Hillary Clinton's CNN interview was "vintage Clinton" as she "accepted accountability for nothing" while blaming the "right-wing conspiracy for everything," and lumping all her potential Republican opponents' stances into one prevailing opinion, GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said Wednesday morning.
"It serves her political narrative to continue the Democrat playbook of identity politics: lump them into identity groups [and] pit one against another," the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program in response to Clinton's comments about the Republican presidential candidates' collective stance on immigrants.
Story continues below video.
In her interview with
CNN's Brianna Keilar on Tuesday, Clinton said Republicans are in general agreement on immigration, even when they do condemn Trump's words.
"They range across a spectrum of being grudgingly welcoming or hostile to immigrants," Clinton said, pointing out that she supports comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.
Fiorina, though, does believe that sanctuary cities, where arrested immigrants are not detained for federal authorities unless a warrant is presented, are a "travesty of our justice system."
The practice has come under fire after last week's death of San Francisco resident Kate Steinle, 32, who was shot while walking on a San Francisco pier and popular tourist spot with her father. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant and repeat felon, has been arrested in Steinle's death.
Sanchez had been deported to Mexico five times, and said he returned to San Francisco because of its status as a sanctuary city.
He had been convicted of several felonies, but San Francisco authorities released him after dropping drug charges against him, even though federal officials had asked to be informed of his release. Local officials released Sanchez while following a 1989 law, the
City and County Refuge ordinance, that prohibits them from helping in federal immigration enforcement efforts unless a court order or state law compels them to do so.
"The truth is this, sanctuary cities existed under a Republican administration as well," said Fiorina. "We need our federal immigration laws enforced in every single city, including San Francisco. It's shameful that sanctuary cities exist."
But the United States is "obviously welcoming to immigrants, legal immigrants," said Fiorina, as the country was built on immigration.
Fiorina also said she was amazed at Clinton's comments about the ongoing controversy over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
On Tuesday, Clinton insisted everything she did with her emails was "permitted," including the wiping of the server's contents after turning over the emails her staff deemed related to government business.
"I didn't have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me," she said. "Because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system. And now I think it's kind of fun, people get a real-time, behind-the-scenes look at what I was emailing about, and what I was communicating about."
"She truly does not see a conflict of interests," said Fiorina. "I think that's clear. She truly doesn't see this is an issue. She doesn't see it's an issue (that) you have a private server in your basement you've wiped clean."
Clinton also "doesn't see conflict in the cozy relationship between the Clinton Global Initiative, the State Department, and foreign governments that had business in front of the State Department. She doesn't see it. This is vintage Clinton, 'trust us, we know best. There's nothing to see here. Every question raised is part of the right-wing conspiracy.'"
Her attitude points out that the media won't be asking questions about Clinton's State Department tenure, or "why she thought a red reset button would stop Vladimir Putin, why Benghazi was lied about for a long time, or what's going on in Libya," said Fiorina. "We need someone to ask questions and demand answers on the general debate stage."