Hillary Clinton Defends Her Connection with Harvey Weinstein: 'How Could We Have Known?'
Hillary Clinton maintains in a new interview that she had no inkling of the alleged sexual misconduct of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
The former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee was asked about Weinstein in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to promote the documentary “Hillary,” which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this week before being released March 6 on Hulu.
“With his trial in the news right now, do you have regrets about your lengthy association with Harvey Weinstein?” interviewer Lacey Rose asked.
“How could we have known?” Clinton replied. “He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general. And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior.”
Weinstein was a major fundraiser for Clinton, as well as other Democratic candidates.
In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, liberal comedian Lena Dunham said she warned the Clinton campaign in 2016 that Weinstein was too visible.
“I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the deputy communications director for the Clinton campaign.
“I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fundraisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault,” Dunham said she also told Schake.
Author and editor Tina Brown said she had made a similar comment to a Clinton aide in 2008.
“I was hearing that Harvey’s sleaziness with women had escalated since I left [the magazine] Talk in 2002 and she was unwise to be so closely associated with him,” Brown told The Times.
Many on Twitter reacted to Clinton’s comments on Weinstein:
Clinton asked ‘How could we have known?’ about Weinstein in her recent THR interview, but a. multiple women say they warned her campaign and b. Ronan Farrow reported that her people tried to pressure him over his Weinstein reporting.https://t.co/iXtlXG1EkG
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) January 21, 2020
Hillary Clinton has expressed more disdain towards Bernie Sanders than Harvey Weinstein. https://t.co/gcTEHEUOVX
— George (@_GeorgeGlass) January 21, 2020
Hillary Clinton was good friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein, two of the most rich & powerful rapists in our time. She has absolutely NO moral high-ground to discuss sexism.
— Kevin Thee Donkey ? (@swallowit_) January 21, 2020
Weinstein is currently on trial in New York City on rape and assault charges, with opening arguments scheduled for Wednesday, according to USA Today.
Late last year, journalist Ronan Farrow, who who was among the first journalists to publish stories on the sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein, said Clinton distanced herself from him as he was working on the Weinstein story.
“She attempted to withdraw from an interview that she had committed to for a foreign policy book that I was working on, for which I interviewed every other living secretary of state,” Farrow told Fox News in October.
“And, before doing so, her staff raised concerns about the fact that I was working on this story about one of her most significant donors — a big bundler of Hollywood money,” he said, referring to Weinstein.
“The allegation here is not that Hillary Clinton was seeking to squash the Weinstein story, but the conversation did happen,” Farrow told Business Insider that same month. “I do think people can interpret the fact how they will, whether she was nervous about associating with someone who was reporting on a friend of her’s who held a lot of power and held the strings to a lot of fundraising.”
During The Hollywood Reporter interview, the issue of former “Today” host Matt Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct was discussed, and Clinton was asked for her reaction to the development.
“I love this word ‘gobsmacked’ because, yes, look, hypocrisy is everywhere. Look at the current occupant of the White House for Lesson ‘A,'” she replied, referring to President Donald Trump.
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