Hillary Clinton shares what she prepared for her 2016 presidential victory speech
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By Rachel Janfaza, CNN
Hillary Clinton has shared for the first time what would have been her 2016 presidential victory speech.
In a soon-to-be-released Masterclass episode on “The Power of Resilience,” the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state reads from the remarks she had prepared to give in New York on November 8, 2016, before it became clear that Donald Trump had won the election.
“I’ve never shared this with anybody. I’ve never read it out loud. But it helps to encapsulate who I am, what I believe in and what my hopes were for the kind of country that I want for my grandchildren and that I want for the world, that I believe in, is America at its best,” Clinton says in an excerpt of the Masterclass episode released Wednesday by NBC’s “Today.”
She then begins reading from her speech.
“My fellow Americans, today you’ve sent a message to the whole world,” Clinton says. “Our values endure, our democracy stands strong and our motto remains ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one. We will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an us vs. them country. The American dream is big enough for everyone.”
Clinton talks about what she describes as a “long, hard campaign” through which the country was “challenged to choose between two very different visions for America.”
“Fundamentally, this election challenged us to decide what it means to be an American in the 21st century,” she says.
Clinton — who in 2016 became the first woman to capture a major-party nomination for president — would have spoken in her victory speech about becoming the first female president of the United States.
“Today with your children on your shoulders, neighbors at your side, friends old and new standing as one, you renewed our democracy. And because of the honor you have given me, you changed its face forever,” Clinton says in the video excerpt.
“I’ve met women who were born before women had the right to vote. They’ve been waiting 100 years for tonight. I’ve met little boys and girls who didn’t understand why a woman has never been president before. Now they know, and the world knows, that in America every boy and every girl can grow up to be whatever they dream, even president of the United States,” she says.
“This is a victory for all Americans, men and women, boys and girls, because as our country has proven once again, when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”
Clinton gets emotional in the video while talking about her late mother, Dorothy Rodham, whom she spoke about often ahead of the 2016 election.
In the remarks, Clinton says that during that summer, she was asked by a writer who, across all of history, she wished to share the milestone with.
“The answer was easy: my mother, Dorothy,” she says.
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