Though Hillary Clinton has bashed Donald Trump over his alleged fondness for Russia, excerpts from her purported post-State Department speeches in the WikiLeaks files show she also sought “a positive relationship” with Moscow and praised President Vladimir Putin as recently as 2014.
Clinton, the Democrat presidential nominee, called Putin “engaging” and said he was a “very interesting conversationalist” in some of those speech excerpts, which were revealed when WikiLeaks began releasing alleged emails belonging to Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
“I would love it if we could continue to build a more positive relationship with Russia,” Clinton said during a speech to Goldman Sachs on June 4, 2013. In the same speech, Clinton said “obviously we would very much like to have a positive relationship with Russia and we would like to see Putin be less defensive toward a relationship with the United States so that we could work together on some issues.”
It was no secret that Clinton, who famously tried to “reset” U.S. relations with Russia when she became secretary of state in 2009, pushed for warmer ties with the Cold War foe. But the excerpts suggest Clinton maintained some optimism toward that goal after leaving office and found ways to praise Putin, though her campaign condemns Russia now — and accuses the country of being tied to the WikiLeaks dump.
“I sat next to [Putin]. He’s an engaging and, you know, very interesting conversationalist,” she told international trade consultant Sanford Bernstein on May 29, 2013. “We talked about a lot of issues that were not the hot-button issues between us.”
Clinton went into detail during remarks to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago on Oct. 28, 2013. Read full on FoxNews
