Trump & Clinton Aides Meet & CLASH!

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

 

Clinton and Trump Aides Clash at Campaign Managers Conference

 

"Deeply divided camps offered an unfiltered oral history of their campaigns at Harvard's quadrennial postmortem.

Face to face with the foe, top aides from Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns clashed furiously, at time shouting over each other and tossing out catty asides about their opposite candidates. It was a fitting postlude to a caustic campaign.

Harvard’s Kennedy School hosted its quadrennial Campaign Managers Conference on Wednesday and Thursday, and the deeply divided camps offered an often unfiltered oral history of their campaigns. Trump’s victorious team wasn’t shy about reminding the vanquished of their defeat, and the loss was still raw for Clinton’s team. For some of the operatives, it was the first time meeting their rivals, and, in the case of the Clinton aides, it was their first public appearance since the Nov. 8 surprise.

“You’re making me remember such a wonderful moment in my life,” Clinton campaign chief Robby Mook said with more than a hint of woe, before dutifully taking his grilling from reporters and Harvard students about what went wrong. The diagnosis was inconclusive.

Over two days, the top aides from every major campaign but two — those of Ohio Governor John Kasich and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania were no shows — reflected for the Kennedy School project on the first postelection history of a campaign that saw a billionaire, former reality-show star catapult past rivals with more traditional credentials. But there were flashes of frustration if not anger for winners and losers alike.

“Don’t act as if you have some kind of mandate,” Obama strategist Joel Benenson said of Clinton’s victory in the popular vote but not the all-important Electoral College.

“Hey, guys, we won,” fired back Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. 

“You guys are bitter,” Conway added after another exchange. “You’re all bitter.”

Her assessment wasn’t far off, and winning did little to instill a sense of humility.

“I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” said Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri, attacking Trump’s courting of the “alt-right.” “I am more proud of Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech than any other moment on the campaign.”

 

Some key takeaways:

Ted Cruz’s campaign advised Trump

Heading into the final weekend before New Hampshire voted, Cruz campaign maven Jeff Roe called his counterpart in Trump’s organization. The blustery New Yorker was on track to win the state that Cruz was largely ceding it. Cruz’s research showed voters were on the precipice of switching allegiances. If Trump could tone down some of his fireworks and campaign with a bit less acidity, he could sew up the state. Trump took the good advice, and he used a win in the state to start his string of wins. “Donald Trump changed his strategy on Thursday before the Tuesday election, to be positive,” said Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s manager at the time. “That was the recipe moving forward.”

 

Everyone hates the media …

The press was a target of every campaign team, who objected to everything from the time given to Donald Trump’s rallies to the rules used for debate qualifications. Trump’s campaign blasted the press for its coverage of their candidate. “The largest super PAC, called the media,” his digital director Brad Parscale sneered. “We had media bias that we had to spend money and energy to push and correct the message … We had to fight media bias and corporate bias.”

And Mook said the political forecasters signaled that a Clinton win was inevitable, driving down voting numbers. “When the New York Times or the other prognosticators say you have a 90% chance of winning, that suppresses [voters],” Mook said.

It was a good tactic. Surveys consistently say they do not trust the media, and Trump’s war on them boosted his appeal to the working-class voters who were looking for a candidate who would fight for them. “We actively picked fights with the Union Leader,” Lewandowski said of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper and called its publisher Joe McQuaid “a bad guy.”

 

But the Clinton campaign really hates the media

Palmieri criticized the press for providing airtime to Trump and ignoring their candidate. “He gets all the coverage and you guys only covered her when she was talking about him,” she said.

The Clinton team also piled on attacks for how the media covered Clinton’s use of a private email server. “It’s going to go down in history as the most grossly overrated, overcovered and most destructive story in all of presidential politics,” Palmieri said. “If I made one mistake it was legitimizing the way the press covered this story line.”

Mook echoed with a critique of the coverage of WikiLeaks emails — stolen private messages of Democratic National Committee staffers and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. “The media didn’t seem willing to put that in the proper context of the deep connections that Donald Trump had [with Russia],” he said.

Clinton aides repeatedly asserted that their boss — a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State — was treated as an incumbent President from the first day of the campaign. A frequent point of frustration was her paid speeches between her time at the State Department and her campaign. Palmieri said she read the speeches and initially favored just releasing them to get them out there. However, she came to realize it would never be enough. “They would be poured over, comma by comma,” Palmieri said.

 

CNN takes a lashing

CNN honcho Jeff Zucker came under sustained fire while participating in a media panel over Wednesday evening dinner of fish. The former NBC executive who green-lit The Apprentice faced questions about his network’s extensive and unedited coverage of Trump. He was jeered and heckled by the audience of campaign operatives and journalists, who questioned his decision to hire former Trump campaign manager Lewandowski and to allow Trump surrogates to continuously air falsehoods on his air. One reporter questioned Zucker’s decision to ask Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson — a “nut job” in her estimation — on shows even after she was shown to be factually challenged.

 

Twitter is king

Trump fundamentally changed how campaigns are fought, and Twitter was the favorite battlefield for Trump. “Donald Trump has just tweeted from his pajamas,” Lewandowski marveled. “Fox News would cover it live.” True. And it bedeviled his rivals who couldn’t match the machismo online. “It was like owning the New York Times without the overhead or the debt,” Trump aide Michael Glassner said. And when Trump stepped into controversy, he could fire off a late-night tweet and turn the page. “He has the ability to change the narrative with 140 characters,” Lewandowski said.

The result was that the traditional campaign infrastructure didn’t much matter. “People were really, really excited about President-elect Trump. They were not about Hillary Clinton,” said Mike DuHaime, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s campaign strategist. “The candidates have to be exciting for that to matter.”

 

Hillary is self-critical

Clinton, who has said she lacks the political talents of her husband, remained in a dark place even heading into Election Day. She was still bracing for a loss, even as polls showed her campaign heading toward a victory. “There was no one who was less surprised that she lost than Hillary Clinton,” said Palmieri, who added that Clinton insisted on expecting the worst. “She doesn’t expect everything to go her way.” Palmieri said.

Mook also said former President Bill Clinton remains deeply upset about the results.

 

Mook wanted his team in foxhole

Seeing polls showing Clinton heading toward a loss in her primary against Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, Mook put out the call: everyone head north, whether they were tech engineers or political professionals. “The entire campaign was there. We literally emptied out our headquarters,” Mook said. Clinton lost by 22 percentage points. “We went through that experience together,” Mook said, saying he wanted his team unified in loss. In part, it is why no one blames Mook for the campaign loss.

 

The Clinton campaign also hates James Comey

The FBI director was a frequent target of the Clinton team, for providing what Mook called “the single greatest headwinds we had in this campaign.” That is, his pair of letters in the final 10 days of the campaign. Clinton’s team believes the first letter alienated some soft Clinton supporters, while the second energized Trump’s base. “Mr. Comey seems to care little about FBI precedents,” sniped Benenson, Clinton’s strategist and pollster. 

Earlier in the campaign, Mook was on the phone with White House political director David Simas when Comey went to the television cameras for an unprecedented press conference to criticize Clinton’s use of private email. “I think we had better got off the phone and watch this,” Mook said to his counterpart. Neither knew just how far Comey would go."

 

CONTINUED: http://time.com/4588449/campaign-managers-conference-2016-election/

 

[Luc 4,776]

What a mess. 

 

I don't even want to hear about that whole fiasco anymore. The e-mails  I would not be surprised if Comey's actions were mentioned in future history books as what caused a demagogue to be elected.

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

9 minutes ago, Luc said:

What a mess. 

 

I don't even want to hear about that whole fiasco anymore. The e-mails  I would not be surprised if Comey's actions were mentioned in future history books as what caused a demagogue to be elected.

EXACTLY ^^  A college course on how NOT to behave if you go to work in government!  SMFH   

 

[Lion Heart 15,041]

 

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

9 minutes ago, Lion Heart said:

 

 EXACTLY!   

 

[President Trump 3,508]

3 hours ago, En_Sabah_Nur said:

 EXACTLY!   

 

 

4 hours ago, Lion Heart said:

 

No, I'm sorry. Kellyanne dominated this conversation. The women that says "Yes" in this picture was stuttering the entire conversation, and kept repeating herself, in manners that one might deem as "frantic." Kellyanne was extraordinarily calm and made better points. I am aware that this opinion is disregarded and I'm usually attacked, but come on. No harm intended. Just my opinion.

Also this topic was very interesting

[En_Sabah_Nur 9,366]

28 minutes ago, Ma Ma Pa Pa Pa said:

 

No, I'm sorry. Kellyanne dominated this conversation. The women that says "Yes" in this picture was stuttering the entire conversation, and kept repeating herself, in manners that one might deem as "frantic." Kellyanne was extraordinarily calm and made better points. I am aware that this opinion is disregarded and I'm usually attacked, but come on. No harm intended. Just my opinion.

Also this topic was very interesting

...And on that note, I'll just leave you to your opinion.