Hillary Clinton’s campaign staffers were quite adamant that former President Bill Clinton shouldn’t be allowed to take one last bite of the paid speech apple from Wall Street three days before she officially announced her presidential run, according to the latest string of emails released by Wikileaks. The optics of it all didn’t appear to bother Hillary Clinton, a possible window into the former first lady’s brazen confidence that she was going to win the 2016 election. There appears to be a back and forth between Hillary, longtime aide Huma Abedin, and campaign manager Robby Mook, who understood how big of a mistake it would be for Bill to deliver that speech. In the end, Hillary relented and agreed that Bill should probably cancel his speech appearance (via Huffington Post):
The internal emails reveal Clinton staffers’ attempts to reason with a wealthy political candidate who didn’t appreciate the potential damage that could be done if her husband ? referred to as “WJC” in the communications ? spoke to a prominent Wall Street firm just three days after she formally announced her presidential campaign.Staffers knew that Clinton didn’t want to hear it, and maneuvered to make their objections understood.
“HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” wrote Clinton aide Huma Abedin on March 11, 2015. “I think if John [Podesta] is getting involved in this scheduling matter, he must feel strongly. I will have to tell her that WJC chose to cancel it, not that we asked.”
“Yes the issue is that if we’re announcing on the 12th/13th and he’s speaking to a wall street bank on the 15th, that’s begging for a bad rollout,” campaign manager Robby Mook replied.
Six and a half hours later, Abedin delivered the bad news to Mook and Podesta, a longtime Clinton confidante: “John and Robby – HRC is reiterating her original position. She does not want him to cancel.”
[…]
By the following afternoon, Clinton was willing to listen to reason.
“Robby – Just raised with her again,” Abedin wrote. “We are good to cancel esp if WJC is ok with it. Just needed a cool down period.”
Mook noted that Wall Street is the number on institution Iowans feel take advantage of Americans. It was the recipe for a disastrous rollout.
“It’s a very consequential unforced error and could plague us in stories for months,” he wrote. In the end, the campaign would be plagued by the former first lady’s email fiasco for months, followed by the alleged unethical dealings at the family nonprofit. Both areas have sunk her trust and honesty levels with voters and contributed to Clinton being unable to take a decisive lead in the polls against Donald Trump until now.
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