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Fwd: Andrea Mitchell

Friends - could use some help thinking through this problem. It's a panel on us and press. Like to raise on our morning call. Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: * Mitchell Reports Panel On Media Access to HRC, Alleged Policy Changes, and Clinton Foundation News http://mms.tveyes.com/transcript.asp?PlayClip=FALSE&DTSearch=TRUE&DateTime=04%2F16%2F2015+12%3A28%3A40&market=m1&StationID=205 [12:28:33 PM] ANDREA MITCHELL: Hillary Clinton has left Iowa, and she's planning her next trip to New Hampshire next week. Joining me now for our Daily Fix: Chris Cillizza, MSNBC contributor and founder of The Washington Post’s The Fix blog; MSNBC political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald; and New York Times political reporter Amy Chozick. Thanks all. Alex, first to you. We were there, trying to get questions to her. Let’s take a look at what the campaign posted on flicker, which is the campaign’s still photographer's pictures of the final event yesterday – not announced, not on the schedule. She goes up to the state capitol. You can see this is a rather large gathering. We had people outside. Dan Balz and others from The Washington Post were outside. Amy, I don't know where you were at that hour, but this was 3 o’clock or so in the afternoon – plenty of time for all of us to file and nobody was able to cover this. Fair game? [12:29:26 PM] ALEX SEITZ-WALD: Yeah, I mean, this was typical throughout her Iowa tour and I was there outside the room as well. We had gotten tipped off – there was word – but this was a problem throughout. You know, they had these two big, anchor events, which were clearly meant to give us something to cover. Meanwhile, we were chasing her throughout the state while she was doing these, kind of, main events – meeting with people in coffee shops and meeting with state legislators here. And I think what frustrated reporters was not that she wanted to do events in private, but that we got so little heads up on it, so little warning on it. And, you know, she's trying to execute two simultaneous resets. She’s trying to reset in Iowa and she’s also trying to reset with the press and these things are in tension with each other. And she went with Iowa over the press, clearly, here. [12:30:02 PM] MITCHELL: Amy, what is your takeaway from all of this? Especially since what news was made yesterday happened in a statement from her campaign office, which was a recasting let's say, to be kind, of what she said last summer to Terry Gross during the book tour on NPR about same-sex marriage. She's now affirmatively declaring that the Supreme Court should grant the constitutional right as a national issue rather than progress state by state. [12:30:27 PM] AMY CHOZICK: Right, and I think they did something similar this morning in releasing something to the Huffington Post about her stance on giving driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. And so, this sort of trickle of news, while Andrea, you and I and Alex are out there sort of killing ourselves to cover the events, I think it does create a tension. You know, from what I heard from her campaign, they recognize that. They say they’re they’re to figure these things out. But you can not expect the national news media to cover, sort of, the gauzy events and get the beautiful photos without, you know, having the ability to ask the candidate questions. And I’ve been assured that, you know, that might change in the future. But, I also think that what’s so interesting is this small strategy, this talking to six Iowans. I mean, let’s be real, it’s completely dependent on the national news media to broadcast that to the world – those small moments to the world. You know, it’s not just about talking to six Iowans in a quaint coffee shop. It’s about broadcasting that and so it is a symbiotic relationship and I think they realize that they need to sort of figure things out. You know, as well as we do in covering these things. And I’ve got to give it to Alex. He’s the hero for not running after that van. [12:31:35 PM] MITCHELL: The most incredible self-restraint. You were on the air live when all that was going down. It went viral. Chris Cillizza, I mean, this is the age-old tension. But, we’ve never seen quite as profoundly disparate, the division between the coffee shop where we now learn people were actually driven in, pre-screened and cleared. They want the national media there to take the picture but there’s no one there to ask a question or to provide any, you now, context, unlike the traditional White House pools. I mean, we’ve covered these campaigns: Hillary Clinton in New York state in 2000; Hillary Clinton all over the country in 2007 and 2008. She had secret service in both instances [inaudible] “Oh there’s a security reason why you can’t get close.” We covered the president of the United States – successive presidents – all over the country for years and years with secret service and we get to ask questions. [12:32:29 PM] CHRIS CILLIZZA: The problem here Andrea – and the Obama administration has taken this to a certain degree and whoever the next president is, Republican or Democrat, will probably take it to an even further degree – which is, the rise of technology, the rise of Twitter and Instagram, and Flickr, as you mentioned, YouTube. There's a strong sense if you're Hillary Clinton, who is, you know, universally known, she doesn't have the Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio problem where they need the media, at some level, to, sort of, get them more known. She doesn’t need the media go get here more known. She just sort of end-runs it. As Amy mentioned, she parcels out pieces of news as she sees fit to organizations she sees fit and then she does things like puts up a video, sends an e-mail to supporters. The Obama campaign did this brilliantly. We know Hillary’s already got a lot of the people from the Obama campaign, but I think she's going to take that blueprint and, sort of, do everything she can to end-run us to the point at which everyone throws up their hands and then, I think, they will sort of say, “Oh okay, here's this thing.” But, Hillary Clinton is never going to be – maybe no candidate will be anymore – but the John McCain circa 1999 and 2000, back of the bus everybody asking questions. That's never, ever, ever, ever going to be her. I don't think any of us want that, although it would be great, but something more in the middle, equitable, I think, is what we're all sort of aiming for. [12:33:52 PM] ANDREA MITCHELL: And Amy, the other news on the Clinton foundation, they have now decided they are going to keep accepting foreign donations. She resigned from the foundation on Sunday night after declaring her candidacy – it’s the family foundation. She was being criticized from accepting money from Saudi Arabia and other, you know, countries that have terrible policies in contrast to her own policy towards women's rights. So now they are going to accept money from, you know, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the U.K. Basically, from Anglo-Saxon countries and not the Middle Eastern countries. How does that get around the potential conflict of interest should she become POTUS? [12:34:30 PM] AMY CHOZICK: Right. And you know, President Clinton has said he intends to continue to run the foundation – not just through the campaign, but should she win the White House. He said, “I would keep the place in Chappaqua, and continue to run the foundation.” Obviously there were appearances of conflicts at the State Department and I think that those would just be exacerbated should she, you know, obviously win the White House. Of course, the Clinton Foundation says, “We have gone above and beyond. We’ve done thing that no global philanthropy does in terms of disclosing donors and limiting donors. But, of course, no other foundation has quite the situation of one of the family members running for president. So I think it will continue to be a question. Again – you said it – it’s not necessarily the conflict. It’s the appearance of conflict and the GOP is just going to hammer that. * Can you have someone send me transcript of her panel on us and press coverage? -- Thanks, Vas