Hillary kowtows to Hollywood filmmaker, backs out of conference

Melting snowflake alert. A Hollywood filmmaker you’ve never heard of is collapsing in a puddle because former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen is scheduled to participate in a women’s conference next week. Her demand that others follow her lead and drop out has been met by, you guessed it, Hillary Clinton.

An annual conference for the past 22 years, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit will be held in Washington, D.C. next week. Filmmaker dream hampton (lowercase letters) has dropped out of the summit and is demanding that others do the same. Why? Kirstjen Nielsen is slated to participate. Apparently ms. hampton is too delicate to be anywhere near Nielsen.

Not to be left out of a gesture made by a social justice warrior, Hillary Clinton has joined in the attempt to get Kirstjen Nielsen’s invitation rescinded. She, too, has canceled her appearance. Just hours after it was reported that hampton was raising a ruckus, Hillary Clinton suddenly remembered a conflict in her schedule that will prevent her participation. All it took was for an activist to alert Hillary’s people that Nielsen would be there and just like that, Friday Hillary was out.

So, you might ask, what exactly is the problem here? The executive producer of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly”, dream hampton, was scheduled to participate on a panel about justice and power. She can’t possibly be in the same building with Kirstjen Nielsen, you see, because Nielsen put kids in cages, or something. Nevermind that Nielsen is scheduled for thirty minutes after hampton’s panel and the two don’t have to interact at all. This temper tantrum is all about cancel culture. The left is so intolerant that people with opposing views must not be tolerated, they must be destroyed.

It doesn’t sound as though Nielsen will be given an easy go of it at the conference. Her appearance is billed as a “no-holds-barred interview” and promises “tough questions.” That’s not good enough, apparently. Nielsen doesn’t deserve a platform. The filmmaker calls it “reputation rinsing” and she’s not having it.

Hampton provided HuffPost with a statement on her decision:

Fortune should not be giving Kirstjen Nielsen a platform to rehabilitate her image. I’ve worked all my life to tell the stories of women, girls and families. Sharing a stage with Nielsen, who separated immigrant families and put babies in cages, would have put a stamp of approval on her immoral and reprehensible actions and help legitimize the terror that Trump is inflicting on immigrants and communities of color. So I’m cancelling my attendance and encourage other speakers to do the same. I’m thankful for the organizing CREDO Action, Define American and Bend the Arc have done to hold Trump collaborators like Nielsen accountable for their atrocities.

Reputation rinsing ― using visible, celebratory platforms to restore and normalize monstrous abuse ― was actually common practice for predators like R Kelly and Jeffrey Epstein. When every infant, toddler, child and teenager Nielsen is responsible for ripping from their families is released and reunited, when attempts at restitution are made, then perhaps she can face one of them for a public “interview.” Perhaps they’ll begin by asking her a softball, like “Does she now know Norway is a white country?”

dream hampton is encouraging other speakers at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit to pull out as long as Nielsen is given a platform. Fortune spox said they plan to have Nielsen face a “no-holds-barred interview” and “tough questions.”

— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) October 18, 2019

Again, despite hampton’s statement that she can’t share a stage with Kirstjen Nielsen, she wasn’t ever going to. It’s all just an excuse to start a stink. It’s what the left does these days. Imagine being so arrogant that she feels entitled to demand someone else not be invited to participate in a conference, simply over political policy. How is this filmmaker an example of a powerful woman if she can’t even be in the same building as a former Secretary of Homeland Security? She sounds weak, insecure, and out of touch. You know, like the rest of Hollywood.

Hillary Clinton has been broken by President Trump. She will say anything if she thinks it advances her fight against him, no matter how unhinged she sounds doing it. Apparently she is so weak that she, too, cannot handle being in the same building as Nielsen. Good thing Clinton isn’t still tasked with standing up to brutal dictators overseas on behalf of the United States.

Hillary Clinton was set to speak at the summit, too. On Friday, however, she removed herself from the event, citing a scheduling conflict.

But a person close to Clinton’s decision-making process told Slate that she had decided to drop out after hearing that Nielsen was also on the docket. “We work with a lot of activists who are trying to do their best to improve this horrible situation down at the border,” the person said, citing Clinton’s support of RAICES and other organizations that advocate for asylees and immigrants. “At the end of the day, it’s an easy decision. You have to side with them.”

The person said one of those activists alerted Clinton to Nielsen’s slot on the schedule earlier this week, after which Clinton’s team notified Fortune that she would no longer be attending the event. Friday evening, Clinton’s name and headshot were removed from the summit’s website.

“While there’s an argument to be made to hear all voices, there are those who fall outside of what should be the band of acceptable behavior and public policymaking,” the person said, describing the actions of Nielsen’s Department of Homeland Security as “one of the most horrific things that we’ve had to bear witness to within our borders in modern political history.”

Let all that nonsense sink in. Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady and Secretary of State, sides with the illegal aliens at our southern border instead of the Department of Homeland Security. I’m old enough to remember when Hillary Clinton voted in support of border security and establishing the department she now turns her back on.

Naturally, there is a petition to get Nielsen kicked out of the summit. So far, Fortune is standing firm.

More than 51,000 people have signed a petition asking Fortune to remove Nielsen from the agenda. “Fortune strongly believes that interviewing Nielsen—and other key figures from the private and public sector, however controversial—is important journalism and provides us an opportunity to ask substantive questions in front of our viewers and readers,” Fortune communications manager Alison Klooster said in a statement.

When asked why Fortune placed Nielsen’s interview under the umbrella of Most Powerful Women—a brand associated with cheering on female leaders and advocating for gender parity in business and government—rather than interviewing her for a regular news story, Klooster explained that the summit will allow Fortune to “reach a much greater audience for this crucial topic than we might have with a straight news piece.” The three-day summit is only open to Most Powerful Women members, who pay $13,500 each year for the ability to attend five events, but Nielsen’s interview will be livestreamed and made available to broadcast news outlets.

There are still about 100 speakers slated to appear at the summit. Most of the speakers are business executives, plus a handful of journalists, scholars, and elected officials. The title of Nielsen’s panel has been modified and her co-panelist has dropped out. Let’s hope no more adjustments are made. By simply accepting the invitation to be grilled in front of a potentially hostile audience makes Kirstjen Nielsen far more powerful than Hillary Clinton or her comrade, the lesser-known Hollywood filmmaker.