SAN DIEGO, CA — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke via satellite to attendees of San Diego’s Western Healthcare Leadership Academy on Apr. 11, just days after canceling plans to attend in person. Two protest groups gathered outside the San Diego Convention Center for the conference, but for two different reasons.
One group of 10-15 demonstrators, promoting a single-payer healthcare system, stood across from the Convention Center. While playing a recording of the folk tune “Medicare for All,” the group spoke to passing pedestrians for approximately two hours.
The other protest, directly in front of the Convention Center, included over 40 protestors expressing their opposition to Hillary’s handling of the events surrounding the September 11, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Organized by the recently-formed group The Difference Matters, those walking the protest line included Benghazi victim Sean Smith’s mother, Pat Smith, and a friend of Ty Woods, another Benghazi victim.
Pat Smith spoke during a short program with The Difference Matters protestors. She recalled promises made:
All I really know is, Hillary lied, Hillary lied and all those people at the medal ceremony, including President Obama, who came up to me and Hillary came up to me and Panetta came up to me, Biden came up to me. They all looked at me within two inches of my face and lied to me and told me it was the video that did it. Including Susan [Rice]–she came up to me too–who said it was the video. And then they promised me that they would check into it and find out all the details and get back to me. And nobody, nobody, ever got back to me.
Lynette Williams, President of San Diego Women Volunteers In Politics, also spoke, saying: “The war on women is not from Republicans. The war on women is from Democrats who abandon people like Pat and the families of all of the Benghazi dead. They’ve abandoned those women. They don’t care about those women. They don’t care about the millions of women who lost their healthcare.”
In responding to Clinton’s conference speech, the Republican National Committee issued an official statement: “Hillary Clinton is the mother of government-run healthcare. Mrs. Clinton ought to use this opportunity to explain why she fiercly supported Obamacare, despite being one of the few people who knew that this law would prevent millions of Americans from keeping their doctors and current healthcare plans.”
On April 2, local Fox 5 News reported that officials in the Clinton camp attributed the reason for cancelation of her in-person appearance at the conference to scheduling issues.