The former US first lady revealed on late-night TV she and then-president Bill nearly left their daughter in Moscow
© Getty Images / Todd Owyoung
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nearly left her daughter Chelsea at the Kremlin when the first family was on a state visit to Moscow during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the former first lady revealed on the Tonight Show on Tuesday.
Clinton told the story in response to a prompt from host Jimmy Fallon for any “crazy vacation stories.” Acknowledging the experience was “pretty traumatic,” she claimed she and her husband had gotten caught up in the formalities of their visit with then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin and had already been “ushered into” their limousine to return to the airport before they realized Chelsea was not present.
She did not explain precisely how the couple had learned their daughter was missing, and neither did Chelsea, who appeared to recall the incident.
“Can you imagine leaving my only child in the Kremlin, especially with everything that has happened?” Clinton exclaimed for the audience’s benefit, presumably referring to her own insistence that Moscow was to blame for her 2016 election loss to Donald Trump and the complex conspiracy theory her political allies constructed to sell that story.
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The former head of protocol for Yeltsin, Vladimir Shevchenko, told Sputnik news agency he had all but forgotten about the incident, which had been overshadowed by “Clinton himself talking some nonsense,” and could only venture that “maybe they left her, I don’t know.” However, he was sure the Clintons had never stayed overnight in the Kremlin, “in principle.”
Shevchenko does remember the visit itself, and told the outlet that the first lady had appeared “not very balanced” at the time. Bill Clinton was largely responsible for Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection, and American media even boasted about his election-meddling on behalf of the deeply unpopular leader, whose approval ratings hovered around 6%.
Many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters still insist she was robbed of the presidency in 2016 by a sinister Russian plot, though the “collusion” allegations that dogged Trump for most of his presidency were never proven despite multiple investigations.
