May 20, 2018

Hillary Clinton Talks About Trump, Facts, and Fascism in Yale Speech

She said America is facing a “full-fledged crisis in our democracy”

Today, Hillary Clinton delivered Yale University’s annual Class Day speech, urging the Class of ’18 to keep organizing to roll back the “full-fledged crisis in our democracy.” But before she got serious, she kicked things off with a dig at a scandal-embroiled political adversary who remained unnamed throughout her remarks: 

Clinton, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, hit some common graduation speaker themes—citing Alexis de Tocqueville and Benjamin Franklin, urging grads to “find ways to disagree respectfully” and embrace “radical empathy.” But her comments became more pointed as she described the current political situation, particularly the Trump administration’s disregard for facts, data, and real news. To bolster her point, she name checked her fellow former secretaries of state, quoting Madeleine Albright’s new book, Fascism, and praising Rex Tillerson for his recent criticism —”perhaps a tad late”—of his former boss. 

Clinton also gave shoutouts to the #MeToo movement and the Parkland students, and called for “common sense gun safety legislation as soon as we can get it.”

Clinton urged grads and anyone else listening to combat the Trump administration’s disregard for facts by “supporting great journalists and their reporting”—and by subscribing to a newspaper. Disappointingly, she did not mention magazines.

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