By AW Magazine
Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic Party candidate for president has added her opinion on the recently nullified presidential election in Kenya, calling into question the role of Cambridge Analytica, the data company owned by the Mercer family that was instrumental in the Brexit vote.
Clinton won the popular vote in the November 2016 election, but lost out to Donald Trump in the Electoral College vote count. Soon after Trump’s election, thousands of people took to the across cities in America to demonstrate against the election of Trump, with some calling him an illegitimate president because of the perceived Russian meddling in the election.
In her new memoir “What Happened,” Clinton reflects on the tumultuous campaign and her devastating defeat to Trump. As part of the book promotion, she talked to Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross, and this is where she gave a candid feedback on the Kenya election outcome.
Terry Gross: I want to get back to the question, would you completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now?
Hillary Clinton: No. I would not. I would say
Terry Gross: You’re not going to rule it out.
Hillary Clinton: No, I wouldn’t rule it out.
Terry Gross: So what are the means, like, this is totally unprecedented in every way —
Hillary Clinton: It is.
Terry Gross: What would be the means to challenge it, if you thought it should be challenged?
Basically I don’t believe there are. There are scholars, academics, who have arguments that it would be, but I don’t think they’re on strong ground. But people are making those arguments. I just don’t think we have a mechanism. You know, the Kenya election was just overturned and really what’s interesting about that — and I hope somebody writes about it, Terry — the Kenyan election was also a project of Cambridge Analytica, the data company owned by the Mercer family that was instrumental in the Brexit vote.
There’s now an investigation going on in the U.K., because of the use of data and the weaponization of information. They were involved in the Trump campaign after he got the nomination, and I think that part of what happened is Mercer said to Trump, We’ll help you, but you have to take Bannon as your campaign chief. You’ve got to take Kellyanne Conway and these other people who are basically Mercer protégées.
And so we know that there was this connection. So what happened in Kenya, which I’m only beginning to delve into, is that the Supreme Court there said there are so many really unanswered and problematic questions, we’re going to throw the election out and re-do it. We have no such provision in our country. And usually we don’t need it.
Now, I do believe we should abolish the Electoral College, because I was sitting listening to a report on the French election and the French political analyst said, “You know in our country the person with the most votes wins, unlike in yours.” And I think that’s an anachronism. I’ve said that since
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