The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second "Clinton Era" (29 page)

JK:
And I would never say, I mean, there’s a lot of time to go before she even announces her presidential campaign. The point, I think one of the other reasons why the President did what he did is he thinks he can bait Republicans to saying out of the mainstream type comments, things that make them do things, threat of impeachment or the threat of a government shutdown.

HH: No one’s going to do that, though, right?

JK:
It’ll make it easier for someone like Hillary to run against. So I think there’s a lot left to be determined. I feel like it’s too early to really make a judgment on how the immigration play turns out. But I think if Republicans don’t self-destruct, if they don’t do things that hurt their own brand, I think the burden is on Hillary. The burden is on the Democrats to really show how they’re in the, how they get the majority back with supporting this executive order, with supporting the process of this executive order.

CHAPTER 36

An Interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, November 21, 2014, November 9, 2014, and March 26, 2015

Interview, November 21, 2014

HH: Are you going to cover Webb, because I think James Webb presents a very interesting problem for Hillary Clinton.

CT:
To a point, I do think he could. He could. He presents, put it this way, if you were to go into a factory and say who’s the perfect potential challenger for her, I think the only thing, the only problem is I think demographically, having, he doesn’t necessarily, a southern white guy isn’t necessarily the perfect primary challenger to her. But he’s to the left of her in economics, will come across as stronger on national security, even as he’s more to the left of her, less hawkish, certainly will be incredibly critical of her, particularly on Libya. He’s been, he was from the beginning critical of the entire Libyan operation, and being somebody who wore the uniform doesn’t hurt. The question is, can he raise money? I thought it was fascinating, if you saw the Jim Webb news, within 12 hours, Tim Kaine puts out a PAC email talking about being ready for Hillary. It tells you that, you know, I think the Hillary people, that wasn’t an accident. I think they are nervous about him if he ever got traction.

HH: And I have been watching, I put in an interview request which has not been responded to earlier today of Senator Webb’s office, because I am curious about…

CT:
I would bet you he comes on.

HH: I know, and he told me to contact the office. And I am curious as to what he’s going to do on immigration, because it seems to me the opening against Hillary.

CT:
Right, he was not in favor, you know. I’m old enough to remember when there were a whole bunch of Democrats who weren’t supportive of some of these immigration reforms, particularly having worried about the idea of basically wages going down. And that suddenly, you know, and there were a lot of labor unions members worried about that.

HH: And jobs being taken. So I’m curious, were you surprised that former Secretary of State Clinton, it took her less than 10 minutes to issue a full-throated endorsement of the President’s action

CT:
Oh, if it’s not a reminder that this was, look, I know we’re all shocked that everybody plays politics with issues, but this was pretty, I mean, that the politics of this has been pretty obvious from the get-go, which is the Democratic Party, and look, and if you look at it from Obama’s point of view, he broke promise after promise with Hispanics. And he felt like he had to come with something, or they risked alienating Hispanics for a long time, which is why I think you saw Hillary Clinton so quickly do that. But I have to say there’s another part of this story that we haven’t talked about enough, and I think we’re going to play the demographics game, and that is white working class voters are, you know, dealt a thumping to Democrats in 2014, and immigration is one of the reasons. So you know, yes, for every gain they make, and maybe long term, the demographic trend will be better off for the Democrats, but they also have a white working class problem. I think a Minnesota, I think Iowa, I think Wisconsin, I think you’re going to start seeing that for every Arizona that the Democrats think they’re going to bring into play, I think some of the northern Midwestern states are going to come into potentially being in play for the Republicans.

Interview November 9, 2014

HH: I want your take on what [Tuesday’s vote] means for Hillary.

CT:
You know, I’ve been thinking about this a while, and I think, I’ll tell you, she’s got pressure on her to now get in earlier maybe than she wanted to. I think there is a sense, there’s the sense of some Democrats are looking for somebody to sort of start rallying the party. But I have to say, I think a long presidential campaign’s not going to be healthy for her. Like I don’t think that’s a good, it’s just not good for anybody to be in the spotlight for as long as she’s going to be in it. And I think a bigger problem for the Democrats this election is the fact that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, everybody decided
to run again. You know, the fresh faces, the young faces in Washington are Republican faces. And the old faces or sort of the veteran faces are Democratic faces. And so I think that’s something that the party in general, and you wonder if you’re Hillary Clinton, you know, she’s the youngest of that group of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, those folks, but you know, I think you want to present yourself as the next generation, you know, sort of the party of the 21st Century. And maybe demographically they feel like they’re there, but I think their leaders, I think the faces of the party, I think that’s something they have to think about.

Interview, March 22, 2015

HH: Would you be surprised by a 69 year old at the time former Senator and Secretary of State declining to run, because boy, the news today was bad on her. And Gawker’s got a story out with Pro Publica about the Sid Blumenthal story.
The Washington Times
has Trey Gowdy, who you had last week, blowing up because she wiped her server clean and she’s not turning it over. Hillary’s at the center, and this new poll shows only 26% of Americans now have a favorable view of her, 37% unfavorable, another third are undecided. And it’s dropping like a rock, Chuck Todd.

CT:
Well, and this is the pattern of Hillary Clinton, something I brought up last week. The pattern of her political career is when she is front and center, the polarizing view of Hillary Clinton comes into focus. And when she is off the front pages and is sort of a player but on the sidelines, like when she was a Senator or when she was Secretary of State, her numbers go up. And as a presidential candidate, and when she’s at the center, you know, I think all of a sudden, there is, and she might blame that press, that the press has old habits die hard, they only cover her like she’s a Clinton from the 90s, and so it doesn’t matter. But all of a sudden, I think this is such a big challenge in the email story, is not the email story itself, it’s the idea that it creates the ‘oh, there they go again, this is the 90s all over again.’ And if Clinton fatigue, which is already a disease in the press corps, actually becomes a problem with the voting public, and these polls, maybe this is the first time that it’s becoming a problem, that is doom for her.

HH: It is a rumbling drum in the background. Now the Blumenthal story is different. I thought until today, actually earlier this week when I began to get wind of this, that Blumenthal would send her emails and she would write him back, and it was the kind of thing where you had a former aide, a hanger-on, and you stay in touch with everyone. No. He’s running a private intelligence operation on the Libyan-Tunisian border through former CIA operatives. Chuck Todd, if W. had done that, or actually, Condi Rice or Colin Powell would be the appropriate analogy…

CT:
Yeah.

HH:… people would be tearing their hair out.

CT:
And yet I have to say nothing involving Sid Blumenthal surprises me. Zero. And I agree. I think this, I saw this Gawker stuff. You know, you’ve got, it’s Gawker and all this stuff, but I’ve learned over the years, nothing involving Sid Blumenthal is surprising. And you know, for some reason, they’ve had, he’s blindly loyal to them, and I think the Clintons have always had a blind spot with him, because he skirts the rules.

HH: Yeah, this is going to…

CT:
He’s, you know, he likes to leak stuff. He likes being described, I think, as a practice of the dark arts in politics.

HH: Well, Murray Chotiner…

CT:
And this goes right into his pattern of practicing dark arts. And in this case, instead of politics, it’s world diplomacy.

HH: Yeah.

CT:
I agree it’s, if proven, and I think more of us are looking into this, I think it just, it only, all it does is no one thing will take her down. It’s the accumulation of bits like this that then feed the narrative of oh, do you want ten more years of what you didn’t like about the Clintons.

HH: You know, Richard Nixon had Murray Chotiner. Reagan had Lyn Nofziger. Lee Atwater was George Herbert Walker Bush’s guy.

CT:
Yeah.

HH: But Sid Blumenthal is known as Sid Vicious for a reason, and none of those people, to my knowledge, ran a foreign private intelligence operation, because it raises, Chuck Todd, and this would go…

CT:
Well, I don’t know about Nixon. Don’t forget ol’ G. Gordon. But when he was around…

HH: Well, he was [acting] domestically, domestically. But here’s what [the Sid Blumenthal story] raises. If [Hillary Clinton has] got a private server and a private citizen collecting private intel [and sending it to her], it is highly likely it’s compromised going into the Secretary of State’s server. I mean, it’s just going to raise all sorts of fun. If there was on the right someone with the chops of some of the famous investigative reporters for
The New Yorker
, this would be keeping them up all night.

CT:
I think, and look, I think all things Sid are going to become a big part of our, I think this is going to get a lot of attention. And I don’t think it’s a right, left, right, center. And you know, this is going to be, I think, the more explosive part of the first time she testifies on Benghazi. I mean, I think the Blumenthal stuff is going to be the stickiest wicket for her.

CHAPTER 37

An Interview with the
New York Times’
Mark Leibovitch, November 19, 2014

HH: Mark, let’s talk about Hillary. You have these letters, these Peavoy letters. Did you copy all of them?

ML: I did.

HH: That’s just…

ML:
I mean, I think all of them. There was all, the one that filled the box were about 30 of them. And yeah, no, I have them in a file cabinet about 10 feet from my desk right now.

HH: Now one, you might get a break-in very quickly, but you wrote in your profile of Hillary from July 29th of 2007, that once she became aware of them, she respectfully wrote Mr. Peavoy, Professor Peavoy, and requested copies, which he dutifully sent to her.

ML:
Yes, it’s true. So she knows they exist. I mean, she obviously knows after I published some of them. But no, I think he then told me that like he kind of dropped off the White House Christmas card list.

HH: You also update, though, your portrait of Hillary by noting in the introduction a 2014 speech that she gave that there is, “a relentless scrutiny that now stalks not only people in politics, but people in all kinds of public arenas, and it gives you the sense of being kind of dehumanized.” You’re struck by the words
stalking
and
dehumanization.

ML:
Yeah, those are pretty strong words. I mean,
dehumanize
, especially, is the kind of word you would associate with people who have been exploited, who have been, you know, imprisoned or abused, or something like that. So yeah, you don’t very often hear someone worth a hundred million dollars
using terms like that, but I see what she means. I mean, it is not a dignified exercise to go through the scrutiny that someone at that level has to go through. But at the same time, you know, this is what they’re signing up for.

HH: It’s also another reason to read
Citizens Of the Green Room
. I had missed this entirely, this speech that she gave, which was apparently fairly self-reflective, saying as well, “You can’t really ever feel like you’re having a normal day. It can be done, but you never forget that you’re in that public arena.” As I thought about that, you really don’t want to be a 69 year old woman who’s going to get photographed in their bathing suit, do you, Mark?

ML:
You know, I wouldn’t know, just because I’ve never been a 69 year old woman, but I’m guessing that that wouldn’t be her first choice of photograph attire. But I can’t say for sure.

HH: But it also applies to everything else that she does. You remark that all public people are almost always on.

ML:
Right.

HH: She can’t be anything but on, on, on.

ML:
Well, that’s the thing. I mean, I think in a case like the Clintons, you just, I mean, you have to wonder do they even know what normal looks like, or what does normal look like. I mean, forget the things that people fixate on, like she hasn’t had a driver’s license in X number of years and all that. I mean, that’s, part of being an ex-president and an ex-first lady, and being Secretary of State. I mean, it’s just the bubble of public life. I mean, that’s one thing you can sort of intuit that it not something any of us will ever identify with. But no, just knowing, and being accustomed for, what, I mean, she was first, they first went to, he was first elected governor in ’78, right?