Clinton fields email questions under shadow of Dallas attacks

Hillary Clinton showed today — if nothing else — she’s a skilled politician who understands exactly the way media works.

Today’s biggest story was obviously the aftermath of the ambush of Dallas police officers that left five dead and seven wounded. The sniper responsible was killed after an explosive attached to a police robot killed 25-year-old suspect Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran from a local suburb. 

{mosads}National media has descended on Dallas to cover the story. All cable news networks went wall-to-wall with it today, an easy choice given both presidential candidates in Donald Trump and Clinton cancelled their respective campaign events. 

But then word came down early in the afternoon that the presumptive Democratic nominee would be sitting down for several interviews on CNN, MSNBC and PBS. Note: Clinton hadn’t spoken to the press in any capacity in the three days since FBI Director James Comey’s delivered his report that highlighted various damning contradictions on her handling of official State Department emails while secretary of State.  

Add it all up, and Clinton seemingly saw an opportunity here to get in front of anchors of her choosing while the conversation was more likely to focus on the shootings than the FBI investigation. And that’s how each interview went down: Each conversation began and stayed with a series of questions around the Dallas, Minnesota and Baton Rogue shootings, followed by questions around healing race relations in America. 

Each interview eventually pivoted to the FBI probe. After all, it would only appear callous by those asking the questions to lead with the FBI findings on such a somber day. From there, Clinton disputed Comey’s assertion she was “extremely careless” with her email, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Comey had “clarified that comment, to some extent, pointing out that some of what was thought to be classified apparently was not.”  

She also told NBC’s Lester Holt (on MSNBC) that she “turned over every document in my possession when the State Department requested it.” She also insisted, “There were no materials” marked classified in her State Department emails.

With little time for follow-up questions while trying to cover so much ground in such little time, both Holt and Blitzer couldn’t properly challenge such arguably questionable responses. A later interview with PBS’ Judy Woodruff played out in a similar way.

The presumptive Republican nominee was quick to pounce on the tenor and timing of the interviews on Twitter: 

Isn’t it sad that on a day of national tragedy Hillary Clinton is answering softball questions about her email lies on @CNN?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2016

Under normal circumstances, Clinton’s interviews would be parsed and analyzed by a panel of political pundits throughout the rest of the day and in opinion-heavy prime time on cable news. 

But Dallas is impossible to pivot away from so soon given the weight and unprecedented nature of the story. So while there may be a smattering of analysis, the Clinton interview basically goes away. 

And with that, mission accomplished for Hillary. 

Because after three national interviews today, no one can say she’s still running and hiding from the press regarding an FBI investigative conclusion that greatly called her conduct and credibility into question once again.