Hillary Clinton is the candidate of Wall Street more than anyone, more than Donald Trump, certainly more than Bernie Sanders, says Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute. Yet she must find a way to convince progressives to vote for her, he added.
Hillary Clinton has been proclaimed the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, knocking out Bernie Sanders, who has since declared his support for Clinton. This has rallied her supporters while triggering a wave of furious protests among the rest.
Latest polls suggest Clinton will face an uphill struggle if she hopes to defeat Republican challenger Donald Trump. A CNN survey a day before the Democratic Convention gave Trump a five point lead: 44 per cent to Clinton's 39.
RT: Hillary Clinton has promised to clean up Wall Street if she is elected President. Can she live up to that promise?
Daniel McAdams: These are campaign promises. This is a way of trying to get some of the Bernie Sanders voters to come over to her, which she absolutely has to have if she is going to win. She has got to find a way to convince the progressives to vote for her. She is having big problems. But she is the candidate of Wall Street more than anyone, more than Donald Trump, certainly more than Bernie Sanders. So the idea that someone who is Wall Street to campaign as someone who is going to crackdown on Wall Street – talk about putting the fox in the hen house. It is absolutely not going to work. It is not going to convince a lot of people, I don’t think.
RT: Wikileaks released damning emails that show the Democratic Party favored Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit Bernie Sanders, who eventually was forced out of the race to be the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, the DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has forced to resign following the leak. What do you make of that?
DM: The whole system was rigged; it was an absolutely flawed process. The DNC colluded with a very willing media who did their share to make sure that Hillary’s time had come and she would be the candidate. They colluded to spread false rumors about Bernie Sanders behind his back. They colluded to do all sorts of things to make sure that their candidate won and the DNC is supposed to be completely neutral in this race. It is an absolute undermining of the democratic process. And forget about this whole idea of the super delegates where one person gets a thousand votes…It is an absolutely horrible process. If any other country overseas had a process of electing their leaders like the US had, the US would condemn the process in a heartbeat.
RT: Clinton has been harshly criticized for her role in the Benghazi affair, which led to the murder of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens after Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.
DM: I don’t think she will provide an answer because I don’t think anyone will ask her the right questions on Benghazi. The Republicans have botched this from day one. They’ve only thought about how they can score political points off the tragedy in Benghazi, how can they make Hillary Clinton look bad. And so all of their questions have been pointed toward that. What the Republicans should have said is: Why were we in Benghazi in the first place? Why did we overthrow the Gaddafi government in Libya, turning the place into an absolute hellhole and opening the door wide open for ISIS and destroying the country. Why were we there? Why did we overthrow this government illegally? They will never do that because at the core the Republicans agree with Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy – one of the reasons why so many neoconservatives are going over and supporting Hillary. They love her interventionism, they love this foreign policy.
RT: Perhaps most damaging for Clinton’s reputation are claims that she used a private server when handling US government documents. Do you think this was an illegal move on her part?
DM: Hillary Clinton said something the other day that she meant in a different way, but it came out very funny. She said: ‘There is some set of rules for everyone else, and there is one set of rules for me’. She meant that she is picked on more, but the rest of us understood it that she can get away with just about anything. Anyone who has had a security clearance… would understand what Hillary Clinton did with her server was absolutely illegal and she knew it was illegal. She opened up the most sensitive secrets of the US government to any hacker to get a hold of. And she treated it as if it just didn’t matter. That alone should disqualify her for the presidency. But she is clearly what a lot of people in Democratic Party want, so I guess they’ll get her.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.