Hillary Clinton Blames 'Weaponizing Technology' Used By Russians For 2016 Election Loss

While speaking at Recode's Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on Wednesday, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton explained why she lost the 2016 presidential election. The former secretary of state blamed a lot of people and things, including the Russians, her own party's committee, Facebook and fake news.

Her interview, which went on for over an hour, was conducted by Recode technology journalist and co-founder Kara Swisher, and Walt Mossberg, who was a principal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal from 1991 till 2013. The event was the latest in the series of public appearances for the former presidential candidate, in which she was quick to cast blame on the actions of those around her and other external circumstances that led to her defeat on the Election Day.

“I take responsibility for every decision I make, but that's not why I lost,” Clinton said. “Anti-American forces are going after our economy and they are going after our unity as a nation.”

During the interview, Clinton blamed Russia for her November loss to President Donald Trump and accused the White House of aiding and cooperating with Moscow in “weaponizing technology” to sabotage her election campaign.

“What we saw was, in the election particularly, the first time that you had the tech revolution really weaponized politically — before it was a way to reach voters, you know, collect fundraising, do things that would help the candidate who was behind the messaging — that changed this time, and it changed for a number of reasons we should talk about,” Clinton said.

“It was aimed at me but it's a much deeper, more persistent effort to literally turn the clock back on so much of what we have achieved as a country,” she added.

Clinton clearly linked Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election to the Trump campaign and said she hoped that the FBI would be able to investigate and unmask the plot that was constructed to meddle with the elections. When asked about who was to blame for aiding Moscow, Clinton did not hold back and said she thought the president was responsible for directing the Russians.

“I’m leaning Trump,” she said. Clinton also described how the Russians misinformed the public through social media and led a campaign against her on networks like Facebook. The former secretary of state said she was a victim of an unprecedented campaign of fake news and social engineering on Facebook, which was orchestrated by Russian agents and an army of bots.

About content on Facebook, Clinton said the “vast majority” of news items that were posted or appeared on the social networking site about her during the elections were fake. This orchestrated campaign was “connected, as we now know, to a thousand Russian agents [and] connected to the bots, which are just out of control,” she said.

Read: Hillary Clinton Lists Reasons For Loss To President Donald Trump

Clinton mentioned that her campaign tried to bring to notice Russia’s interference in the elections, but her claims were largely ignored at the time.

“Putin wants to bring us down,” Clinton said. “It's way beyond me... I believe that what was happening to me was unprecedented. Over the summer we went and told anyone we could find that the Russians were messing with the election and we were basically shooed away. .... We couldn't get the press to cover it.”

Clinton also criticized the Democratic National Convention (DNC) during the interview Wednesday and said when she became her party’s presidential nominee, she inherited “nothing” from the committee.

“I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,” Clinton said. “It was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, and its data was mediocre to poor, non-existent, wrong. I had to inject money into it — the DNC — to keep it going.”

She also asked Democrats to create more content of their own in response to the current administration’s actions. “We [the Democratic Party] are not good historically at building institutions and we’ve got to get a lot better, and that includes content. We have a great story to tell. I found when I started the campaign that I had to say in practically every one of my speeches, ‘Barack Obama saved the economy and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves.’ I had to say that because people had been told differently.”

In a Twitter post Wednesday night, the president responded to Clinton’s comments regarding her loss in the 2016 elections.