It is, therefore, stunning that she has chosen to side with Vladimir Putin against her successor at the State Department, Hillary Clinton.
Condi is wrong on several counts.
Read more >>>>Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put some of the blame for Russian election on Hillary Clinton in a wide-ranging MSNBC interview on Thursady
Rice, who has considerable experience with Vladimir Putin, did not hold back on her assessment of the motivations behind Russian election meddling.
She said that then-Secretary of State Clinton criticizing Putin for Russia’s 2012 elections encouraged the foreign leader to seek revenge. Rice said that Putin is an “eye for an eye” kind of person and that he was out to hurt Clinton in order to prove that America could also have flawed elections.
"With Vladimir Putin, this was an eye for an eye. He’s an eye for an eye kind of person, and Hillary Clinton criticized his election. Now he wants to show that he can sow chaos in ours."
1. Hillary commented (no she did not "meddle" - that is something different but back to that later) on the 2010 Russian parliamentary elections not Putin's 2012 presidential election.
In her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton portrays Putin's worldview as "shaped by his admiration of the powerful czars of Russian history" and his view of geopolitics as a zero-sum game. Following the December 2010 parliamentary elections in Russia, widespread reports of fraud brought tens of thousands of protestors out into the frigid Russian streets. Hillary recalls stating, "The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted.... That means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them." She goes on to describe Putin blaming her for "setting the tone" for the widespread demonstrations that followed the elections. Nothing in Hillary's memoir nor elsewhere provides any account of Hillary speaking out against Putin's 2012 reelection or any protests, for that matter.
2. Hillary Clinton was not "meddling" when she made her comments. This is meddling. As secretary of state, Hillary was well within her "paygrade" to make a comment regarding elections and unrest in another country.
3. Victim-blaming is always a cheap shot and always wrong! It is especially disturbing coming from a former secretary of state about her successor. I have this quote in the right sidebar here. It bears repetition. "What I have always found is that when it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water's edge." -HRC 11-04-10. Had Condi remained at the State Department in December 2010, she, too, would have been expected to comment on the elections and protests in Russia - especially given her academic background. Would her remarks have been so different?
The cyber attacks against independent election observers that Hillary describes in Chapter 11 of Hard Choices foreshadow some of what we saw happen here in 2016. Some. But not all. Not the worst. We also deserve fair, free, transparent elections and commentary about a foreign country from a candidate never justifies elements from that country interfering in our elections in any way.
Reuters Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with President-elect Barack Obama's Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton at the State Department.
