Hillary Clinton says she's finally 'free to speak her mind' — conservatives have a field day with it

New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote in a recent column that Hillary Clinton is finally "free to speak her mind" after she lost to President Donald Trump in last year's presidential election.

His column, released Saturday, is titled, "Hillary Clinton, Free to Speak Her Mind."

Kristof wrote:

I’ve known Clinton a bit for many years, and when she was running for office she was always monumentally careful in her language — a natural impulse when critics are circling, but it also diminished her authenticity as a politician. Her prudence came across to voters as "calculating.”

Now she’s out of her shell, freed by defeat, and far more willing to speak bluntly.

And she did. She told Kristof that she has no doubt in her mind that "misogyny" played a role in her loss to Trump last year.

"That just has to be admitted," Clinton claimed.

Clinton explained that there is an amount of "abundant social science research" that proves her very appearance as a woman contributed to her loss, suggesting that some people voted for Trump simply because he looked more presidential.

Later in the interview, Clinton continued to blame her loss on factors other than her candidacy and campaign. Studies have shown that Clinton's poorly run advertising contributed to her loss in crucial states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, but Clinton still blamed her loss on emails and FBI Director James Comey.

More from the column:

Russia’s hacking of campaign emails “was a more effective theft even than Watergate,” she said, adding: “We aren’t going to let somebody sitting in the Kremlin, with 1,000 agents, with bots and trolls and everybody else, try to mix up in our election. We’ve got to end that, and we need to make sure that’s a bipartisan, American commitment.”

Naturally, conservatives on Twitter had a field day with Clinton's comments about finally being "free" to speak her mind and her continued refusal to take any blame for her second failed bid at the White House.