ABC News(NEW YORK) — A new book detailing the downfall of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign contains some juicy, behind-the-scenes details about the Democratic contender and the team that failed to get her to the White House.
The book, titled Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, was released on Tuesday. It was written by two political journalists, Jonathan Allen, a former Politico White House bureau chief who is currently the head of content at political news site Sidewire, and Amie Parnes, senior White House correspondent for The Hill.
The pair said they spent a year and a half conducting interviews with more than 100 sources. Through these interviews, they said they developed a sense that the internal goings-on in Clinton’s world were “starkly at odds with the narrative the campaign and the media were portraying publicly.”
Here are five of the biggest takeaways from the book.
Unease over email issues
Early on, the authors tackle one of Clinton’s biggest headaches: the email saga that would go on to plague her campaign. Shattered details Clinton’s own alleged snooping through her aides’ email accounts after her failed 2008 campaign.
Clinton allegedly looked through the campaign server “to see who was talking to who, who was leaking to who.”
Fast forward seven years later, and news that Clinton used a personal email during her time at the State Department is breaking. Clinton herself waited eight days before commenting publicly on the issue, the book finds, spending that time consulting with lawyers and various members of her team and arguing over language. She was reportedly even deciding whether or not she should joke about it.
On March 10, 2015, Clinton made her first statement, saying that she didn’t send or receive emails containing classified information over the private server, which was later proven to be false. But Clinton allegedly came out of the press conference and told her aides that she thought she had nailed it.
The months that followed showed that was far from the case, however. At one point, both Bill and Hillary Clinton arranged a conference call with top aides where the couple criticized the staff’s handling of the scandal, Allen and Parnes write. One person on the call put it bluntly: “We got an ass-chewing.”
It wasn’t until Clinton was interviewed by ABC News’ David Muir in early September that she expressed contrition for deciding to use a private email server, the authors write.
A missed warning
The book alleges that as Trump took the lead among Republican primary contenders, her campaign received a warning from an unnamed, longtime Clinton adviser that laid bare what could happen.
The warning came in the form of a memo with a straightforward title: “FACT: Donald Trump can defeat Hillary Clinton and become the 45th President of the United States.”
Specifically, the memo said that Clinton should not “underestimate his capacity to draw people to the polls who normally do not vote,” which could “tip the scales in key states (and put certain states in play that would otherwise be more safely Democratic).”
In terms of numbers, the adviser suggested that the Clinton team account for that unknown factor by adding “three or four points to whatever they say about his support” in polls.
Flashbacks to a prior fumble by Bill
When Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008, there was a moment in South Carolina when Bill Clinton compared then-Sen. Barack Obama’s primary victory in the state to that of Rev. Jesse Jackson. The remark drew criticism from African-American voters and resulted in what was largely seen as a sidelining of the former president from his wife’s campaign.
The new book alleges that aides saw Bill make a similar mistake on the 2016 trail.
The moment in question came when Bill engaged with Black Lives Matter protesters during an event in Philadelphia. The former president spoke with activists for 10 minutes, defending the Clinton Foundation’s work with people in Africa, the 1994 crime bill passed by his administration, and prior comment Hillary had made “superpredators” in the mid-1990s.
The book alleges that the former president “believed he was in the right and that he was helping his wife. No one else did.”
It goes on to say that his aides “lit into him,” calling the incident “his worst foul-up of the campaign.”
Tensions at the VP roll out
The book detailed how there had to be some last-minute changes to the event in Florida where Clinton was slated to announce Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice presidential running mate.
Kaine received a congratulatory call from then-President Obama shortly after Clinton formally asked him to fill the role and Kaine agreed. When it came to the public introduction, however, things were far less cheery behind the scenes.
The event was scheduled to be held in Florida in the home district of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and had her playing a central role in the event. But Wasserman Schultz had to be sidelined because the announcement came a few days after the leak of Democratic National Committee emails that sparked debate about whether Wasserman Schultz was being fair in her dealings with Clinton and Sanders.
“Hillary genuinely likes Debbie. I think she’s the only one in the orbit who does,” a Democratic source told the authors. “The campaign does not like Debbie.”
Wasserman Schultz was reportedly upset over her diminished role in the event and spoke about it afterward in a meeting with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. After that meeting, Podesta reportedly made his feelings about Wasserman Schultz clear.
“If she’s ever Speaker of the House, I’m done with politics,” Podesta reportedly told his colleagues, according to the book.
Issuing congratulations — and an apology
The book also delves into how Clinton conceded on Election Night, reporting that there was some unintended delay in her making the call to Trump. Campaign manager Robby Mook was reportedly unable to reach Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. The authors write that Conway only picked up her phone when Clinton’s close aide, Huma Abedin, called.
It was then that Conway gave her phone to Trump and Abedin gave hers to Clinton. “Congratulations, Donald,” Clinton said. “I’ll be supportive of the country’s success, and that means your success as president.”
Shortly after her call with Trump, Abedin handed Clinton the phone again. But this time, it was Obama on the line.
“Mr. President, I’m sorry,” Clinton reportedly told him, feeling that she had let him down.
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