Emails include list of "hits" on Bernie Sanders and attempts to spin media coverage in Hillary Clinton's favor
by Nika Knight, staff writer
October 11, 2016
Common Dreams
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The emails reveal prominent Clinton supporters outside of the campaign were frightened by the unexpected success of Sanders' campaign and often provided advice on how to defeat him. (Photo: ABC/flickr/cc)
WikiLeaks released the third installment of its cache of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's hacked emails early Tuesday, revealing the inner workings of the Clinton camp's efforts to spin news items and influence reporting; their strategies to take down the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); and the often cozy relationship between Podesta and corporate lobbyists.
For instance, one email featured Gordon Giffin, a lobbyist for TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, asking Podesta personally to secure a seat for him at the White House state dinner with Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "Giffin is a [so-called] 'Hillblazer' who has contributed or raised at least $100,000 for Clinton and her joint funds with the Democratic Party," Politico observed.
Another exchange shows top aides struggling to spin contentious moments, including a statement Clinton made last February about her vote for a 2001 bankruptcy bill that favored credit card companies. Clinton said she was pressured to vote for the legislation by women's groups.
"She said women groups [sic] were all pressuring her to vote for it. Evidence does not support that statement," Clinton campaign senior policy adviser Ann O'Leary wrote.
Other notable exchanges reveal the Clinton campaign's attack lines on Sanders' presidential run: one shows Clinton aides soliciting an op-ed from current transition team head (and former Interior Secretary) Ken Salazar that slams Sanders' record on immigration, which Salazar readily provided.
Another, titled "Sanders hits," features a list of points of attack against the Vermont senator. It includes such items as Sanders' record on gay marriage and gun rights, which became popular lines of attack from the Clinton camp during the close Democratic primary contest.
And many emails involving journalists, such as one from Patrick Healy of the New York Times, often reveal the campaign's forthright efforts to manipulate media coverage of Clinton—a tactic that prior email dumps have also shown, as The Intercept reported.
Occasionally, the exchanges also reveal Clinton aides expressing views that oppose the candidate's own: one email from Podesta shows him urging another Clinton staffer to "drop the gmo's [sic]" when the aide tells Podesta she is suffering from a bad migraine. Clinton supports GMO crops and the biotech industry.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks and others continued to sift through the thousands of emails previously published by the group and highlight particularly notable ones:
Our Goals & Strategy
Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate. We have outlined three strategies to obtain our goal:
1) Force all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election;
2) Undermine any credibility/trust Republican presidential candidates have to make inroads to our coalition or independents;
3) Muddy the waters on any potential attack lodged against HRC.
Operationalizing the Strategy
Pied Piper Candidates
There are two ways to approach the strategies mentioned above. The first is to use the field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more “Pied Piper” candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
• Ted Cruz
• Donald Trump
• Ben Carson
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously.
WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks
Clinton's secret strategy shows how Clinton pushed to elevate Donald Trump as early as April 2015 #PodestaEmails https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 …
3:58 PM - 10 Oct 2016
1. The Prime Minister always had a “surprising good relationship” with Hillary; she is “easy to work with”, and that she is more instinctively sympathetic to Israel than the White House. Even during their “famous 43 minute phone call, when he felt like slamming down the phone, he felt she was simply heavily scripted and reading from points prepared by the White House.
2. While the Prime Minister favors a two state solution, neither a majority of the Likud Party nor Bennett’s party does. Indeed, a two state solution has never been in the government guidelines in any Likud-led government.
3. The Prime Minister hoped during his most recent meeting with the President that the new MOU would be announced, but the White House only wanted to announce the intention to negotiate it. He hopes it will be concluded in the next few months. When I asked if Bunker Busting Bombs or the new deep ordinance bomb was on the Israeli request list, he only indicated that “there is no dispute on platforms” between the Administration and Israel. He said the biggest issue is the amount of money, in a lean budget situation. The Israeli Embassy is not going around the Administration to lobby for a higher figure, although they could probably get it. But if the figure is too low, they will wait until the next President.
WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks
Israel PM Netanyahu coms to Hillary Clinton according to private email from Israel ambassador #PodestaEmails2 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/346 …
12:25 PM - 10 Oct 2016
WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks
Univision owner & Clinton doner Haim Saban revealed to be tightly coupled to Clinton Latino strategy #PodestaEmails2 http://www.politico.com/live-blog-updat ... df79c90000 …
12:48 PM - 10 Oct 2016
Dear Investors & Key Advisors,
Wanted to send you a quick update...
As you may have heard with the hard work of the folks at ProgressNow Colorado as part of Colorado¹s ³communication hub² they dug up weeks ago and carefully passed on information to the mainstream media on how the leading GOP candidate for Governor, former Congressman Scott McInnis plagiarized a report he provided on water policy for a foundation in Colorado.
In the past 48 hours, McInnis and the entire Republican party of Colorado are in free-fall. There are now calls even within the Republican party for McInnis to withdraw.
The best part is that ProgressNow Colorado nor any of our allies had their fingerprints on any of the excellent behind-the-scenes work to develop and then break this story. This has led to three straight days of front page Denver Post coverage as well as the editorial below and statewide media, a share of which is linked to below.
Kenneth P. Vogel ✔ @kenvogel
Dem "Dark Money" org @ProgressNowCO boasts it took out GOP gov candidate "without any fingerprints". #transparency https://wikileaks.com/podesta-emails/emailid/886 …
3:36 PM - 10 Oct 2016
The emails also reveal prominent Clinton supporters outside of the campaign were frightened by the unexpected success of Sanders' campaign and often offered unsolicited advice on how to better appeal to voters. "A good amount of exposure of Hillary holding, feeding and playing with her adorable grandchild would greatly help the public understand her," wrote longtime Clinton ally Andy Manatos last fall.
And other missives illustrate that the Clinton campaign was at times pressured to adopt more progressive views. For example, The Hill columnist Brent Budowsky argued to Podesta in March that Clinton should attempt to dovetail with Sanders' policy recommendations, rather than attack the progressive senator, if Clinton hoped to win Sanders' supporters' votes in the future. Budowsky wrote:
[...] Hillary should stop attacking Bernie, especially when she says things that are untrue, which candidly she often does. I am one of the people with credibility to suggest Bernie people support her in November, and she and [chief campaign strategist Joel] Benenson and others have no idea of the damage she does to herself with these attacks, which she does not gain by making. Instead the smart move would be to look for issues where she can dovetail with Bernie. One I am definitely going to suggest would be to take his proposal for a free public college education paid for by a transaction tax on Wall Street speculation and add one new dimension....that to receive this benefit young people should devote one year to some form of community or public service.... There is no reason Hillary cannot not support this.... Right now I am petrified that Hillary is almost totally dependent on Republicans nominating Trump....she has huge endemic political weaknesses that she would be wise to rectify.....even a clown like Ted Cruz would be an even money bet to beat and this scares the hell of out me.....
In response to the WikiLeaks trove, Clinton surrogates and supporters have said that the leaks were orchestrated by Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, despite no evidence to support that claim. "It is absolutely disgraceful that the Trump campaign is cheering on a release today engineered by Vladimir Putin to interfere in this election," Clinton campaign spokesman Glen Caplin said Monday in a statement.