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A defensive Clinton promises 'more press'

The first national interview of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign did not go well. She dodged questions about Bernie Sanders' appeal, refused to say whether she would seek to raise taxes, dismissed data showing that the majority of Americans don't trust her, and was repeatedly forced to defend her lack of transparency at both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.

And yet, toward the interview's conclusion, the long-evasive Democratic front-runner pledged to do more uncomfortable sit-downs like the one she had just, painstakingly, endured.

"Obviously I'll be doing a lot more press," Clinton told CNN's Brianna Keilar.

The only reason Clinton hadn't been doing national interviews, she said, was because she had been busy listening to American voters.

"I just have a different rhythm to my campaign. I'm not running my campaign for the press, I'm running it for the voters," she explained. "I totally respect the press and what the press has to do. I wanted and was determined to have the time that I needed to actually meet and listen to people. I had not been involved in domestic politics while I was secretary of state, and I just wanted to get my own feel, my own time, face to face with people."

"Everything has its own time, and I'm on my own rhythm," she said.

While that may be true, avoiding the press had become a dominant theme of Clinton's early days on the campaign trail. Clinton said she'd always planned "to spend the first 90 days ... getting my feel of what was going on in the country," but her refusal to answer questions from reporters on the trail was so frequent that it made headlines.

As Clinton told Keilar, "it'll be 90 days [since the launch of her campaign] on Sunday," and the time to open up to the media has come. But if Americans are expecting more transparency from Clinton, they may be sorely disappointed.

"I didn't hear a more open or transparent Hillary Clinton," Keilar said after her interview. "I heard her not engaging on the issue of Bernie Sanders. He's a self-described Democratic socialist. I asked her why is he garnering this support, this enthusiasm, that you don't seem to among Democrats. She wouldn't engage on that. Even on this concern of if she were to face off against Jeb Bush, and there would be this dynastic race between a Bush and a Clinton ... she wouldn't engage on that. She was very quick to move on."

Keilar bears some responsibility for that, of course. She hardly pressed Clinton to answer the questions she was dodging and rushed from topic to topic. If an interviewer is hoping to pin Clinton down on anything, she or he will probably have to take a more Terry Gross-like approach.

More likely, however, is that Clinton herself will decide to be more transparent. There are almost 500 days left till Election Day; if she is serious about "doing a lot more press," she'll need to come up with a better strategy than "dodge and defend."