"With all claws!" That was Hillary Clinton's response when podcast host Kara Swisher asked her on "On with Kara Swisher" whether "the pussy finally grabbed back" after last Tuesday's midterm results. The former presidential candidate who lost to Donald Trump in 2016 decided this was her moment.
She's been waiting ten years for this.
Clinton didn't stop at the claw imagery. She called the midterm results "a total rebuke of Donald Trump and his cult and the many wrongheaded evil policies that he's inflicted on us and the world." The woman who managed to lose to a first-time candidate with the entire media establishment behind her now wants credit for an election she wasn't on the ballot for.
The full victory lap kept going. Clinton told Swisher the results were "a real tribute to Democratic candidates and the campaigns they ran and how strong they were on the main issues of affordability and corruption." She added that Democrats had to "finally lift the poisonous cloud that Trump has put over our heads for the last ten long years" and celebrated "a new crop of very exciting public servants."
Affordability. She said affordability. The party that spent two years in unified government watching grocery prices climb is now running on affordability, and Hillary Clinton is the one delivering the message. With Democrats having seized control of both the House and Senate, she apparently felt the stage was hers again.
The "pussy grabbed back" line is a callback to the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that the Washington Post released in October 2016 — a month before the election Clinton lost. Trump had told Billy Bush, "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.... Grab 'em by the pussy." The tape was supposed to end Trump's campaign. It didn't. Clinton's campaign ended instead.
That was a decade ago. Trump won the presidency. Served four years. Won again. Served four more. And Hillary Clinton is still workshopping comebacks to a leaked tape from the George W. Bush administration.
The Gateway Pundit reported on the interview, noting what anyone watching already knew — this wasn't analysis or even political commentary. This was a woman who has spent ten years replaying the same loss and finally found a scoreboard she could point to.
She didn't mention her own 2016 campaign. She didn't mention the private email server, Benghazi, the "basket of deplorables," or any of the specific reasons voters chose Trump over her. The rebuke of "Trump and his cult" conveniently skips the part where the cult formed because the alternative was her.
Clinton talked about lifting a "poisonous cloud." She described Trump's presidency as something inflicted on people, like a weather event they had no say in. Sixty-three million Americans voted for him in 2016. Seventy-four million in 2020. However many in 2024. Those aren't clouds. Those are voters.
But none of that matters to the woman on the podcast. She got her line. She got her claws metaphor. She got to sit across from Kara Swisher and pretend the last decade went differently.
The new crop of exciting public servants she celebrated didn't ask for her endorsement. They ran on their own. Won on their own. And now Hillary Clinton is standing behind them in the team photo like she played the whole game.
Ten years. Two presidential terms. One podcast appearance. Same grievance.
