Let’s be honest: We’re going to miss the Clintons

by WorldTribune Staff, November 16, 2016

Since when could any serious journalist take a London Daily Mail piece based on one anonymous source as Gospel?

The easy answer is “never”. But what if the source claims to have overheard Bill Clinton screaming at his wife Hillary about who was to blame for her imploding campaign? And what if the source said a red-faced Clinton ended the argument by throwing his phone off the roof of his penthouse presidential library in Little Rock toward the Arkansas River?

bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-2016-election-defeat-getty-640x480Ed Klein, a former reporter for the N.Y. Times who has just published his fourth book about the Clintons since 2005, wrote for the Daily Mail on Nov. 15 that, according to the source, Bill Clinton didn’t buy the excuse that FBI Director James Comey would cost Hillary the election.

“As far as he was concerned, all the blame belonged to [campaign manager Robby] Mook, [campaign chairman John] Podesta and Hillary because they displayed a tone-deaf attitude about the feeble economy and its impact on millions and millions of working-class voters,” Klein wrote.

“Bill was so red in the face during his conversation with Hillary that I worried he was going to have a heart attack,” the source said. “He got so angry that he threw his phone off the roof of his penthouse apartment and toward the Arkansas River.”

Bill Clinton has a luxurious penthouse apartment with an outdoor garden at the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock.

The source said that Bill Clinton continually prodded Hillary’s campaign brain trust to “connect with the people who had been left behind by the revolutions in technology and globalization.”

“Bill said that constantly attacking Trump for his defects made Hillary’s staff and the media happy, but that it wasn’t a message that resonated with voters, especially in the rust belt,” the source explained. “Bill always campaigned as a guy who felt your pain, but Hillary came across as someone who was pissed off at her enemy [Trump], not someone who was reaching out and trying to make life better for the white working class.”

Bill was on the phone at his luxurious penthouse apartment he keeps at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. /Getty Images
Bill was on the phone at his luxurious penthouse apartment he keeps at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

“Bill also said that many African Americans were deeply disappointed with the results of eight years of Obama,” the source continued. “Despite more and more government assistance, blacks weren’t economically any better off, and black-on-black crime was destroying their communities. He said Hillary should have gone into the South Side of Chicago and condemned the out-of-control violence.”

Bill Clinton did acknowledge that Comey’s decision to re-open the investigation into Hillary’s private email server created a problem for her campaign, but the former president believed the issue had little impact on the eventual outcome as it had already been baked into the decisions of most voters.

“A big part of Bill’s anger toward Hillary was that he was sidelined during the entire campaign by her advisers,” said the source. “He can’t be effective if he sees himself as just another hired hand. He wasn’t listened to and that infuriated him. After all, he knows something about campaigns, and he told me in early October that Hillary and her advisers were blowing it.

“Hillary wouldn’t listen. She told Bill that his ideas were old and that he was out of touch. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it because Hillary and her people weren’t listening to anything he said.”

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