Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton thanks supporters before her victory speech Tuesday night. Clinton said the historic nature of being the first woman to win a major American party's presidential nomination is still setting in. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |
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CHAPPAQUA, N.Y., June 8 (UPI) -- A day after her historic victory celebration, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said in the moments before her speech she was "overwhelmed" by emotion and nervous she might cry at the podium.
On Monday, Clinton secured the delegates necessary to clinch the nomination, becoming the first woman in American history to do so. On Tuesday, she scored a landslide victory in the California primary, while winning three other states. On Wednesday, speaking from her upstate New York home, she reflected on the historic moment.
"I was just overwhelmed," she told the Washington Post. "It just was a sense of momentous historic experience -- that I was part of it and it really was hard to actually, you know, make sense of it."
Clinton's speech reflected on both the historic arc of women's rights in the United States, which began in the former first lady's adopted home state in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848. She also reflected on her personal journey and memories of her late mother, who overcame abandonment as a child, and who taught her to stand up to "bullies."
In a second interview with The New York Times, Clinton said she was grateful for her apparent primary victory, but quickly pivoted to the steely politician many view her to be and attacked Trump at the outset of the general election phase of the campaign.
The former State Department chief said she is prepared for the likely onslaught of criticism of her quarter-century in public life, but pledged she would focus on issues relevant to the campaign, not personal insults.
"I am responding to [Trump's] very apparent lack of qualifications to be president based on what he has said and done and the temperamentally unfit person he is," Clinton said.
If the first few days of the general election phase are any indication, the attacks could come often.
Last week, Clinton delivered a searing indictment of Trump's foreign policy proposals, casting him as "dangerously incoherent" on world affairs.
Trump said Tuesday that he is planning a major speech attacking the Clintons, potentially for scandals past and present -- from Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs as president, the charitable foundation they both run, Hillary Clinton's role in Benghazi and her use of a private email server while secretary of state.
During Wednesday's interview with the Times, Clinton again brought up Trump's criticism of a federal judge, who's overseeing a civil case involving Trump University, for his Mexican heritage.
Clinton called Trump's comments "an outrageous, racist attack."
