Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign

I'm Jonathan alter Jonathan Alan and I are sometimes confused so you got two names but if we could all keep Barack Obama straight I think we can do this with the two of us right and I'm just really thrilled to be here tonight I'm great admirers of Amy and Jonathan's work I I've read both their books on Hillary Clinton I know there's a lot of excitement because Hillary's book is out now and she's doing all these interviews but if you actually want to know dispassionately what happened in that campaign this is the book to read and so I'm thrilled to be here and really glad to see you guys the first thing I wanted to ask was about what would have happened if she won if she had won in terms of your book this is sort of a publishing question but I think any of you any of you who start to read it you'll you'll have the same question I did because you know it's it feels like you had a crystal ball and and knew that this was gonna end badly but you didn't write what's funny about it is John and I started writing writing and reporting this book in late 2014 she hadn't even announced she was running yet and so we're doing or reporting and toward you know throughout the process we're filing to our esteemed editor Kevin Dalton who's here tonight and so we're sending them along and about a month out Kevin actually calls us up and says we have a problem here you guys are reporting all your reporting points to the fact that she's gonna lose and she's gonna win and how are you gonna square that and John and I Kevin might recall this conversation but John and I work we kind of paused for a long time and then called each other after kind of like what do we do but it's interesting I think for reporting purposes this is the biggest lesson is to trust your reporting and what your sources are telling you and we thought that she was gonna win up until election night actually that night I was sitting at the Javits Center and until about 10:30 or 11:00 until I got an email from a source high up in the campaign saying oh something's gone terribly wrong we never saw this happen I you know I think we both assumed that she was gonna win well they I was at the Javits Center too I called a source inside the campaign at about 9:00 and he said don't worry you know it's gonna still gonna be okay he sounded like he was telling the truth like they didn't know themselves and Trump Trump didn't know but there were there were we're gonna get to the end of the campaign but let's start at the beginning of the campaign at her speech on Roosevelt Island when she announced her candidacy you're pretty hard on that speech did she not know why she was running for president you know that's not our conclusion that's the conclusion of the people who worked for her and worked on her speech and I mean I think you know we talked to a lot of people about the formation of that and not only on that day the reason that we spent so much time on it was it was reflective of a problem that continued throughout the campaign which was an inability to define for the public what she was going to bring to the public that is to say like her vision for the for the country in a way that was about them and not about her and I think one of the easier ways to think about it is that that simple slogan she had of I'm with her was about her it wasn't she's with me wasn't here's what she's doing for me and I think a lot of voters want to know what that what that is and even in her not to preview too much but I've started reading her new book even in her new book I think there's sort of you know she says why she was running for president she says I was running for president people keep asking this I was running for president because I thought I would be the best president and even that is about her and now I don't think it's any different than anybody else who runs for president and I think it's a lot more honest but I don't think it's what voters want to hear so the reason that I find this so interesting is I covered Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and 96 and have been covering them for a long time and remember the draft story and the gennifer flowers story and all these stories in 19 1992 that raised all these quote character issues and that was badly exaggerated by the press but nonetheless was a big thing and Bill Clinton's whole point and the reason he survived and went on to be the nominee and the president was he kept saying this is not about me this is about you and and I'll be there for you till the last dog dies this is about you so now I can't do my Bill Clinton impression it was pretty good so but why I guess the what I'm puzzled by is he had something to say about that campaign and she knew that that's how he won in 92 was making it about the voters not about him so why couldn't they get that point it's interesting I mean just to broaden it out a little bit coming back to the 92 campaign I was just talking to somebody was a senior person on that campaign I said one of the things that's mind-blowing to me is Donald Trump ran against an improving and and reasonably good economy not good for everybody understand but ran against a pretty good economy as a terrible economy which is exactly what Bill Clinton did in 1992 and it worked for Trump just like it worked for Bill Clinton and they never found an antidote to what Trump was saying I mean I think there are a lot of places where this campaign was you know could have learned lessons from its past you know the the Bill Clinton forebears and then some cases and we go through this in the book Bill Clinton himself saying listen you guys are doing this all wrong you're not communicating well with voters who are opposed to you're not doing a good job of trying to win the persuadable z-- and she probably could have learned from her own lessons from 2008 because she made a lot of the same mistakes she she did a 180 on a lot of different things she brought in a lot of Obama people she brought in fresh blood but you know she made a lot of the mistakes that she made in 2008 and one of the big things was actually getting rid of the people who weren't working for her she has a really big problem doing that she's very loyal she expects loyalty so I think that was a problem getting rid of people who she didn't think were competent right exactly just leave them hanging she kind of shuffled the decks this time around as we talked about in the book she created a board of directors a super six as they called it and none of this was reported at the time we talked about it for the first time in our book they kept it very hush-hush they didn't want people this was one of the biggest lessons she learned in 2008 that you know all these negative headlines were out there she didn't want that perception this time around she wanted a squeaky-clean campaign but why did she so her.she strategist is a very well-regarded guy named Joel Benenson who had worked very well with Barack Obama he did not get along with the Clintons and why couldn't they see past his kind of you know sometimes very acerbic Brooklyn delivery to what he was trying to advise them to do they and then if they didn't want him why didn't they bring in somebody else who could provide them advice well it's interesting what they did is they they sort of shunted him to the side and I think part of that was I'm a good part of that was as you say the acerbic personality I don't think he delivered things well to them in the way that they were accustomed to hearing it a once we didn't kiss their butts enough yeah basically and and also seemed to have some issues with other people in the campaign but this is remember this is a really passive-aggressive group so I mean they're kind of setting each other up right like if you don't know the rules and like how to navigate that you haven't been in it before I think it could be a difficult place to try to jockey and we go through a lot of this in the book but she's got these people from the White House days from the State Department days from Bill Clinton's days and everybody's constantly trying to get closer to them so if you're somebody who's actually laying some truth down you are at odds with every Elson I think that's a problem I also think whether or not it was true they believed that he was leaking and the idea of someone talking in an unauthorized way to reporters on this campaign as Amy was saying was like you know this this incredible sin rather than learning the lesson from 2008 that the leaks on her campaign were symptomatic of problems she thought they were causal I don't even think it was true because that guy is a good friend of mine and I was desperate to have him leak something to me and he wouldn't do it they sometimes get a little maybe paranoid is too strong but she'd been beaten up so much by the press there were so many unfair things that had been printed about her in the past and then in the press in the campaign talk about how that kind of gun-shy problem with the press may have hampered her well for one thing I mean going back to this point she she hated the idea of leaks so much that as we report in a book she conducted kind of an email she wanted cut of an investigation of sorts done in 2008 about what happened and so she finds out that certain people are leaking and I think she thought that Joel was a weaker and that's why but she she's very afraid of the press she's never had a good relationship with the press and she's opposing a guy who manipulates the press and loves the press even though I know that the perception is that he hates it in its fake news but he knows how to work and how to use the press she's never quite learned what to do in in oh wait she used to kind of come back and bring the press donuts and try to warm up to them but it never worked for her she tried to various attacks this time around where Joel Benenson actually had a lot of reporters over to his house you know not too far from here to kind of warm up to the press this time around and take a different approach but it didn't work I mean I think from the start of her last book hard choices I think the guns were out I think the press kind of had it in for her and I think she felt that and it sort of took a step back but but was she kind of running an old-fashioned campaign and the example would be that Trump was calling in to MSNBC and CNN all the time and getting his take out there on a daily basis yeah and a lot of her people wanted her to do that I guess at the very end she started she tweaked it a little worse a little Colin you know once or twice but do you think things might have gone a little differently for her and obviously everybody knows she got the most votes but you know you know in a close election everything matters and we'll talk about call me and all the rest but just in terms of fending off Sanders early on and then having a better relationship with the press let's say she had done sort of what John McCain did in in 2000 or what Trump was doing in 2016 and said I'm gonna talk to the press every day I'm gonna give at least one interview maybe to a local reporter every single day and and it had just a very different kind of openness about the campaign would that have made a difference or with the press of just gone yeah maybe they still don't like her I think they're so averse they just hate the press so much even this email scandal it kind of lingered over her campaign for the better part of 2015 it wasn't until September of 2015 where she comes out and has her first interview about it but there's a frustration building that entire summer why isn't her message getting through why aren't they getting the press coverage that they need Bill Clinton there's a call that we talked about on this campaign and he's so he's fuming mad on this call and he's like come on you guys what's it gonna take I mean why is it her economic message penetrating and and so so they said in the book you say that the staff said we just got our asses chewed out by Bill Clinton yeah did did that help or did that hurt if if Bill Clinton is chewing you out I don't think it helps much I think these folks were sitting around going these the the Clintons don't get it they don't understand that her economic message isn't breaking through not because we're failing to state it accurately but because she's not apologizing for this email server thing and she's basically saying she didn't do anything wrong and so you know I think it was a moment where both sides frustration or you know sort of peaking but only one side has a would it have worked I mean it's always easy to 20/20 hindsight is easy but let's see could rewind the clock did the people inside the campaign think that if she'd gone out there and said Mia culpa I should never have done this it was a terrible mistake that that would have been the end of it I don't think they think it would have been the end of it but I think that they believed that it would have allowed them a little more space to get their other messages out so it would have been like we're not gonna hear any more about the email scandal because after the subsequent to that you know we we get the investment the investigation the FBI basically has to do because they find classified information on our server so it would have continued to be a story I think the question is whether they would have been able to talk about anything else effectively and basically during this period she's hiding from the press so wall hurricane while she's going out and saying things in public it's not like she's bringing people back and having interviews and talking about other things which is how she actually might redirect you know she has this relationship with reporters over time where she's a little paranoid and then they think she's hiding something and then she reacts to that you know and and kind of draws back farther in and this is this cycle and you know we've written about that before but also in her new book she writes about it a little bit and says she should have been more comfortable with the press or tried to make more of an effort to be comfortable with the press as well as blaming the media for some things although she said that the last time around - and she never quite she didn't make I mean it was better than 2008 right it was better you know and I mean that was crazy that year they made some improvements I was interested to read for the first time in your book that she she actually did some snooping of her own in in the emails from 2008 I guess she went back to the server that had all the 8 year old emails to find out who was leaking about her 8 years earlier and then make sure not to hire she'd actually done it right after that campaign right after a 2008 campaign she'd had staff download the emails of her other staffers so where IT staff goes in grabs the emails so that she can get a readout on who was leaking who was stabbing in the back who was disloyal to her and you know we think that there's we think that that information was used in determining who got what jobs this time uh-huh so it seemed like there was a lot a little bit of self-pity or neediness on the part of the staff so there was this line where the staff would say we're not allowed to have nice things what does that mean so every time they would do something well or they would have a winning streak she had a really good October I think it was where she won the debate against Bernie Sanders Joe Biden wasn't announced that he wasn't running she had done everything well and then BAM something happens you know Bernie Sanders comes out of nowhere and he's on their backs and they never saw it coming and so throughout the campaign I think Jen Palmieri was one of the people who said this her communications director you know every time things are going well you know something happens and we can't have nice things and this became sort of a theme inside the campaign the sphere of the other shoe dropping this common theme or literature in life as I think a larger theme you know broadly to I think I was talking to strategists throughout and and one strategist in particular said you know we're always sort of waiting for like the next thing like you never know what's gonna happen with the Clintons and I think inside even though pollster said one time too I think the pollster compared it to herpes yeah we we spared readers the actually said it's like herpes that keeps coming back so let's let mr. while we're on oh wait she tried to learn from it what did she over learn she kind of over in some ways she overcompensated a little bit right yeah lessons that she over learned I think one of them was that as I said before she people have this idea of Clinton world being this isolated island and that she wasn't hearing from other people so she purposely brought in a lot of people who worked on the Obama campaign Joel Benenson being one of them lots of other people I'm gentle Mary was one she worked in the Obama White House but what was interesting about that dynamic is as John mentioned earlier you have so many different factions already inside Clinton world you have his world in her world and the many factions in her world and so when you bring in all these other people they don't quite play well together and that was something I think that was problematic in the end so the loyalists didn't know national politics and the people who had the Clinton experience who really understood how to get somebody elected president born in the inner circle right right was there anybody in a Venn diagram who was in both who really had experience and who they trusted not really I mean even even if you look at the campaign chairman John Podesta who's like sort of the Democratic furniture I mean for lack of a better term I don't mean that as an insult to him I just mean he's done a lot of things for the Democrats but even John Podesta was not a campaign person for the Clintons it's not like he was like James Carville or Paul Begala or somebody had that kind of experience they trusted him but he wasn't somebody that had that like national campaign experience very I can't think of anybody who was very close to them and had national campaign experience so I I remember seeing Podesta in New Hampshire in 2016 and just asking him in passing why did she give those speeches to Goldman Sachs you know okay it's not a crime but she had to know that what they call the optics of that would be really bad and he said that she didn't know at that time that she was running for president so so let's I mean youyou mentioned that as well as a series of other particulars you know that the email server that the deplorable z' comment where before we get to the external things that were done to her like Comey and that kind of thing in terms of self-inflicted wounds how do you rank these and how important were they I think the big one is the lat is that lack of a message that basic lack of a definition of why she was running for president that was about the voters I think the email scandal is a big number to a me if you've got others because Comey never would have been involved had she never used a private email server and had she never and she admits as much in her new book I think this is her biggest biggest thing she feels went wrong is she says something like I never would have used a private email server but it's true it's this guy who comes in the final 11 days and kind of what she thinks sort of you know turns the campaign around is really her fault had she never done that he never would have appeared but you know when you look at what Trump is doing almost every day the private email server doesn't knock my socks off as a terrible scandal the fiery of that the fiery of Jim Comey makes the Loretta Lynch meeting on the tarmac look pretty petty right like her dad know Clinton goes has a meeting with the Attorney General talks about kids which by the way Laura don't Lynch knows what that means and Bill Clinton knows what that means but he didn't apparently say to her hey let my wife off or else right Trump said that to Comey according to Comey and Trump and then fired Komi over his unwillingness to drop the Russian investigation I mean but that's like so much different and what is it about what is it about Hillary Clinton that is that is Velcro rather than Teflon I mean she she says that a lot of that has to do with gender and there's a lot devoted into in her new book to sexism in the country and I I think that's an important conversation about where we are and and how we get to a place where misogyny is less acceptable in our society as a candidate it's your job to overcome people's biases whatever they are right the game is to get the most votes or in our case to get the most votes in the right States on the right day and but but the rules are pretty are pretty clear I think but I think there is something about her that's not gender related I mean she is somebody who wants to win the argument based on what she believes is right or the right principles and not somebody who will click quickly pivot to the place somewhere not someone else is to win like she's not a traditional politician in the sense of finding a way to agree with everybody so that everybody likes her that's not how she operates and it's something that's that is different on in some ways it's a more honest approach but it is also different for those of us who've been watching politics for a long time een politicians try to get away with as much distance as possible between what they say and what they do and they're really good ones get away with them folks and when they stop getting away with it they start shrinking back toward the truth for her I don't think that the calculation is quite the same but if you're a woman you you can't win I mean if you if you're too aggressive then you're strident if you're holding back then you're passive you know everything you wear is scrutinized so how should historians you know you've written two books about her now how should we look at the role of of sexism and in this campaign what's funny there going back to this is that she had such a big likability problem and I think one of the most underreported stories in this campaign is that she couldn't sway millennial women to vote for her and I did this story a couple of times during the campaign but I found it fascinating that they felt like it was more empowering to support a man or to be given the choice to support a man than to automatically say yes I'm a woman I'm gonna vote for her she had a problem convincing these people they thought surely in one day they'll find full boat for a woman that they like better and I think that was a huge problem for her the fact that President Trump now then Donald Trump brought in all these he brought Republicans home at the end of the day she failed to do that she failed to convince all these Millennials and then some all these Bernie Sanders supporters who stay at home or voted for a third party candidate that they should support yeah I just think they're jackass super liberal so I mean they did it in a 1968 to Hubert Humphrey you know and that's how we got Nixon is they oh I like gene McCarthy I don't want to vote for Hubert Humphrey you know and and I don't she could have done anything and they they were I went out and interviewed them in the streets of Philadelphia during the convention and these people were saying that they would absolutely vote for her under no circumstances is there anything I'd say Bernie Sanders is telling you to vote for her he's giving a very sincere speech which he finally did you know he realized this Trump is so much worse for the country then then then Hillary and he's your leader I don't know why don't you follow him and vote for Hillary and they said nope not gonna do it so is that Hillary's fault really that they hardcore Sanders people weren't gonna come kind of in I don't think he was that convincing either in fact we have a scene in the book where he's he's going to cut an ad for her and he's reading the text of the ad before they start taping and he gets to the part that says I'm with her and he says I'm with her I can't say that that's so phony and I think a lot of his supporters didn't believe that he really genuinely 100% stood behind her so in terms of the messaging that they did do was stronger together a bad slogan that's pretty weak I mean that you know obviously if you look at if you look at Trump and you know he obviously I'd make America great again but the other thing that he talked about and there was a real sort of reaction to because the historical talk but he talked about America first which suggested that Hillary Clinton would put something else first you know there was a real duality and and there's a duality and the Clinton message which is that were weaker divided it doesn't have that same I sort of feel like it just doesn't have the same strength on the front end or the back end it was something that everybody seems to agree on as a reasonable slogan I think of her message him better the slogan wouldn't have been the thing that brought her down but I don't think it's a great slogan by any by any stretch of the imagination I don't think people were like let me get that stronger together bumper sticker because that's how I'm feeling right now that's gonna get me out there to vote yeah I probably misjudged this I thought her paid media during the campaign was excellent and she had these ads that let Trump hang himself you know kids watching Trump saying these insane things on TV and the camera was on the kids and and you know the the the ad with him making fun of the disabled reporter which played very well in focus groups people just thought that was horrible which it was so is it possible that when you know when you lose everything looks bad right so is it possible that she did some things that helped her to win the popular vote that actually were pretty good absolutely and she won the three debates hands down this is a I'm not the first person to say this but that was the most convincing set of debate victories I've seen in my lifetime which doesn't go back through the history of presidential campaigns and by the way the poll showed that afterward she extended her lead after those three debates so I think she killed it in the debates I think Trump looked terrible in the debates he was able to communicate effectively to his base to at least keep them while he was losing them but he basically folded in those debates I think that I think you're right I think a lot of the paid meaning it was very good certainly was something that was unifying two Democratic voters in terms of wanting to be against Trump like the the whole strategy at the end and and they ran positive and ads the whole time but basically the whole strategy of the general election campaign was disqualify Trump and she and her campaign did that effectively except that one fifth of Donald Trump's voters according to exit polls said that he was unfit to be President so they believed he was unfit and then went and voted for him so I think they were I think that when I say they effectively disqualified him I mean I think they were effective in getting that message that Donald Trump shouldn't be President across to a lot of voters that he was unfit unstable all of those things and a lot of them voted for many well they probably thought unfit meant physically he's fat he's not physically fit you know was she talks in her new book and it made headlines a week or so ago about Trump crowding her on the stage and they dealt with this you guys say in debate prep like how do you deal with all of that George W Bush when Al Gore was crowding him in 2000 he just turned around he spun and he gave him a look like you know the look said back off and and it was very effective for him because it is a kind of an alpha game whose king of the hill who's the alpha alpha House plug right there that is about the house black so why didn't they come up with something for her to do rather than just ignore it I think they wanted her to take the high road and that's why they kind of practiced her aid fully brighness was in her face the whole time and even ran around and chased her because they thought that he would do something like that and they played they he played Trump to a tee he went and got everything he made himself look taller he got everything down to cufflinks and and yet they felt like okay they didn't want to have another Benghazi what difference does it make a moment they didn't want her to kind of escalate her voice they wanted her to be very rational very presidential and they felt like if she had done that that would kind of spiral out of control and and get her negative headlines so I think they were very aware of the tone of the debate and they felt like if she had just if she was if she remained above the fray she would win my wife argued that the one thing that she didn't do in the debate she won them all but was to make some reference to the suffering in her own marriage because that's when she had reached her highest levels of popularity after bill was found cheating on her and that if she had just done a little bit of that it would have reminded lots of people of a time when they really sympathized with her and really liked her did they ever even talk about that or they know that she just would never go there I mean they've got Paula Jones is in the audience and you know should they have done something that was the opening that was certainly the opening to do with that second debate were as you said the Paula Joneses are in the audience and you know fully brighness in the debate prep had run by all the sort of Trump possible lines of attack on Bill Clinton you know including accusing Bill Clinton of being a rapist and you know I don't think they ever did so far as we know never really discussed the idea of you know Hillary could present herself as a sympathetic figure or even try triangulate against her husband a little bit and say look Donald my husband did bad things and Donald you did awful things - that doesn't make me a bad person that my husband did awful things or that my husband did things that I don't right she never did that because they think they always believed she was better off and have for many many years believed she was better off not showing distance from her husband that they've been a unit for a long time and and and so if you think about that and look they've got to live together right for the rest of their lives presumably you think that so in 2008 he was a liability setting aside the Loretta Lynch story do you think on balance he was an asset or a liability this time I think a little bit of both I think they probably could have used him more effectively early on and we were both hearing from people in the beginning of the campaign saying where is Bill Clinton why have they sidelined him donors in particular were really aggrieved by this and said because she kind of lacks that you know that schmooze II glad-handing kind of thing that donors really want and so we were fielding calls from people like what's happening why don't they let Bill Clinton out there and and unleash him and they didn't really you never really saw him he was playing a role behind the scenes but you never saw him on that trail until right before the Iowa caucus and and then later on you hear him constantly sounding the alarm when he thinks things are going wrong and he's on the ground in Michigan in places but she ultimately lost and he's hearing from people that things aren't going well and he's telling Brooklyn he's repeatedly I mean you see you see him coming up in the book kind of saying what's going on guys you need a little bit you need to mix in the science and the art and we're kind of lacking that a little bit why didn't that message get through it's interesting one of the questions you asked earlier was about lessons she over learned and I think one of the lessons she over learned from 2008 was Obama had run circles around her with modern campaign in terms of Technology data analytics and so she came to believe that in order to run a modern campaign effectively she basically had to like take Obama stacking people you know for lack of a better term and put them on her campaign and then she believed in what the data were telling her and what those guys were telling her all the time data can be static certainly public opinion can be or you take a snapshot it's static if you want to move public opinion you've got to go out and do persuasion and I think they looked at data and thought of it in the in the sort of static terms like these people don't agree with us well they're never going to agree with us so let's not waste time or money or energy trying to get them to agree with us why didn't they why didn't their data tell them that in Michigan and Wisconsin they were in deep trouble and they shouldn't be going to Arizona they the data the data told them that those places were coming closer yeah that they were that the lead was narrowing but their baseline was artificially high so from where they start they started from a place that was too high and when they lost ground it still looked to them like they were in good they weren't even polling there in the last couple of weeks that's we we talk to people they said we didn't do traditional polling in battleground states for the last three weeks so there was no check on what the data analytics what's right now look the polls could have come back and said the same thing we've heard that arguing to us before they would have said the same thing because all the independent polling said the same thing but I don't know in a campaign that spent a billion dollars the idea that you wouldn't have that one of the priorities wouldn't be polling in battleground state last three weeks is kind of crazy that's really amazing so October 7th was a big day tell us why you've had sort of a trifecta first the US intelligence community comes out with this assessment that Russia interfered in the election and basically Hillary's aides are in her Brooklyn headquarters and they're getting together and they're like this is great for us because we have been suggesting that this has been the case for a long time it's going to validate us people are going to think what heck is Donald Trump doing cahoots with the Russians they're Democrats so they believe that being in cahoots with the Russians must be the thing that destroys your life forever because they have some experience with that you know historically and so they're excited about that and then this videotape pops up of Donald Trump on Access Hollywood bragging about sexually assaulting women and and some of them are very excited about that and this is like within a couple hours of each other some of them were excited about that thing like this guy's terrible everybody's in it was terrible but the main campaign braintrust really things from Russia is this story and they're not they're almost not distracted at all by the Access Hollywood tape because they're thinking is we all knew this guy was allowed and that's not gonna change the dynamics and voters minds but maybe the Russia story will so Robbie milked the campaign manager and others like it takes them a while to even see the tape and they don't think that that's gonna be the major event of the day now a third thing comes out in the middle of this by the way the people the RNC are watching the Access Hollywood tape and they're like we're done this is over I mean it's like this is the worst thing that's ever happened we're like we're totally finished there's no pushing back on this in fact there was fighting later on after that because Steve Bannon told them all to to fight back on Donald Trump's behalf and like nobody wanted to like be in favor of this any right so so the third thing hits which is WikiLeaks releases John Podesta is the first batch of John Podesta see emails you know which was very bad for them but very good for you it turned out that you've got a lot of good stuff on that you know we the people have said have asked us of us so the WikiLeaks emails come out the John Podesta emails and it's October 7th and every day for an entire month a new batch of emails is released so the folks at the RNC and at the Trump campaign are pushing that storyline out as hard as they can on October 7th amid the Access Hollywood and they're just kind of hoping that if somebody's writing about Access Hollywood and the Russian interfere that they will also include a line about these Podesta emails and they're pretty successful at getting that stuff pushed into stories at the bottom or whatever but they get them kind of pushed in and then for a month boom-boom-boom Podesta emails every day the Podesta emails the Clinton emails everything's emails right like I think there was a belief in the Clinton campaign and I think probably rightly said that there was a lot of conflation about you know did she leave John Podesta these emails open to being hacked is this part of the you know the intelligence story and having confident classified information so but anyway all of this happens in one day this sort of boom boom boom right on October 7th and then you know they're not they're really never able to stop the drip drip drip of that once great about that is that they have a rolling whiteboard a scandal whiteboard that they actually wheel from room to room to keep track of the daily scandal there's a guy in charge of it if Trump is impeached it might you know come back to that it not being such a coincidence that right after the Access Hollywood tape suddenly there are these wiki leaks know and and and Julian Assange has been very close to the Russians and it all kind of Lane in Roger stone and so I mean I'm I don't mean to severe he's raw coincidental I'm very critical of the press and that period right then because I think they I don't think there was very much news in those emails there was good sort of grist for your book because it gives you a feeling of you know you're inside the campaign but in terms of news three weeks before the election that was obtained basically through Russian espionage it was really wrong for a lot of news organization running so hard with those emails let me let me ask ya just because I think it might be interesting for folks like for us dealing with those Podesta emails and trying to determine how to use those if whether to use them in part because a lot of them have been reported and they were out there by the time we were working on the book we felt less of an obligation is the sort of deciders on the first thing not that we wouldn't have gone ahead and used them anyway but because they were all sort of out there already it seemed dumb to not look into them what we generally used them for was where there was a narrative that we were already working on where there was some some storyline or narrative that we were working on where they provided a little extra detail or perhaps an exhibit confirmation the confirmation of something or like a demonstration of you know staff infighting or whatever that we were talking about her somebody was upset with so-and-so and then you see an email and it shows how that happened we tried to use it mostly as supporting information I think there's a misperception amongst some people that like a lot a lot of our book is from those emails they stopped in March of 2016 I'm sorry March of 2016 yeah so somebody from the audience is a question about the Clinton Foundation do you think that hurt yeah I'm stories definitely I mean all of you the email scandal I think was the biggest one the Clinton Foundation I mean it if you had fed into this big larger narrative of like I said earlier what other she was gonna drop and this nefarious perception of the you know if the Clintons and their dealings which I think followed but you know it actually came before the campaign as well but I think this I think had definitely heard if neither of them was running for president the Clinton Foundation would rightly be looked at as a really wonderful charitable organization that has the side benefit of you know flying them around the country and staying them in nice places and everything but it would be looked at solely as that with one of them running for president of the United States it's hard to look at a foundation in the same way you know Tom DeLay the House Majority Leader from from Texas way back when had a charity for foster kids fostering adopted kids I think and but people rightly called him out for for his donors giving to that you know his political donors giving money to that operation because it was a way to influence him there was a way to get close to him there's a way to spend time with him and so I think that so I think you know with the Clinton Foundation I think they do a lot of really good things but it was reasonable for reporters to look into the base sort of sort of basic overall question of is this a means for for people who want influence with the Clintons to get that influence or to get that a year or to get that favor what happened behind the scenes is that because of all these different Clinton factions the foundation was kind of told you know hush-hush left the campaign kind of deal with that and they were never really allowed to defend themselves and I think that was a problem because they wanted to but they kind of had to defer to the campaign the campaign room to like to kind of sculpt that narrative and I think that was actually that hurt them in the end as well the last question I think we have time for is about Barack Obama now he you know knew about the Russian interference he told Putin to knock it off some people you report and the in the Clinton campaign wanted him to speak out about it I guess the White House's argument was that would have politicized everything and they didn't think it would do her very much good who was right on that it's hard to second-guess but I think they I think they probably handled it well because and you might disagree with me but I think I think it's true and I was hearing I think we were both hearing a lot about this and at the time but they really felt like he would be accused of tipping the scales and that could be a really big problem and this was a problem during the primary you'll remember with Bernie Sanders a lot of people were out there saying that he was out there tipping the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton then he didn't want that perception kind of following him into the general election and the DNC was accused of that as well and I guess there's some truth to that with debbie Wasserman Schultz so somebody out there wanted to know whether you guys think that Sanders would have won if he had been the nominee it's hard to run an election without running the election I never I never looked at Sanders as a more likely general election winner than Clinton but that's my personal view but I've been wrong about a lot of things before in politics up to and including president Trump's viability at various stages of the candidacy so I don't think that Sanders I don't think Sanders would have been a better general election candidate but it's hard to know without seeing it so she's not running in 2020 I think she's made that pretty clear but an awful lot of people in this room including me wonder you guys are good talent scouts you know a lot of the faces and the Democratic parties or anybody that we should be looking out for maybe isn't getting mentioned as much a couple of people I think Kamala Harris is getting a lot of buzz behind the scenes there is a really funny story happening though also where a lot of President Obama's supporters want to ball Patrick to run because Kamala Harris is kind of signaling hey I'm the female Barack Obama look at me and they're saying not so fast and they're pushing Deval Patrick's name forward so there's a lot of kind of really interesting fascinating I'm covering it now and it's you can trip over how many stories there are but it's it's really fascinating to watch but other people like Mitch Landrieu or kind of the mayor of New Orleans Mayor of New Orleans there are lots of you know they're saying as many as 30 Democrats could run in 2020 there's Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders Kirsten Gillibrand you know I mean so it's interesting Amy brings up Mitch Landrieu and I should just say buy by way of disclosure my wife used to work for for his sister Mary Landrieu and Senate but he's an interesting type of candidate that I'm hearing a lot about lately which is a Democrat in a red state who has not won a gubernatorial election or a Senate election you know a lot of Democrats who are capable of reaching out Republican voters never get very far in their states Mitch Landrieu was a lieutenant governor and a mayor people talk about Jason Kander who lost a Senate race in Missouri Al Franken actually is people been talking about him a lot he was just here recently I saw though he actually there was a video that he did that went viral where he talked about why he's a Democrat and I think this is a big kind of they're doing a lot of soul-searching in the party right now to figure out what went wrong and how to plow forward and I think the video went viral because he kind of talks about the essence of being a democratic democratic values and how his wife's mother went to school on Pell grants and how you know he grew up middle class and and he kind of chokes up at the end and I think it kind of resonated with a lot of people and so a lot of I did a story recently about how he's kind of the reluctant presidential candidate but a lot of people are trying to kind of push him in and I pretty sure Terry McAuliffe the governor of Virginia began running on election night right it may not have been called yet when he started making calls to do yes Al Franken wrote a novel once called why not me this is before he went into politics about running for president which features a fistfight between me and Howard Fineman my kid says thank you is about Comey yeah well I think we stipulated that call me was a big problem but do you think that yeah that's good thank you for that it will end on Comey do you think that she believes that Comey cost her the election in a very close election do you think she's right I think it's no I think it's one of the factors but there were many which is why I think our book was successful because we point out that it wasn't just Russia and it wasn't just call me these were a couple of reasons sure but there were lots of other reasons for why she lost she was in the position to lose to Donald that late in the election I mean that that in and of itself is somewhat of a failure she should have killed him is the point I think metaphor okay on that note thank you to everybody for coming

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 71,224

Rating: 3.9981446 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Hillary Clinton, Clinton, presidential race, presidential candidate, 2016 election, 2016 US election, politics, US politics, American politics, Democrat, Democratic Party, US, United States, Amie Parnes, Jonathan Allen, Jonathan Alter, Sidewire, The Hill, presidential campaign

Id: Ob1WbjiKoqs

Length: 51min 5sec (3065 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017