Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, joined the ranks Wednesday of prominent Democrats to call out the Clintons and her party over the handling of President Bill Clinton’s myriad sexual misdeeds.
“Not only did people look the other way, but they went after the women who came forward and accused him,” Sebelius, told CNN. “And so it doubled down on not only bad behavior but abusive behavior. And then people attacked the victims.”
The Democrat’s response to the multitude of women accusing Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or assault when he was their 1992 presidential candidate and then as President of the United States was noted for its uncompromising solidarity. Clinton campaign strategist James Carville, for example, famously said of President Clinton’s accusers in 1996, long before the Monica Lewinski scandal broke, “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”
Sebelius specifically called out Hillary Clinton, who defended her husband vigorously and attacked his accusers, calling them part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and insisting “we really look at the people involved here, look at their motivations and look at their backgrounds, look at their past behavior, some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.”
As CNN’s Pete Jones writes:
Sebelius extended her criticism to Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton White House for what she called a strategy of dismissing and besmirching the women who stepped forward—a pattern she said is being repeated today by alleged perpetrators of sexual assault—saying that the criticism of the former first lady and Secretary of State was “absolutely” fair. Sebelius noted that the Clinton Administration’s response was being imitated, adding that “you can watch that same pattern repeat, It needs to end. It needs to be over.”