Veteran newscaster Andrea Mitchell admitted on MSNBC on Tuesday that she crafted questions during her interview with Hillary Clinton partly out of fear the Democratic front-runner would cut her off.

But she made excuses for Clinton anyway.

The admission and the excuses — which should lay to arrest any doubts that the Clintons still command the loyalty of the Washington press corps — came when Mitchell appeared on “Morning Joe” for some post-Labor Day questions about her sit-down with the former secretary of state.

Mitchell, a doyenne of the Washington news media, acknowledge the constraints the Clinton campaign had placed on the length of the interview. With only 15 minutes to question Hillary, Mitchell said she was afraid her time had run out.

“We were told we had a 15-minute interview,” Mitchell said. “I asked more than 12 minutes on emails before I felt — out of concern that they would cut it off, obviously — that I had to move on.

“I couldn’t ask everything that I did want to ask.”

Actually, she couldn’t ask one of the only questions that really mattered – which is why Hillary set up her own private email server. Instead of getting an answer to that, Mitchell made up her own on “Morning Joe” – and made it appear like Hillary was justified because of past bad experiences with the American press.

“We can infer a lot of things from her background from the way she was introduced to national politics in the middle of all of the troubles that her husband was incurring during the New Hampshire primary in 1992,” Mitchell said.

“There were a lot of reasons, why, perhaps, she did this. She’s never answered it herself. We don’t have an explanation as to why [she] chose only a personal server, not having the official one.”

Maybe, but what we can definitely infer is that with reporters like Andrea Mitchell on the story, Hillary will feel entirely free to answer exactly the questions she wants to answer, under exactly conditions she dictates.

And she’ll feel entirely comfortable knowing that her media minions will make excuses for her anyway.

Check out Mitchell doing exactly that here:

• Author
• Recent Posts

Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

Latest posts by Joe Saunders (see all)

• Pelosi goes off the deep end when asked if a baby is human; ‘might be the dumbest response in history’ - October 1, 2015
• GOP congressman, whose mom died of breast cancer, explodes: ‘I’m tired of getting lectures from Democrats!’ - October 1, 2015
• Undercover sting catches Hillary worker breaking law: Hispanic voter sign-up using ‘Trump’s ‘bi**hface’ - October 1, 2015

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.