Local
Clinton returns to D.C. lamenting mistakes of 2016 campaign
Dem nominee on role of misogyny, fake news in election loss
Hillary Clinton lamented having stayed “too focused on a path” in the 2016 election. (Screenshot via CSPAN)
As Hillary Clinton has reemerged in the national spotlight to promote her new book, some critics have groaned and wondered why she won’t just go away. They were not among the crowd at the Warner Theatre on Monday night.
In fact, the veneration for the first female U.S. presidential nominee of a major political party was palpable among attendees, who paid upwards of $82 for a ticket to the event.
The topic of discussion was her new book “What Happened” — a self-examination of the 2016 presidential campaign and actions that led to her loss and the election of President Trump to the White House — and Clinton had many explanations for that outcome and the way forward.
Clinton laid out a balanced approach to explain her loss, attributing the outcome not just to her missteps, but also outside forces that tipped the election in Trump’s favor.
“I just decided I was going to write it, and it was painful,” Clinton said. “I say in the book that I’d write about something, and I’d have to go lie down because it was just so hard to think about the mistakes I made and missed opportunities, but then also to come to grips with these other big forces at work that I think had a determinative impact on the outcome.”
Clinton recalled after the election before she started writing the book in February being “so devastated,” trying to feel better by cleaning out closets and taking walks in the park. The process of the writing the book, Clinton said, was “cathartic,” but also important for her view of democracy.
“It really hit me there were these very important issues that needed to be discussed, debated even, that our democracy and country relied upon that kind of self-examination,” Clinton said.
A key factor Clinton identified in her loss was not realizing the game had changed since her runs with her husband President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and her earlier campaign in 2008 — even during the 1960s and 1970s — when clear policy proposals were crucial for presidential candidates.
“You realize that the press is not putting out the policy that you’re putting out everyday, they’re covering an empty podium,” Clinton said. “And I kept thinking, ‘Well, we’re still going to break through because we really care do about what kind of jobs and infrastructure and health care and other things you want to do for them and their families and their incomes, but there’s a disconnect.”
Although Clinton said she “stayed too focused on a path” and “was not as adept” at changing to the new environment, she cautioned a less detailed approach might not be the path in the future and speculated “people will want details” again in 2020.
Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of Politics & Prose and Clinton’s chief speechwriter in the State Department and the White House, moderated the forum and queried Clinton on factors attributed to her loss, from Russian interference to fake news and misogyny.
Clinton recalled feeling compelled to exercise constraint as a woman and not respond during the second presidential debate when Trump could be seen on camera lurching close behind her as she spoke.
“As you might think back — funny gestures, facial expressions, heavy sighs — these really do affect viewers,” Clinton said. “And I just ended up believing that in addition to the gender-linked aspect of this, there was a history of people in presidential debates who had deviated in a way to show frustration, anger, dismissiveness, whatever their feelings were, and paid a heavy price for it, and I thought whatever price they paid, I would pay double or triple.”
Clinton recalled with indignation the Russians hacking the emails of her campaign chair John Podesta, which she described as being “stolen,” and given to Wikileaks — a website Clinton called “nothing more than a tool of Putin and the Kremlin.” Clinton said Trump’s associates “certainly” knew about it, citing a tweet from Roger Stone that Podesta’s time in a barrel would soon come.
Although Clinton said the emails were “anodyne,” she said they were later weaponized as fake news — in one case to potentially violent consequences as a result of the Pizzagate scandal in which Clinton was accused of running a child trafficking ring out of the basement of D.C. pizzeria. (The restaurant doesn’t even have a basement).
“Even I have to say I don’t believe it was meant to be believed to influence somebody to pick up an AR-15 and drive from North Carolina to Washington to liberate the imaginary children from the imaginary basement of the pizza parlor,” Clinton said. “But in came this young man believing that he was on a mission because he saw it on Facebook, he saw it in other places online, he saw it in quote, news outlets. And so, he was there on a mission of rescue. People could have gotten killed; he [fired] his automatic weapon inside this pizza parlor.”
Citing her loss to Trump by 53 percent among white women, Clinton said a major factor was former FBI Director James Comey reopening the email investigation — only for him to close it again one day before the election .
“All of sudden, people are told being told something’s going on, they’re going to investigate her again, or whatever,” Clinton said. “We could see that a lot of women in particular turned away. They were discouraged. I don’t blame them. They didn’t know what to believe. I mean, it was outrageous.”
When Muscatine mentioned Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whom Clinton heavily criticizes in her book for raising doubts about her connections to Wall Street, the audience at the Warner Theatre audibly booed and hissed.
But there were also moments of levity at the event. Muscatine at one point engaged Clinton in a game of having to choose one of a pair of words. Asked about “tea” or “coffee,” Clinton replied “coffee.” Asked about “beach” or “mountains,” Clinton replied “beach.” Asked about “Trump” or “Putin,” Clinton replied she’d have to “take that under advisement” because she “ran against both of them.”
Attendees at the event — who consisted mostly of middle-class women but also members of D.C.’s LGBT community — came to the Warner Theater adorned in Clinton campaign T-shirts leftover from the 2016 election. One vendor outside sold campaign buttons with slogans reading “Hillary 2016” and “Hil Yes!”
Blake Smith, 20, a gay student at George Washington University, worked for Clinton’s presidential campaign and came to the event wearing a T-shirt comprised of a collage of images of Clinton.
“I just think she gets a bad rap,” Smith said. “And I think that people treat her really unfairly, and I think that she’s really, genuinely a good person and she cares about this country.”
District of Columbia
‘Sandwich guy’ not guilty in assault case
Sean Charles Dunn faced misdemeanor charge
A jury with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, Nov. 6, found D.C. resident Sean Charles Dunn not guilty of assault for tossing a hero sandwich into the chest of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent at the intersection of 14th and U streets, N.W. at around 11 p.m. on Aug. 10.
Dunn’s attorneys hailed the verdict as a gesture of support for Dunn’s contention that his action, which was captured on video that went viral on social media, was an exercise of his First Amendment right to protest the federal border agent’s participating in President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal troops on D.C. streets.
Friends of Dunn have said that shortly before the sandwich tossing incident took place Dunn had been at the nearby gay nightclub Bunker, which was hosting a Latin dance party called Tropicoqueta. Sabrina Shroff, one of three attorneys representing Dunn at the trial, said during the trial after Dunn left the nightclub he went to the submarine sandwich shop on 14th Street at the corner of U Street, where he saw the border patrol agent and other law enforcement officers standing in front of the shop.
Shroff and others who know Dunn have said he was fearful that the border agent outside the sub shop and immigrant agents might raid the Bunker Latin night event. Bunker’s entrance is on U Street just around the corner from the sub shop where the federal agents were standing.
“I am so happy that justice prevails in spite of everything happening,“ Dunn told reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict while joined by his attorneys. “And that night I believed that I was protecting the rights of immigrants,” he said.
“And let us not forget that the great seal of the United States says, E Pluribus Unum,” he continued. “That means from many, one. Every life matters no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify, you have the right to live a life that is free.”
The verdict followed a two-day trial with testimony by just two witnesses, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent Gregory Lairmore, who identified Dunn as the person who threw the sandwich at his chest, and Metro Transit Police Detective Daina Henry, who told the jury she witnessed Dunn toss the sandwich at Lairmore while shouting obscenities.
Shroff told the jury Dunn was exercising his First Amendment right to protest and that the tossing of the sandwich at Lairmore, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, did not constitute an assault under the federal assault law to which Dunn was charged, among other things, because the federal agent was not injured.
Prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. initially attempted to obtain a grand jury indictment of Dunn on a felony assault charge. But the grand jury refused to hand down an indictment on that charge, court records show. Prosecutors then filed a criminal complaint against Dunn on the misdemeanor charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers of the United States.
“Dunn stood within inches of Victim 1,” the criminal complaint states, “pointing his finger in Victim 1’s face, and yelled, Fuck you! You fucking fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”
The complaint continues by stating, “An Instagram video recorded by an observer captured the incident. The video depicts Dunn screaming at V-1 within inches of his face for several seconds before winding his arm back and forcefully throwing a sub-style sandwich at V-1.
Prosecutors repeatedly played the video of the incident for the jurors on video screens in the courtroom.
Dunn, who chose not to testify at his trial, and his attorneys have not disputed the obvious evidence that Dunn threw the sandwich that hit Lairmore in the chest. Lead defense attorney Shroff and co-defense attorneys Julia Gatto and Nicholas Silverman argued that Dunn’s action did not constitute an assault under the legal definition of common law assault in the federal assault statute.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo, the lead prosecutor in the case, strongly disputed that claim, citing various provisions in the law and appeals court rulings that he claimed upheld his and the government’s contention that an “assault” can take place even if a victim is not injured as well as if there was no physical contact between the victim and an alleged assailant, only a threat of physical contact and injury.
The dispute over the intricacies of the assault law and whether Dunn’s action reached the level of an assault under the law dominated the two-day trial, with U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, who presided over the trial, weighing in with his own interpretation of the assault statute. Among other things, he said it would be up to the jury to decide whether or not Dunn committed an assault.
Court observers have said in cases like this, a jury could have issued a so-called “nullification” verdict in which they acquit a defendant even though they believe he or she committed the offense in question because they believe the charge is unjust. The other possibility, observers say, is the jury believed the defense was right in claiming a law was not violated.
DiLorenzo and his two co-prosecutors in the case declined to comment in response to requests by reporters following the verdict.
“We really want to thank the jury for having sent back an affirmation that his sentiment is not just tolerated but it is legal, it is welcome,” defense attorney Shroff said in referring to Dunn’s actions. “And we thank them very much for that verdict,” she said.
Dunn thanked his attorneys for providing what he called excellent representation “and for offering all of their services pro bono,” meaning free of charge.
Dunn, an Air Force veteran who later worked as an international affairs specialist at the U.S. Department of Justice, was fired from that job by DOJ officials after his arrest for the sandwich tossing incident.
“I would like to thank family and friends and strangers for all of their support, whether it was emotional, or spiritual, or artistic, or financial,” he told the gathering outside the courthouse. “To the people that opened their hearts and homes to me, I am eternally grateful.”
“As always, we accept a jury’s verdict; that is the system within which we function,” CNN quoted U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro as saying after the verdict in the Dunn case. “However, law enforcement should never be subjected to assault, no matter how ‘minor,’” Pirro told CNN in a statement.
“Even children know when they are angry, they are not allowed to throw objects at one another,” CNN quoted her as saying.
Maryland
Democrats hold leads in almost every race of Annapolis municipal election
Jared Littmann ahead in mayor’s race.
By CODY BOTELER | The Democratic candidates in the Annapolis election held early leads in the races for mayor and nearly every city council seat, according to unofficial results released on election night.
Jared Littmann, a former alderman and the owner of K&B Ace Hardware, did not go so far as to declare victory in his race to be the next mayor of Annapolis, but said he’s optimistic that the mail-in ballots to be counted later this week will support his lead.
Littmannn said November and December will “fly by” as he plans to meet with the city department heads and chiefs to “pepper them with questions.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Democrats on Tuesday increased their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The Associated Press notes the party now has 61 seats in the chamber. Democrats before Election Day had a 51-48 majority in the House.
All six openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual candidates — state Dels. Rozia Henson (D-Prince William County), Laura Jane Cohen (D-Fairfax County), Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg), Marcia Price (D-Newport News), Adele McClure (D-Arlington County), and Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) — won re-election.
Lindsey Dougherty, a bisexual Democrat, defeated state Del. Carrie Coyner (R-Chesterfield County) in House District 75 that includes portions of Chesterfield and Prince George Counties. (Attorney General-elect Jay Jones in 2022 texted Coyner about a scenario in which he shot former House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican.)
Other notable election results include Democrat John McAuliff defeating state Del. Geary Higgins (R-Loudoun County) in House District 30. Former state Del. Elizabeth Guzmán beat state Del. Ian Lovejoy (R-Prince William County) in House District 22.
Democrats increased their majority in the House on the same night they won all three statewide offices: governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.
Narissa Rahaman is the executive director of Equality Virginia Advocates, the advocacy branch of Equality Virginia, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group, last week noted the election results will determine the future of LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, and voting rights in the state.
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
The General Assembly earlier this year approved a resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment that defines marriage in the state constitution as between a man and a woman. The resolution must pass in two successive legislatures before it can go to the ballot.
Shreya Jyotishi contributed to this article.
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