Hillary says 'I now disagree with the choice that I made' on email server but WON'T apologize – and admits it 'doesn't make me feel good' when Americans call her a liar

  • Clinton sat for a rare interview on Friday, choosing MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell to be her inquisitor
  • Twice she refused to apologize for the self-inflicted wounds of her email scandal, only saying she is 'sorry that this has been confusing to people'
  • 'I now disagree with the choice that I made,' Clinton said in a now-familiar lawyerly fashion 
  • She conceded that 'I was not thinking a lot when I got in' as secretary of state' because 'there was so much work to be done'
  • 'Hillary Clinton regrets that she got caught and is paying a political price,' the Republican Party responded

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor For Dailymail.com

Published: 11:59 EST, 4 September 2015 | Updated: 14:41 EST, 4 September 2015

Democratic presdiential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton twice refused to apologize on Friday for her politically disastrous choice to keep sensitive emails on a private server when she was secretary of state, saying only that she was 'sorry that this has been confusing to people.'

In just her third televised interview since launching her second presidential bid, Clinton told MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell that she regretted her actions had 'raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions.'

Asked specifically if she should apologize – 'Are you sorry?' – Clinton punted to language she has used before on the campaign trail.

'I take responsibility and it wasn’t the best choice,' she said, adding in a lawyerly fashion that 'I now disagree with the choice that I made.'

Hillary Clinton sat for a rare interview on Friday, telling MSNBC that while she won't apologize for her self-inflicted email wounds, she is 'sorry that this has been confusing to people'

Hillary Clinton sat for a rare interview on Friday, telling MSNBC that while she won't apologize for her self-inflicted email wounds, she is 'sorry that this has been confusing to people'

Andrew Mitchell, normally friendly to Democrats, was chosen for only the third interview the secretive Clinton has given since her second cmpaign for the White House began

Andrew Mitchell, normally friendly to Democrats, was chosen for only the third interview the secretive Clinton has given since her second cmpaign for the White House began

The Republican National Committ pounced.

'What’s clear is Hillary Clinton regrets that she got caught and is paying a political price, not the fact her secret email server put our national security at risk,' said RNC spokesman Michael Short

'Hillary Clinton's repeated distortions of her growing email scandal, which now involves an FBI investigation, and her refusal to apologize only reinforce why three-fifths of the country doesn't trust her.'

Clinton has found herself beseiged by atypically aggressive journalists seeking answers about whether maintaining State Department secrets on a piece of computer hardware in her home should disqualify her from being commander-in-chief – or, worse, subject her to criminal prosecution.

As a result, her public polling numbers have slipped steadily. One recent survey found words like 'liar' and 'dishonest' were the first to leap to mind when Americans are asked to describe her.

'Certainly.' Clinton admitted on Friday, 'it doesn't make me feel good.'

'But I am very confident that by the time this campaign has run its course, people will know that what I have been saying is accurate.' 

For now, though, what comes across in interviews and brief press conferences has been a sudden shift from derision to contrition – which has happned so fast that it also risks making her look inauthentic.

Only ten days ago Clinton mocked questions about whether or not she ordered her email server 'wiped' clean – 'What, like with a cloth?' – and cracked jokes about using Snapchat because the messages 'disappear all by themselves.'

But last week in Iowa she began to express a measured sense of regret. That contined Friday with a look back at her transition from the U.S. Senate to the State Department.

'I did all my business on my personal email [in the Senate],' Clinton said. 'I was not thinking a lot when I got in [as secretary of state].'

'There was so much work to be done. We had so many problems around the world. I didn’t really stop and think, "What kind of email system will there be?"'

'This was fully above-board, people knew I was using a personal email. I did it for convenience,' she said. 'I sent emails that I thought were work-related to people’s "dot-gov" accounts.'

Those statements, too, could come back to haunt Hillary.

HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL? Mitchell heard Clinton say it wasn't pleasant to hear that the first words that come to Americans' minds when they hear her name include 'liar' and 'dishonest'

HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL? Mitchell heard Clinton say it wasn't pleasant to hear that the first words that come to Americans' minds when they hear her name include 'liar' and 'dishonest'

On Tuesday night when the State Department released more than 7,000 pages of the emails Clinton chose to turn over late last year – she deleted more than half of her complete archive – one threat showed that State's own computer help-desk didn't recognize her only email address when it was reported as having problems.

And several messages, including some now considered classified, werepart of conversations between Clinton and longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal, who was banned from working at the State Department and never had a 'dot-gov' address.

So far, inspectors from U.S. Intelligence Community agencies have redacted – censored – 189 of her emails before releasing them, specifically on the grounds that they contained material that should have been stamped as classified. 

But the 'vast majority' of messages she sent to government officials were captured on their 'dot-gov' accounts, she said. And 'I take classified material very, very seriously, and we followed all the rules.'

At one point in Friday's interview, Clinton complained that 'our government is not up to speed technically' in a way that would have allowed her to manage both a dot-gov address and a separate personal email account on a single electronic device.

Tuesday's email release at State included one exchange with then-communications advisor Philippe Reines in which Clinton herself demonstrated that she didn't know how to charge an iPad.

Ultimately, Democratic primary voters will decide whether or not to give the former cabinet secretary, senator and first lady a pass and focus laser-lilke on her policy prescriptions.

There's a chance, though, that her 2016 White House run could evaporate much as her 2008 bid did – in the dust of a candidate whom the Democratic Party's rank and file see as more authentic.

'I don't feel that,' Clinton protested on Friday to the ordinarily Democrat-friendly Mitchell.

'I feel that I have questions to answer, which I intend to do at every turn .. about the whole email issue, and keep saying the same thing.'

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