Chelsea Clinton indicated at the Edinburgh Book Festival Monday that she had not ruled out running for office but it wasn’t something she would do now.
“At the federal level, as much as I abhor so much of what President Trump is doing, I have a great amount of gratitude for what my congresswoman and my senators are doing to try to stop him at every point,” she said.
“While I disagree with the president … I think my family ... is being really well represented,” she emphasized “But if that were to change, if my city councilor were to retire, if my congresswoman were to retire, my senators, and I thought that I could make a positive impact, then I think I would really have to ask my answer to that question [of whether to run for office].”
“For me it’s a definite no now,” she concluded, “but it’s a definite maybe in the future because who knows what the future is going to bring?”
Clinton said that one of the things that most angered her about the Trump administration’s policies was the separating of families at the border.
“In some ways I think this is the greatest sin of the moment in our country and we very much are doing everything we can to stop this from happening,” she said.
Despite her strong feelings about the separation of children at the border, the former first daughter faced criticism last week for some comments about unborn children. Clinton credited the legalization of abortion for adding trillions to the economy.
“It is not a disconnected fact—to address this t-shirt of 1973—that American women entering the labor force from 1973 to 2009 added three and a half trillion dollars to our economy,” she said. “Right? The net, new entrance of women—that is not disconnected from the fact that Roe became the law of the land in January of 1973."
Clinton later took to Twitter to defend her remarks, citing a study linking a lack of abortion access and family poverty.
Hi KrisiAnn- That’s not what I said as you can see in the video. Reproductive rights have always been economic rights. A recent study (https://t.co/IavJXRyHqo) found denying women-often already mothers-a wanted abortion results in years of less employment & more family poverty. https://t.co/MGQ4Rdf812
— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) August 14, 2018
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