Hillary Clinton has been making rounds on US TV programmes promoting her forthcoming book, which she co-wrote with her daughter, and talking about the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Appearing on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Clinton stressed that an impeachment inquiry is "exactly what should be done," especially considering the evidence.
So what’s the evidence? A whistleblower complaint about Trump allegedly inappropriately pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former vice-president and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family over their business dealings in Ukraine during a phone conversation that took place in July.
In that phone call, Trump asked Zelensky to look into what role Biden played in shutting down an investigation by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor into Burisma Holdings gas company that his son Hunter Biden was a paid board member of, and whether Biden got the former prosecutor - Viktor Shokin - fired over this.
Mrs Clinton, who also called Trump "a corrupt businessman" and said his "campaign asked for aid from Russia," something that was never proven, accused the president of "putting his personal and political interests ahead of the national security of our country," as she spoke to the Late Show host.
Likewise, she told ABC’s Good Morning America that "the evidence concerning Ukraine is so dramatic and irrefutable."
But as political analyst Don Debar points out, Mrs Clinton clearly has her sights on the top job.
"If we know nothing else about Hillary Clinton, the one thing that has been demonstrated repeatedly over the course of her public career is that she has unlimited personal ambition. This is particularly true with respect to that seat in the Oval Office to which she has repeatedly demonstrated that she feels personally entitled."
Clinton lost the 2016 election to Trump and since then the very legitimacy of it and Trump’s presidency has been challenged "in an unprecedentedly broad attack by the Democratic Party, some members of the Republican Party establishment, and an almost unanimous voice from the corporate and nonprofit media in the US," the analyst says.
And the person that gains from it the most is Hillary Clinton:
"Clearly, if there was a personal beneficiary of this effort, it is Clinton, since this removes her personal culpability in the loss in 2016," Debar notes.
The political analyst believes it’s not just a coincidence that the latest information about Biden is coming out now:
"Now that Biden has emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primary, riding on an argument of electability just as Clinton did, this particular disclosure about Biden comes to the fore, despite the fact that it was known from its inception in 2014 and simply ignored by the American Press and political establishment. Now weaponised against Biden, it has also somehow become a two-edged sword threatening Trump as well."
With the revelations set to do damage to Biden as well, this means Mrs Clinton would be the only "legitimate candidate" to take on President Trump, Debar said:
"Taken together, this all leaves Clinton poised as 'the legitimate candidate to retrieve the illegitimate presidency from Trump' as well as her renewed claim to being "the most likely to win of all the Democrats" and thus the one they all need to get behind. Likely there will be a vice presidential candidate slot for Warren, Sanders or whomever else is riding the top of the polls at the time," he concludes.
