Hillary Clinton has told students at the college she attended that “Chardonnay helped a little” after her defeat in the recent US presidential campaign.
Hillary Clinton is giving the commencement address at her alma mater Wellesley College.
At times coughing and clearing her throat - blaming allergies - she congratulated the students.
“You may have heard that things didn’t go exactly as I had planned, but you know what? I’m doing ok,” she said. “I’ve spent time with my family,.. taken long walks in the woods, organised my closet” she joked..
And to laughs and applause: “I won’t lie, Chardonnay helped a little too.”
“But here’s what helped most of all - remembering who I am, where I come from and what I believe.”
“You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault on truth and reason,” she told the students, saying there were people who were “drumming up fear about undocumented immigrants, the poor...at a time when we desperately need unity.”
In a clear swipe at Donald Trump’s comments on the size of the crowd at his inauguration, she said: “Some are even denying things we see with our own eyes, like the size of crowds, and then defending themselves by talking about ‘alternative facts’.
“If our leaders lie about the problems we face, we’ll never solve them,” she said. “It undermines confidence in government as a whole...It also matters because our country was founded on the principles of the enlightenment, in particular the belief that people possess the capacity for reason, and that free and open debate is the lifeblood of a democracy.
“When people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them, it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society...Authoritarian regimes attempt to control reality, our thoughts and our beliefs.”