Jill Biden didn’t answer a question about husband Joe Biden‘s impeachment as she hosted an event with Hillary Clinton at the White House but assured the former secretary of state she was very ‘loved’ by the Democrats in the room.

The first lady smiled at a reporter who inquired about Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s decision to open an impeachment inquiry against the president but didn’t stop to comment on the matter.

‘It’s an honor to welcome you back to the White House,’ Jill Biden told Hillary Clinton at the event in the East Room. And when the audience broke into whoops and cheers, the first lady to her: ‘You are so loved.’ 

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden remained in hiding on Tuesday, not appearing in public at the White House. The only event on his public schedule was his daily intelligence briefing although the public schedule doesn’t reflect all of the president’s activities for the day.

The White House called a lid shortly after 2 pm ET, meaning there would be no public activities by the president, who returned from his trip to India and Vietnam late Monday night. That was a few hours after McCarthy made his impeachment announcement. 

The last Democratic president to be impeached was Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton. Republican President Donald Trump was impeached twice. Neither president was convicted by the Senate. 

Hillary Clinton was at the White House on Tuesday for her first public appearance at the  presidential residence and workplace since her 2016 election loss to Donald Trump.

The former secretary of state did make a private appearance at the White House in 2021 for a dinner to celebrate then outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel early in Biden’s tenure. 

Biden and Clinton were honoring the 2023 Praemium Imperiale Laureates. The Praemium Imperiale is a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association for lifetime achievement in the arts. The Praemium Imperiale Laureates were first celebrated at the White House by President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton in 1994. 

It was a Clinton-friendly crowd. Spotted in the audience was Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin; former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of both Clintons;  Capricia Marshall, who was an aide in the Clinton White House; and former Rep. Jerry Moran, a close Clinton ally.

Actress Debra Messing and ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov were also at the event.

In her remarks, Jill Biden also reference the fact that Hillary Clinton will be returning to the classroom. The former secretary of state is teaching a class on global decision making at Columbia University. 

The first lady, who teaches at Northern Virginia Community College, noted Clinton was now a ‘fellow educator.’ 

‘Good luck this semester,’ she told her. 

Clinton thanked the first lady for hosting the event at the White House and paid tribute to her dual work as first lady and teacher. 

She didn’t mention her own presidential race or former president Trump. 

‘You know, Dr. Biden travels across the United States and around the world on behalf of the American people and I can say from some experience that is an exhilarating but exhausting job,’ Clinton said.

‘But throughout it all, she has remained dedicated to her first calling as an educator and mentor of young people. Now as she said, I’ve gone back to teaching recently, after 50 years, and I can attest it’s a hard enough job without being first lady,’ she said.

Earlier Tuesday, McCarthy made the shock announcement he would launch an impeachment inquiry on Biden, accusing the president of an ‘abuse of power and being involved in a ‘culture of corruption’ over son Hunter’s foreign business deals. 

‘House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct,’ McCarthy said, speaking at the Capitol. ‘Taken together these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.’

‘These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption. And they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,’ he noted.

‘This logical next step will give our committees, the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. That’s exactly what we want to know the answers.’

Republicans have charged Biden and his family made millions off shell companies Hunter Biden formed when his father was vice president. Hunter had business deals with an energy company in the Ukraine, received a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China, and did consulting for a Romanian real-estate magnate.

The president has denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings. But Republicans claim at least a dozen Biden family members could be involved in a scheme to benefit financially from Biden’s public office. 

House investigators are expected to issue subpoenas for the bank records of the president and his family. The GOP also claim Biden sat in on at least 24 calls with Hunter’s business partners and was referred to as ‘the big guy’ by Hunter’s business associates. And they say Joe Biden used pseudonyms to discuss his activities related to Ukraine with his son Hunter during his time as vice president.

An inquiry is the first step in the impeachment process. It is when evidence is gathered for the articles, or charges, of impeachment against an official.

It is a massive step with many pitfalls, including infuriating Republican moderates and many GOP senators, who are skeptical of the issue and causing friction with the White House as budget negotiations are underway. Congress faces a September 30th deadline to fund the government or it will shutdown.

McCarthy, however, is under intense pressure from the conservative wing of his party to make such a move, including threats from some of his own GOP lawmakers to remove him from the speakership.

The White House has repeatedly denied Biden has conducted any wrongdoing. The president himself has said he was not involved with any of Hunter’s business deals. 

The White House called McCarthy’s move ‘extreme politics.’

‘House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. His own Republican members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support. This is extreme politics at its worst,’ White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams said in a statement. 

A former top advisor to Bill Clinton says there’s a ‘good chance’ Hillary Clinton will run against Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election if the current administration loses Congress in the midterms.

Dick Morris claimed Sunday morning a Clinton-Trump rematch is likely if the Democrats don’t pull the successful results in November’s election, alleging the failure would cause the party to turn on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

‘There’s a good chance of it,’ Morris told WABC radio host John Catsimatidis before applauding the former presidential nominee’s campaign strategy, which could see her face-off against Donald Trump again after Trump beat her to the White House in 2016. 

‘Hillary has set up a brilliant, brilliant strategy that nobody else is able to do.’

He continued: ‘What she’s done — at a point at which no Democrat is willing to come out and criticize Joe Biden, but all Democrats are disappointed with him and have to realize the ultimate correctness of our accusations that he was incompetent to be president — she has set up a zero-sum gain with him. 

‘The worse he does, the better she does because she’s positioned herself as the Democratic alternative to Biden.’

Morris also claimed Clinton, 74, has portrayed herself as the opposition to the extreme left and cautioned her own party to be cognizant of the candidates they’re running in what she refers to as ‘purple districts’. 

That appears to be an attack on ‘woke’ progressive policies that have been blamed for turning many centrist Dems away from the party. 

The former political advisor alleged ‘there is only one person capable of that level of thinking — and that’s her husband, Bill.’

Although Clinton has not yet said if she intends to enter the bid for president in 2024, she has publicly taken aim at the current administration’s efforts, saying they ‘mean nothing if we don’t have a Congress that will get things done and we don’t have a White House that we can count on to be sane and sober and stable and productive’.

Morris alleged Clinton is well positioned to be the Democratic party’s change candidate who can reference Biden’s failures, noting that a ‘left-wing took over the party and led us into disaster in the 2022 midterms’.

‘The person who staked out the turf first and owns the turf in the Democratic Party is going to be Hillary. It’s a brilliant, brilliant strategy​,’ he explained. 

His comments come just weeks after Clinton warned the Democratic Party it needs to be ‘clear eyed’ about what wins elections – a tacit warning that its progressive wing risks handing midterm victories to the Republican Party. 

She told NBC‘s Willie Geist last month that Democrats needed candidates who could win in purple states if it was to have a Congress that will ‘get things done.’

Her comments reflect divisions in both parties, as centrists grapple with fringes that offer ideological purity and headline generating Twitter accounts. 

For Democrats, that means the so-called Squad of progressives – including the likes of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.   

‘I think that it is a time for some careful thinking about what wins elections, and not just in deep blue districts where a democrat and a liberal Democrat or so-called progressive Democrat is going to win,’ said Clinton.  

‘We’ve got to be very clear eyed about what it’s going to take to hold the House and the Senate in 2022. And to win the electoral college because also Republicans are doing everything they can to create an environment in which winning the Electoral College, even narrowly the way Joe Biden did will be out of reach for Democrats,’ she argued in December, just weeks after the party’s defeat in Virginia’s gubernatorial election.

She added that she understood why politicians would want to argue for their own priorities. 

‘But at the end of the day, nothing is going to get done if you don’t have a Democratic majority in the House, in the Senate, and our majority comes from people who win in much more difficult districts and our majority in the Senate comes from people who can win in not just blue states and hold those wins … but can win in more purpleish states,’ she said. 

‘So this is going to be a very intense period, not just for the Democratic Party, but for the country.’ 

Morris, referencing her commentary, said Sunday: ‘She was absolutely right and nobody else has the guts to say that.’

He alleged other Democrats had to keep their alliance with the extreme left because ‘that’s their potential base’.

‘Hillary can say “go to hell, I don’t care about you guys. I’m going to be the anti-Chirst, I’m going to run against you.” Therefore, she’s the only one between now and the end of the midterm elections who’s prepared to say what the truth is,’ Morris said.

He added: ‘She staked out a ground, not on ideological issues, but on pragmatism.’ 

Morris’ statements echo those made last week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed making a case for a Clinton 2024 run.

The authors cited Biden and Harris’ poor poll numbers, alleging they could open doors for the former Secretary of State.

‘She is already in an advantageous position to become the 2024 Democratic nominee,’ Democratic political consultant Doug Schoen and former New York City Council president Andrew Stein wrote. 

‘She is an experienced national figure who is younger than Mr. Biden and can offer a different approach from the disorganized and unpopular one the party is currently taking.’ 

However, others argue Clinton isn’t ‘forward-thinking’ enough to secure a bid for the 2024 race.

‘Democrats have a rich history of bringing old-school politicians out of the stables for a comeback and having them get slaughtered,’ Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, told The Hill Sunday.

‘Not just Hillary Clinton in 2016 but Senate candidates like Ted Strickland in Ohio, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Phil Bredesen in Tennessee and Walter Mondale in Minnesota.’

‘We need forward-looking leaders who stand for a new vision and not the politics of yesteryear that everybody hates,’ he added. 

Although Clinton has not formally stated if she plans to run for president in 2024, a source close to the former First Lady and her husband claims the couple wants to return to prominence in the Democratic Party.

‘It’s a perpetual itch that will never go away,’ the insider told Politico. ‘They know how to slowly reenter. The Clintons want to reset the board in their favor and then move the pieces.

Trump also hasn’t announced if he plans to run 2024, but he has publicly said he’s thinking about it.’

‘I think a lot of people will be very happy, frankly, with the decision, and probably will announce that after the midterms,’ he said in an interview in November.

Recent polls have shown he is favored above other potential Republican candidates.

In a Reuters survey published last month, 54 percent of Republicans said they would pick Trump as their top choice. Eleven percent indicated they favored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton laughed and said ‘no’ when asked Tuesday if she would consider running for the White House again. 

‘No, no,’ Clinton said on Morning Joe between chuckles. ‘But I am certainly going to be active in supporting women running for office and other candidates who I think should be reelected or elected, both women and men.’

The former secretary of State also tore into Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he was ‘acting out his own insecurities’ on the people of Ukraine. 

‘It’s so heartbreaking to me that Putin is acting out his own insecurities, his own resentments and grievances against the people of Ukraine,’ Clinton told Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski.  

‘Waging a war against a smaller state that is totally unprovoked as we have seen, really tells us everything we need to know about Putin,’ she continued. 

Brzezinski asked Clinton how she thought Putin’s invasion of Ukraine would end.  

‘I don’t know how it ends, but I think that probably the person who was most surprised that it is still going on is Vladimir Putin,’ she said. 

‘The level of defense and determination that the Ukrainian people are showing, starting with their president, President Zelensky, going all the way down to, you know, grandmothers and young women taking up arms for the first time to defend their families and their communities – is tragic but inspiring,’ Clinton continued. 

‘And I hope that the world will stay with Ukraine while they try to protect their homeland, and all that they hold dear, including freedom and democracy,’ the former secretary of State added. 

She also pointed out that even though the war is happening ‘far away.’ 

‘It is a war taht will affect what kind of world we’re going to live in,’ Clinton pointed out. ‘And that’s why I hope everybody understands why we should be supporting the Ukrainian people going forward.’  

As Tuesday marked International Women’s Day, Brzezinski asked Clinton what was motivating the women of Ukraine to be so resilient. 

‘I think first of all, it is shock,’ Clinton answered.

‘You know, two weeks ago, these people, especially these women, they were taking care of their babies, they were planning their weddings, they were going to work, they were continuting their education,’ she said. ‘And because a leader of a much larger country on their border decided that he wanted to stamp out their way of life, they are now fleeing for safety or standing up against that military force.’   

She suggested that because the Ukrainians were fighting ‘not for an ideology, not for a dictator,’ but for their way of life, they’ve been able to hold Putin’s forces off. 

‘And you can at least as of now, you know, stop this evil force from just wiping you out and ending the way that you had thought about what life would be for you and future generations,’ she said. 

Clinton called it resilience ‘born out of danger and pain.’ 

The Clintons have been wading back into politics as the November midterm elections approach, but as she said Tuesday morning, is not expected to run for the White House a third time.  

Conservatives, however, don’t seem to be able to believe Clinton’s political ambitions are done.  

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando late last month, attendees who participated in the event’s annual straw poll said that Clinton was the most likely Democratic nominee in 2024, despite Democratic President Joe Biden being in office.

Of those polled, 22.1 per cent said Clinton would be the Democrats’ 2024 nominee, while 16.8 per cent said it would be former First Lady Michelle Obama  – who’s never expressed a desire to pursue elected office. 

In third place, came Biden with 13.6 per cent of the vote.  

Hillary Clinton warned that Democrats‘ insistence on focusing on transgender issues and spending their time condemning JK Rowling could cost them the 2024 election – and cost America democracy itself.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate agreed with reporter Edward Luce that Democrats are sabotaging themselves by focusing on the wrong issues.   

‘Democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by elevating activist causes, notably the transgender debate, which are relevant only to a small minority,’ Luce said, ‘What sense does it make to depict JK Rowling as a fascist?’ 

The former first lady and 2016 presidential candidate didn’t dispute Luce’s assertion, and answered: ‘We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.

‘Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.’ 

Hillary’s comments came just days after President Biden signed an executive order to make ‘gender-affirming care’ that can involve hormone therapy and surgery while accusing Republican lawmakers of ‘bullying’ LGBTQ+ children. 

JK Rowling has become a lightning rod for supporters of the most hardline pro-trans policies after saying that some spaces such as domestic abuse shelters should remain open to non-trans women only, for safety reasons. 

Clinton spoke as the the Democrats’ progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez persisted with gender-neutral terms for women including ‘people who menstruate’ and ‘pregnant people.’

The terms are designed to include people who are transgender and non-binary. But many women – including those on the left – say they feel the modern terminology erases them, after centuries of battling for equal rights. 

Some gay and lesbian people have also urged caution against treatment for children who say they’re transgender, after some research showed that many youngsters who expressed such feelings grew up to become gay men or women who were contented in their bodies.  

‘Look, I’m all about having vigorous debate. I think it’s good, and it gives people a chance to be part of the process,’ Clinton told MSNBC in December while voicing fears over Democrats’ 2022 midterm prospects, ‘But, at the end of the day it means nothing if we don’t have a Congress that will get things done, and we don’t have a White House that we can count on to be sane and sober and stable and productive.’

Clinton’s comments in the Financial Times were published just days two days before the debate about transgender women competing in women’s sports – circling around UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas – came to a head.

On Sunday, the international federation sports federation for swimming changed its policies to stipulate that transgender women can only compete in the organization’s women’s races if they have completed their transition by the age of 12.

Clinton also spoke about the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, and the implications of what could follow.   

‘If you go down the rabbit hole of far right intellectuals, you see that birth control, gay marriage — all of it is at risk,’ she said.

Then referencing the The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood, she discussed what the Christian ‘endgame’ is and referenced how the future could mimic the novel and hit Hulu show.

‘The level of insidious rulemaking to further oppress women almost knows no end,’ Clinton says. ‘You look at this and how could you not but think that Margaret Atwood was a prophet? She’s not just a brilliant writer, she was a prophet.’

Less than 48 hours before her Hillary’s interview was published, former president Bill Clinton shared similar grim sentiments in an interview with James Corden on CBS’s The Late Late Show on Wednesday night.    

Corden asked Bill how he stays ‘so positive in what has been a very, very dark few years’, without mentioning Donald Trump by name. 

The Democrat admitted it was ‘impossible to be pessimistic about the future’ while he was watching his grandchildren growing up, but went on to paint a bleak picture of America’s future – just hours after the third hearing from the January 6 committee hearing.

‘I actually think there’s a fair chance that we could completely lose our constitutional democracy for a couple of decades if we keep making — if we make bad decisions, Clinton added.  

‘I’m not naive about this. I’ve been in a lot of fights. I’ve lost some, won a bunch. I’ve been elated and heartbroken,’ he continued.

‘But I’ve never before been as worried about the structure of our democratic form of government,’ he added.

The Clintons’ interviews followed the Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on Wednesday showing that 55% of Democrats and 53% of Republicans share that belief in a stunning sign of pessimism about the country’s future. 

Additionally the poll found that a majority of Republicans – 52% – say it’s likely that ‘there will be a civil war in the United States in [their] lifetime’ while half of independents – 50% – and a plurality of Democrats – 46% – agree. 

The poll, which surveyed 1,541 adults and was conduced from June 10 (the day of the first January 6th hearing) until June 13 (the day of the second hearing), also found Americans have largely given up on one another.  

Members of both parties picked negative phrases to describe the person across the political aisle.

Republicans, when asked to choose the phrase that best ‘describes most people on the other side of the political aisle from you,’ a majority used ‘out of touch with reality’ (30%), a ‘threat to America’ (25%), ‘immoral’ (8%) and a ‘threat to me personally’ (4%) to describe Democrats. 

Very few opted for ‘well-meaning’ (4%) or ‘not that different from me’ (6%). 

Democrats felt the same about Republicans, using phrases such ‘out of touch with reality’ (27%), a ‘threat to America’ (23%), ‘immoral’ (7%) and a ‘threat to me personally’ (4%) to describe them. 

Very few used words like ‘well-meaning’ (7%) or ‘not that different from me’ (5%). 

Hillary Clinton’s criticism of ‘open border’ under Biden is a sign she WILL run for president again in 2024, says former adviser to Bill who now works for Trump

• Dick Morris was an adviser to Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas governor and later as president in 1992, but now advises Donald Trump
• He said both Bill and Hillary’s recent comments about migrants are a sign that she’s gearing up to run as Democrats’ ‘moderate’ option in 2024
• Morris predicted Clinton would announce a third White House bid if Democrats faced huge midterm losses in the Senate and House of Representatives 

By Elizabeth Elkind, Politics Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 10:54 EDT, 2 October 2022 | Updated: 14:08 EDT, 2 October 2022

Hillary Clinton said ‘extremist’ Republicans have a plan underway to steal the 2024 presidential election in video urging Americans to vote for Democratic legislatures in their states.

The two-minute clip urged Americans to look past the 2022 midterms and turn out to vote in their local election, because she claims the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court might give state legislatures the power to overturn results.

‘Right-wing extremists already have a plan to literally steal the next presidential election – and they’re not making a secret of it,’ Clinton alleged.

The failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate did not provide any proof of these plans or examples of Republicans conspiring to ‘steal’ the 2024 election. 

The video was put out on Twitter by the progressive group Indivisible Guide, which is running an initiative aimed at promoting progressive candidates in local state races on a website called Crush the Coup.

While the group says Democrats winning the midterms is ‘critical’, it also says they need to be focused on the larger issues of ‘fighting MAGA Republicans at the state level.’

Crush the Coup’s website homepage reads in huge capital lettering: ‘MAGA has a plan to steal the election in 2024. We have to stop them, today.’

It further claims that Democrats need to focus on winning 29 local seats in six swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Clinton scoffed when claiming the prospect of Republicans trying to challenge the results of the next presidential election is ‘keeping me up at night’ and said that allowing GOP legislatures to control states is a ‘threat to Democracy.’

‘The right-wing controlled Supreme Court may be poised to rule on giving state legislatures – yes you heard me correctly – state legislatures the power to overturn presidential elections,’ the former Secretary of State said.

On January 6, 2021, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate objected to the results of the 2020 presidential election, while the vast majority of Congress voted to codify the outcome as a victory for President Joe Biden.

Six Republicans in the Senate and 121 in the House backed objections to certify Arizona’s electoral outcome while 128 in the House and seven in the Senate objected to Pennsylvania’s outcome.

Any Republicans who still question the outcome of the 2020 presidential election have been dubbed ‘election deniers’, even though Democrats have asked questions – and continue to question – the outcome of some previous elections.

Now, Clinton is questioning results a full two years before an election was even held, despite her claims that Republicans pushing election fraud claims are helping push the Kremlin’s agenda. 

Clinton said in June 2021 elected officials suggesting the 2020 election was stolen or conducted unfairly are aiding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine American democracy.

‘We never thought we had to worry about domestic enemies. We never thought we had to worry about people who didn’t believe in our democracy,’ Clinton said during an MSNBC interview at the time.

‘And sadly, what we’ve seen over the last four years and particularly since the election is that we have people in our own country who are doing Putin’s work,’ she continued. ‘They are doing his work to sow distrust, to sow divisiveness.’

Indivisible Guide is a progressive group that formed in response to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, but calls the former president a ‘symptom of a sick democracy, not its cause.’

In Clinton’s video, she said that Republicans are on a mission to make sure that neither the popular vote or the Electoral College results do not determine the outcome of the election. She also slammed the Electoral College as outdated. 

Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 prudential election by nearly 3 million votes – but Trump emerged the victor by winning the Electoral College count by 74 votes. 

In 2008, Clinton lost the Democratic presidential primary election to eventual winner Barack Obama. She won the nomination in 2016, becoming the first woman to run for president under a major party. She lost to Trump. 

‘The 2024 presidential election could be decided not by the popular vote or even the anachronistic Electoral College but by state legislatures, many of them Republican-controlled,’ Clinton said.

She then promoted Indivisible Guide’s Crush the Coup campaign.

The group details that the U.S. faces two fundamental problems, that U.S. democracy is ‘rigged’ in favor of the white and wealthy and that ‘an alliance of white nationalists and the ultra-rich’ has emerged in the last decade to try and cling to power.

‘That’s how we ended up with Trump,’ they claim.

Bill Clinton has revealed that he knew as early as 2011 that it was ‘only a matter of time’ until Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine, after the warmonger made a chilling warning to the former US president.

During a tense discussion between the leaders in Davos, Switzerland, three years before Russia invaded Crimea, Putin made it apparent that he did not agree with a deal to respect Ukraine’s borders.

The US-brokered agreement between Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and Kyiv, stated that Ukrainian territory would not be infringed upon in exchange for Kyiv relinquishing its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal.

‘Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 — three years before he took Crimea — that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,’ the FT quoted the former US president as saying at a New York event.

‘He said… ‘I don’t agree with it. And I do not support it. And I am not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day forward it was just a matter of time.’

The revelation was made during a joint appearance at an investment firm talk with his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which the couple used to urge for greater support of Ukraine.

Former Presidential candidate Mrs Clinton also took a swipe at Putin, who she has previously blamed for helping to undermine her election bid against former president Donald Trump.

She said Putin ‘is in what he views as a righteous struggle to undermine western democracy and reinstitute, as much as he can, the Russian empire. So he’s not going to stop.’

The Democrat politicians also reiterated the importance of Western support to Ukraine, saying that continuing to supply arms could help the country win the war.

A united Western response, they said, would also work to deter China from its ambitions in Taiwan in the short term – with Mrs Clinton saying that Xi Jinping had paid attention to the stand taken by the US, UK and others.

She added that she ‘wouldn’t trust’ Putin at a negotiating table ‘under any circumstances’, saying the only way the war could end would be if Ukraine secured ‘leverage’ – either a military defeat or regaining its lost territory.

The Clintons’ stark warnings come after Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, escalated tensions by claiming that the US was behind a drone strike which Russia said was launched by Kyiv to assassinate Putin.

The Kremlin mouthpiece insisted – without providing evidence – that the US was ‘undoubtedly’ behind the strike that he said was carried out by Ukraine.

The White House has roundly dismissed the claims as ‘lies’.

‘Decisions on such attacks are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington,’ a furious Peskov said. ‘Kyiv only does what it is told to do. Attempts to disown this, both in Kyiv and in Washington, are, of course, absolutely ridiculous.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied Russia’s claims Ukraine was behind the drone strike on the Kremlin and British security officials believe the attack was a ‘false flag’ operation by Russia to distract Kyiv from its anticipated counter-offensive and rally up support back home.

Around 40 explosive-laden drones with ‘for Moscow’ scrawled on them were fired by Putin’s forces at cities that were miles away from the front line, with explosions heard in the capital Kyiv and southern cities of Odesa and Zaporizhzhia. 

While Ukraine has demonstrated the capability to launch such attacks on the Kremlin, Kyiv is considered unlikely to risk fracturing international support by targeting the dictator directly. 

A Russian ‘false flag’ attack appeared a more likely explanation, with the explosion intended to generate support for Putin and further Russian attacks on Kyiv, UK officials said last night.