Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev were also invited.
Judicial Watch obtained a March 13, 2009, email showing the three Russian leaders were among a list of heads of state that were requested to RSVP for the New York event that year. Clinton Foundation Foreign Policy Director Amitabh Desai authored the electronic document before sending it to Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state under Clinton, who forwarded it to Clinton confidante Jake Sullivan, the email thread shows.
Despite the Clinton Foundation’s request for Putin’s presence at the organization’s annual gathering not terribly long ago, Clinton was again bashing the Russian president Tuesday while promoting her new book, “What Happened,” on The Late Show hosted by Stephen Colbert.
Clinton blamed her inability to get along with Putin on – wait for it – the fact that Putin is a sexist. Their coolness arose “partly because I’m a woman – which does seem to get him a bit agitated," Clinton said without finishing her sentence before the crowd started clapping.
"There’s an expression, we certainly know it New York, called manspreading," Clinton told Colbert. "And every time I met with him, it would be [slouches on couch], OK? The whole deal."
Given that publisher Simon & Schuster wasn’t able to sell enough copies of Clinton’s 2014 book, "Hard Choices," to cover half of the $14 million advance she was paid to write the book, perhaps every little bit of attention helps on her current publicity tour.
Clinton’s politics of convenience is useful in creating heroes and villains as needed. When expedience requires extending cordiality to Putin as she sought to usher in a “Russia reset” as the US’s top diplomat, there was no problem with being friendly to the Russian leadership. But once the election hung in the balance, Clinton became a major Russia hawk and then doubled down after her defeat.
Clinton’s current book tour is something of a blame tour: she’s called out former FBI Director James Comey, “Russian hacking,” US Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic National Committee’s data operations department for her loss to Donald Trump. She has actually even faulted the people who advised her to visit the US state of Wisconsin, a state she cavalierly ignored during her campaign, and a misstep now seen as the canary in the coalmine illustrating the Democratic Party’s complacency and hubris. (Trump ended up winning Wisconsin’s electoral college votes.)
After Clinton complained at a June conference in San Francisco the DNC’s data was “nonexistent,” “wrong,” and “poor” – remarkable claims about the data that helped former President Barack Obama win two elections by sizeable electoral vote margins – former DNC staffers struck back.
“DNC data folks: today’s accusations are f*cking bullsh*t, and I hope you understand the good you did despite that nonsense,” former data director Andrew Therriault quipped in now-deleted tweets from June.
“I’m not willing to let my people be thrown under the bus without a fight,” he said, before subtweeting that “somehow” Clinton’s plane “never made its way to the upper Midwest,” nodding to the critical region that could’ve kept Trump from becoming president.
