Hillary Clinton has been gradually dipping her toe back into politics since announcing that she was “ready to come out of the woods” a couple weeks ago. At an event at Georgetown University on Friday, she criticized the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to foreign aid and diplomacy and urged the U.S. government to continue to make women’s rights a priority in foreign policy.
“This administration’s proposed cuts to international health, development and diplomacy would be a blow to women and children and a grave mistake for our country,” she said. Noting Defense Secretary James Mattis’ past remark that cuts to the State Department would result in him having to “buy more ammunition,” Clinton said, “Turning our back on diplomacy won’t make our country safer, it will undermine our security and our standing in the world.”
She also said that gender issues and women’s rights should be “not just a nice thing to do on the margins somewhere deep in the bowels of the State Department but front and center.” The Trump administration’s actions and statements so far have indicated this will not be a priority.
Clinton’s remarks were part of a ceremony for the Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards, which Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace, and Security presented to four Colombians, including three women involved in negotiating the recent peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels.
Referring to studies showing that the participation of women strengthens peace-building efforts, Clinton said, “Here I go again, talking about research, evidence, and facts” to applause from the very friendly crowd. The former secretary of state, who acquired a reputation as something of a hawk and an interventionist within Barack Obama’s Cabinet, also noted, “Women are not inherently more peaceful than men. That’s a stereotype. That belongs in the alternative reality.”
