The chairman Hillary R. Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president told Duke University students Wednesday that he was concerned about President Donald J. Trump’s ability to be president one year after he lived through the biggest presidential upset since 1948.
“Trump’s temperament is bad,” said John D. Podesta, who in addition to heading the former first lady’s campaign served as one of President William J. Clinton’s chiefs of staff and a senior staffer for President Barack Obama. “I would say that our campaign’s argument was that Trump was temperamental and unfit for office.”
Podesta said this lack of a proper temperament not only affects the current government operations and how the government operations going forward.
“Trump is disrespectful and has no respect for boundaries,” he said.
“Trump is embracing ignorance at the expense of future planning,” he said. “Trump is embracing ignorance at the expense of future planning.”
The former chief of staff said the actions of the current chief of staff retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, who struggled to rein in the president.
“Kelly cannot get his phone away from him. He has lowered the standard of the U.S. in the world,” he said.
The 68-year-old Illinois-native spoke for an hour and 15 minutes at a regular forum at the North Carolina university hosted by the school’s American Grand Strategy program, which was facilitated by the director of the program Professor Peter D. Feaver. The professor is an expert on the relationship between military and civilian national security professionals and he has twice worked as a White House national security staffer, first for the Clinton administration and then again for President George W. Bush.
Feaver told Big League Politics the mission of the speakers program was to help is to learn to understand world leaders and foreign policymakers.
“One of our themes is empathy,” he said. “You can’t just look at decisions from afar. You need to get them into the room and ask them what they were thinking.”
When Feaver asked Podesta why he thought Trump won, he said it was because the New York City developer gamed the frustrations of regular Americans.
“There’s a belief that the system isn’t working and that the system is rigged against working class people,” he said.
“Trump played to that, but he’s a hypocrite,” he said. “If that was true, he would have started with infrastructure.”
Podesta also said the credit for Trump’s victory had to be shared. “The Russians stole the election and we are in a heck of a mess.”
Noting the anniversary of Trump’s victory over Clinton, Feaver asked Podesta for his memories of Election Day 2016.
The Clinton campaign chairman said he was confident in the days before the election by after he saw the results in Florida, he started to get nervous.
Even as states won by Obama in 2012 were falling to Trump, such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Clinton campaign leadership was holding on to the hope that things would turn around. “We thought we were in trouble but we but we thought we had an outside chance to pull those three states back.”
Podesta ended the night shortly before 2 a.m., he walked out in front of the thousands of Clinton supporters remaining in Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Center to tell them that the votes were still being counted. “We’re not going to have anything more to say tonight.”
Feaver tried to press him: “Was that the hardest speech you have given, the wait here and don’t panic?”
“Yeah,” Podesta said as he awkwardly shifted in the chair.
“OK. Enough of picking that scab,” the professor said.
During the question-and-answer period, Podesta lost his cool with a question by Nicole Kiprilov about how he handled the conspiracy theories that link him to a pedophilia ring headquartered Washington’s Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant. In March, InfoWars’ Alex Jones formally apologized for his role in spreading the rumors about the so-called “Pizzagate” scandal.
“This is how the alt-right does fake news,” he said.
“That is total bullshit,” he said. “My family has been put through Pizzagate bullshit for a year-and-half.”
Kiprilov, who is a junior at the school, told Big League Politics that she was worried about the reaction she got, but not scared.
She said her friends were worried because they saw that Podesta was very angry by her question.
Kiprilov said she was told by an elderly couple at a cocktail reception at the Washington Duke Inn, following the speech that she was an embarrassment to Duke University and would never be taken seriously in politics.
“My parents are immigrants. My mom fought hard in Bulgaria to bring down communism in the 1990s,” she said.
“I know what I am standing up for, and I believe people wanted to know the answer to the question I asked,” she said.
“Podesta is supposed to be a well-trained politician with a lengthy career and world experience and I am a 21-year-old student, politely asking a question,” she said.
“The power dynamic was slanted in his favor,” she said. “Podesta was aggressive, he jumped to conclusions that I was alt-right, and I thought his reaction was unprofessional.”
Feaver said he not was startled by the interaction between Kiprilov and Podesta.
“I know John is a professional and could handle himself,” he said.
“The challenge I have is to allow leaders make their case,” he said.
“I think she was trying to ask him how he managed replying to difficult stories in the press.”
(First reported by Big League Politcs) https://bigleaguepolitics.com/pedosta-tells-duke-students-trump-disrespectful-no-respect-boundaries/ (December 4, 2017)
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