So the Democratic nominee went before the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists on Friday and it was a pretty weird scene. First of all, for reasons known only to her, HRC delivered what is pretty much her stump speech. Second, elements of the stump speech were widely applauded by her audience, which seems strange for a group of journalists and is behavior that would get you tossed from any press box in the major leagues.

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And, last, she sat for questions, which is the closest she's come to an actual press conference in over 200 days, something that's been the topic of insufferable whining from our elite political press. Said whining was represented ably by Ed O'Keefe of The Washington Post, who prefaced his question by being fairly snotty.

"We encourage you to do this more often with reporters across the country, especially those news organizations that travel the country with you wherever you go."

Tough guy.

Saul Loeb Getty Images

Candidates are under no affirmative obligation to hold press conferences. We are all free to draw our own conclusions as to why a candidate won't hold them and to base our votes on what we conclude from the fact. It is generally preferable to have a candidate hold press conferences, but I'm hard-pressed to see a great public demand for them unless there's a major national story breaking at the same time. And, as hard as it may be for some people to believe, HRC's e-mails is not a major national story.

Nonetheless, here is a big portion of her answer when asked about it on Friday:

"I appreciate your asking that because I was pointing out in both of those instances that Director Comey had said that my answers in my FBI interview were truthful. That's really the bottom line here, and I have said during the interview and in many other occasions over the past months that what I told the FBI, which he said was truthful, is consistent with what I have said publicly. So I may have short-circuited, and that I will try to clarify, because I think [Fox News Sunday host] Chris Wallace and I were probably talking past each other, because of course he could only talk to what I had told the FBI, and I appreciated that. Now I have acknowledged repeatedly that using two email accounts was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that, but I do think having him say that my answers to the FBI were truthful and then I should quickly add what I said was consistent with what I had said publicly, and sort of in my view, trying to tie both ends together.

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"Director Comey said only three of the 30,000 emails had anything resembling classified markers—usually a classified document has a big heading on the top, which makes it very clear what the classification is. In questioning, Director Comey made it clear the three emails out of the 30,000 did not have the appropriate markings, and it was therefore reasonable that anyone, including myself, would not have suspected they were classified…So, that leaves the 100 out of 30,000 emails that Director Comey testified contained classified information, but again, he acknowledged there were no markings on those 100 emails. And so, what we have here is pretty much what I have been saying throughout this whole year and that is that I never sent or received anything that was marked classified."

That is not within an area code of satisfactory.

Hell, it's barely in the neighborhood of English. It is legalistic gobbledegook. You can turn an ankle trying to get from premise to conclusion in that tangled thicket of weaselspeak. It ought not to matter at this point, and it never has mattered all that much to me, but, Lord above, if HRC and her people ever wonder why her trust numbers are so abysmal, they ought to read back her answer to that question.

That's the way you talk when the mule you sold somebody died on the way home.

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