Election run deep. but please listen to me when i say this. america is worth it. our children are worth it. believe in our country, fight for our values, and never, ever give up. welcome back to hardball. that was, of course, hillary clinton, in this case, urging her supporters last night to keep fighting. she spoke at a charity gala in washington for her favorite charity, i believe children s defense fund. it was her first public appearance since conceding the election last week. clinton grew emotional as she spoke about the struggles her mother had faced as a child abandoned by her parents and sent to live with relatives at a young age. clinton says she wished she could go back in time and comfort her, her mother. let s watch. i dream of going up to her and sitting next to her and taking her in my arms and saying, look, look at me, and listen. you will survive, you will have
That over the past week a lot of people have asked themselves whether america is the country we thought it was. the divisions laid bare by this but please listen to me when i say this america is worth it. our children are worth it. believe in our country. fight for our values and never, ever give up. that was hillary clinton and hillary clinton is urging her supporters to keep fighting. she spoke at a charity gala in washington for her favorite charity, children s defense fund. appearance since conceding the election last week. spoke about the struggles her mother faced as a child abandoned by her parents and sent to live with relatives at a young age. could go back in time and comfort her. let s watch.
Like the democratic coalition at the national level which is more diverse and also much younger. those are the forces that are pushing on to pelosi. but asthma g manu pointed out i going to be really difficult. let s talk about hillary clinton last night. she was at the children s defense fund. very emotional. she said look i could have just been curled up reading a book but she wanted to go out there and speak, her first public remarks since she conceded the election. a lot of her supporters still haven t come to grips with the fact that donald trump is going to be the next president of the united states. and maybe she hasn t. it was kind of the most emotional i think we ve seen her. talking about her mother. talking about what she wanted to tell her mother about how she became first lady, senator and then received 62 million votes.
which would be understandable. you know, it s interesting to see her out there. she kept this commitment. she agreed to go speak to the children s defense fund before the election, this would be one of her first speeches when she thought she would be president-elect. and she kept the commitment because it matters to her. but that is the very essence of a defeated person. and her remarks i thought were actually quite candid. i mean, it reminded me of that bruce springsteen lyric about hiding beneath the covers and studying your pain. it s sort of what she was describing. i think we can all understand after suffering such a tremendous defeat feeling that way. but i also thought it was interesting that she was once again, she did this with donors over the weekend, she did this with supporters, pleading with democrats to stay in the fight. and almost, please don t feel like i feel. i want to just sit home. but you got to stay out there, and i think it is totally unclear right now how
Keep believing in america. should she have expressly addressed those protesters out there throughout the country to support donald trump? i don t think this was the right venue for that, carol. i think she actually hit the perfect note. because, this was a speech where she was accepting a lifetime achievement award from the children s defense fund which is the place where she started her career. where she started focusing on what has been her life s work, making life better for children and families and women and america s working and middle class in this country. so i think she hit the right note, in addressing the fact that so many people are reeling from what was a soul crushing loss last week. but she did it in a way that put the country first. that put the advocacy that she has been working on all of her life first and urged americans to focus not on themselves, not on their grief, but to focus on lifting up the country, on lifting up everybody who wants to work for a better lif
Encouragement for supporters to stay the course in public life. i know this isn t easy. i know a lot of people have asked themselves whether america is the country we thought it was. the division laid bear by the election run deep. please listen to me when i say this. america is worth it. our children are worth it. believe in our country. fight for our values and never, ever give up. reporter: secretary clinton agreed to make this appearance before the election. the children s defense fund is the first group bill clinton spoke to after he was elected president. christine and george. all right. joe johns. americans are signing up for obamacare. quickly signing up for obamacare despite the wish to get rid of it. that is more than this time last year. the pace picked up after the
Do is just to curl up with a good book or our dogs and never leave the house again. hillary clinton speaking tonight publicly for the first time since she conceded the presidential race to donald trump. she was honored by the children s defense fund. an organization she worked for back in the 1970s. let s bring correspondent kristen welker back into the conversation. she was inside the room in washington tonight as the former secretary of state spoke. kristen? reporter: it was striking, brian. secretary clinton s speech was filled with reflection and raw emotion. remember, this is the first time we ve heard from her since that concession speech. we saw her once last thursday when she ran into a hiker who instagrammed out a photo of her so this was her first chance not only to speak to the audience tonight at the children s defense fund but to democrats more broadly and to all of her supporters and republicans and her message was really about the
Foreign leader. and one whose big issue is tpp. abe is pro-tpp and trump is anti-tpp and not only that but abe as prime minister of japan they re anti-having nuclear weapons. they don t want nuclear weapons and donald trump said during the campaign they should have them. there actually are although he said he never suggested such a thing even though he did. will they really talk about things like that or is this just a meet and greet? i imagine it s more of a courtesy call. i don t think they ll get deep into defining what the relationship is going to be going forward. i think it s going to start forming a relationship. he has to do it. let s talk about a person who is not president-elect this morning and that s hillary clinton. who spoke last night at the children s defense fund. this was her first public appearance since she conceded the election. let s take a look at a little of what she said. i will admit coming here tonight wasn t the easiest thing for me. there have
Got the feeling, no that won t happen what i think he should do and greatest contribution he can make here, stop this division of people into communities of color and all that. we re all americans here. and i think we have been divided repeatedly in different groups. those are pretty words and i appreciate you say them and i actually think you say them genuinely because i know you. here is a problem. he unleashed this. he was a dividing factor. he inserted it into the rhetoric. he has been talk about the division and dividing us into the mexicans and non mexicans and immigrants and muslims for the last 18 months it is now his responsibility to put it back together. hillary clinton is making first public comments since conceding the election. she s at the children s defense fund event in washington tonight. she s just taken the stage. let s listen in and see what her remarks are on. we don t have any guidance on what she s going to be talking.
Had a message for young women everywhere. and right now she is about to come on stage being introduced by a legendary woman who, of course, civil rights activist, child advocate and head of the children s defense fund which is, i believe, the very first place that hillary clinton worked for when she got out of law school. you can hear the crowd there very excited to hear what hillary clinton is going to have to say. joining me now is michelle goldberg. she s a columnist for slate. if you were writing a speech for hillary clinton on this day, what would you say? well, if i was writing a speech for hillary clinton, i mean, you know, i think it s important to realize she has nothing to lose at this point. she is for the first time in decades in the public spotlight not positioning herself for a job in front of a kind of hostile and skeptical public. so what i hope that she will do is speak to a, speak to the