeat, when the FBI seized it as part of investigations into Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state.“I think I’m going to take it to my grave,” Abedin told CBS. “It took me a while to reconcile that it was not all my fault.”She added: “I have reconciled – and it took me a while to reconcile – that it was not all my fault. I lived with that. I did. I don’t believe that anymore.“It’s more a sense of an ache in the heart, that it didn’t have to be. And also, my belief that [Clinton] would have been an extraordinary president, that she really would have, and what it meant for women and girls, not just in this country but around the world.”Asked why she wrote her book, Abedin said: “I think for most of my adult life, certainly in the last 25 years that I’ve been in public service or in the public eye, I have been the invisible person behind the primary people in my life. But what I realise is that if you don’t tell your story, somebody else is writing your history.”She also discussed Weiner and how she discovered his various infidelities. She and her husband, she said, were “just two severely broken, traumatised people”.Asked how their relationship was now, she said: “We’re good. He is my co-parent. And I learned the full truth, I processed it and moved on. I wish him well. He, I hope, wishes me well. I think he does.”Asked if she was still angry with Weiner, Abedin said: “I can’t live in that space anymore. I tried that. It almost killed me.”TopicsBooksHuma AbedinHillary ClintonAnthony WeinerUS politicsDemocratsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Hillary Clinton in conversation with Jonathan Freedland

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      Jonathan Freedland hosted a special Guardian Live event where he spoke to the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. As the US commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the pair talked about her memories of the day, given she was the senator for New York at the time; how US politics has changed since then; and whether or not retaliation by American forces has made the US and the world a safer or more dangerous place

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      Politics Weekly Extra: Hillary Clinton in conversation with Jonathan Freedland

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      Jonathan Freedland hosted a special Guardian Live event where he spoke to the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. As the US commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last weekend, the pair talked about her memories of the day, given she was the senator for New York at the time; how US politics has changed since then; and whether or not retaliation by American forces has made the US and the world a safer or more dangerous place

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      Hillary Clinton: US still faces ‘real battle for democracy’ – video

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      Hillary Clinton said the US was still in a ‘real battle for our democracy’ against pro-Trump forces on the far right who are seeking to entrench minority rule and turn back the clock on women’s rights.
      Speaking at a Guardian Live event on Monday, Clinton said she believed there was majority support for Joe Biden’s agenda of huge investment in infrastructure and budget support for families. ‘But the other side wants to rule by minority,’ she told the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland

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      US faces ‘real battle for democracy’ against far right, says Hillary Clinton

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      US newsUS faces ‘real battle for democracy’ against far right, says Hillary ClintonSpeaking at a Guardian Live event, the former presidential candidate says the Capitol riot was a ‘terror attack’ that shows a new ‘internal threat’ Julian Borger in WashingtonMon 13 Sep 2021 19.25 EDTLast modified on Mon 13 Sep 2021 19.27 EDTHillary Clinton has said that the US was still in a “real battle for our democracy” against pro-Trump forces on the far right, seeking to entrench minority rule and turn back the clock on women’s rights.At a Guardian Live online event on Monday, Clinton fended off suggestions that the world was now witnessing the twilight of US democracy, but said: “I do believe we are in a struggle for the future of our country”.The former secretary of state and presidential candidate, speaking from her family home in Chappaqua, New York, said she believed that there was majority support for Joe Biden’s agenda of huge investment in infrastructure and budget support for families.‘Weird, patronizing behavior’: AOC lets rip at Manchin’s ‘young lady’ remarkRead more“But the other side wants to rule by minority,” she told Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland. “It has a very powerful weapon in the filibuster in the Senate to rule by minority. It wants to change election laws so that it doesn’t lose elections, despite what the will of the people might be.”Clinton was referring to a raft of state legislation promoted by Republicans aimed at restricting access to the ballot. She also referred to what she called the “crazy, dysfunctional” electoral college system, by which she won the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes but was defeated by Donald Trump by a few tens of thousands of votes in a couple of battleground states, a loss that haunted her long afterwards.Was feeling frustrated & disillusioned after so much political negativity, esp in my community. Until I listened to @HillaryClinton speaking to @freedland @guardian this aft. I needed to hear her matter-of-fact, articulate, and extremely knowledgeable take today. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/K7877MDQrH— Alysson4CK (she/her) (@Alysson4CK) September 13, 2021
      “I thought about it every day during the four years of his administration, but I think what is really, most concerning is that he continues to be destructive,” she said.“The January 6 insurrection at our capitol was a terrorist attack,” Clinton added, noting the parallel with the 9/11 attacks. “We are now much more worried about internal threats, and there are some who say you can’t equate them, having planes flown into the World Trade Center and the terrible loss of life.”Hillary Clinton: ‘There has to be a global reckoning with disinformation’Read more“That’s a horrific external attack, but now we are engaged in a very serious unfortunate but real battle for our democracy against forces, either led by or inspired by Donald Trump.”Clinton was also asked about the abortion ban passed in Texas at the beginning of month, reversing gains for women’s rights won a generation ago.“So you ask if I’m surprised or discouraged. I’m neither. I’m not surprised because I’ve been involved in the women’s movement, the civil rights movement,” she said. “I’ve seen the forces that are arrayed against progress when it comes to women’s autonomy, when it comes to the advancement of civil and political and economic rights. I know very well that the other side never gives up.“They are relentless in their view of what is a properly constructed society, and in that view, white men are at the very top and nobody else is even close.”TopicsUS newsHillary ClintonUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump feared Democrats would replace Biden with Michelle Obama, book claims

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      Donald Trump called Joe Biden a “mental retard” during the 2020 election, a new book says, but was reluctant to attack him too strongly for fear the Democrats would replace him with Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.Biden went on to beat Trump by more than 7m in the popular vote and by 306-232 in the electoral college, a result Trump deemed a landslide when it was in his favour against Clinton in 2016.Trump refused to accept defeat, pushing the lie that it was the result of electoral fraud. The lie resulted in the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January, by a mob Trump told to “fight like hell”, and a second impeachment. Trump was acquitted of inciting the insurrection and remains eligible to run for office.He tops polls of Republican nominees for 2024 and has returned to public speaking. On Monday, Forbes reported a planned tour with the former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who left the network amid claims of sexual misconduct.Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal, will be published in August. Trump was among interviewees for the book. Vanity Fair published an excerpt on Monday.Previous revelations include that the Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was rebuked for campaigning with Trump, wrote an ad for the Trump campaign – a report Hannity denied.Bender writes that Trump interrupted a White House meeting to ask: “How am I losing in the polls to a mental retard?”The idea Democrats would replace Biden reportedly came from Dick Morris, a former adviser to Bill Clinton who has migrated rightwards and who was informally advising Trump.“Dick Morris told Trump that Biden was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee,” Bender writes.Biden was 78 when he became the oldest president ever sworn in. Trump turns 75 next week.Bender adds that Trump believed his attacks on the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren early in the Democratic primary were too successful. Trump gave Warren a racist nickname, Pocahontas, based on her claim to Native American ancestry.Thinking Warren would have been an easier opponent, Bender writes, Trump fretted to aides that Democrats would “realise [Biden is] old, and they’re going to give it to somebody else. They’re going to give it to Hillary, or they’re going to give it to Michelle Obama.”Trump reportedly feared Democrats would move to replace Biden at their convention.According to widespread reporting, Trump’s fears about Clinton were not entirely without justification. Clinton did consider jumping into a race in which Biden struggled before surging to victory.According to Battle for the Soul by Edward-Isaac Dovere, released last month, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state “would muse aloud sometimes” about taking the nomination at a contested convention.Michelle Obama, however, never expressed interest. The former first lady remains hugely popular with the Democratic base but has repeatedly ruled out a career in frontline politics. More

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      Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

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      Seven million votes more was almost not enough. Had 45,000 gone the other way in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would still be president. Calls to defund the police nearly cost Joe Biden victory and led to a more than a dozen-seat loss for House Democrats.
      Biden had “separated himself from the orthodoxies of his party’s base” but “had no coattails” to spare, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write. As always, culture counts – even amid a pandemic.
      But “Unwoke Joe”, as the authors call him, was the one Democrat whose empathy and instincts matched the demands of the times. Lucky is an apt title for Allen and Parnes’s third book.
      “In 2016, Trump had needed everything to go wrong for Hillary Clinton to win,” they write. “This time, Biden caught every imaginable break.”
      Their joint take on Biden is a prism and scorecard that gives added understanding to the seemingly never-ending war of 2020. Allen is a veteran political writer at NBC News digital, Parnes reports for the Hill. They deliver.
      Subtitled How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Lucky is the first full-length campaign postmortem. It makes the silent parts of the conversation audible and reminds the reader the past is always with us.
      The authors convey the cultural dimensions of Biden’s win. He was an old-time north-eastern pol who repeatedly bore witness to personal tragedy. So long in the Senate, he prided himself on his capacity to compromise and reach across the aisle, a trait that Allen and Parnes report elicited scorn from Elizabeth Warren.
      Biden also sought to maintain a “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”, in his own words. It was no accident South Carolina emerged as Biden’s firewall in the primary, or that James Clyburn, a 15-term congressman and the most senior Black member of the House, was pivotal in digging Biden out of a deep hole.
      In the election’s aftermath, Clyburn attributed Democratic underperformance to the move to defund the police and the mantras of the left.
      “I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.”
      On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019.
      Embed
      The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.
      Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden.
      Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought.
      In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power.
      Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trash-talked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.
      As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win.
      Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution. More