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DNC Press Secretary Refuses to Answer Questions About Clinton's Emails, Twice

April 12, 2016

Democratic National Committee press secretary Mark Paustenbach refused two times to answer questions from CNN's Jim Sciutto over Hillary Clinton's continuing email scandal.

After playing a clip of Republican front-runner Donald Trump knocking Clinton and the Democratic Party over her emails, whether she will be prosecuted and calling Clinton a liar, Sciutto asked Paustenbach to respond to Trump's criticism.

"How concerned are you, how concerned is the party that this cloud hangs over her campaign, presuming that she's the nominee and into the general election?" Sciutto asked.

"Well, I think that the key for us is going be having the American people understand where Republicans are, on a number of different issues. And I think that, Donald Trump for example, you just saw his clip right there, you know, the Republicans, the RNC, after the 2012 election created a, an autopsy, a report that talked about very succinctly what they needed to do in order to win in 2016.

"It has to be a more inclusive party, particularly with minority voters, yeah," Sciutto said.

"Exactly, and Donald Trump has effectively buried that report. You know, they said they needed to reach out to female voters, they said they needed to reach out to latinos, and as you know, Donald Trump has angered both of those constituencies," Paustenbach said.

Sciutto called out Paustenbach for dodging the question about Clinton's emails.

"Well, nice pivot to the Republican Party's problems there, but on that issue of the email controversy, because this is something that feeds into a larger impression among voters, Democrat and Republican about trustworthiness, recent poll, the most recent poll from CNN/ORC talking about honest and trustworthy, 43 percent for Clinton, 38 percent for Donald Trump," Sciutto said. "That's not an enormous lead for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump on that key issue of trustworthiness, and the email issue feeds into that problem for, how does she get over that hurdle? Not just in the Democratic contest, but in a general election?"

"Well, I think you've seen, if you look at the Republican side, you've seen, a real, um, backlash if you will amongst voters against Donald Trump. Voters are not comfortable with his leadership, they're not comfortable with his stance on the issues and I think that contrasts very clearly with where Democrats are," Paustenbach said. "You saw in exit polls after Wisconsin, for example, after that race, or that contest, where seven in ten Democrats were optimistic about Bernie Sanders and Secretary Clinton. So, I think there's a real difference, and I think that voters, come the general election, when Trump becomes the nominee are going to have a real problem with him."