Wikileaks: Clinton Camp Entertained Having Pitbull Produce a Hillary Song

As part of a list of self-admitted “goof ball” suggestions, a Clinton confidante floated the idea of getting a popular music artist like Pitbull or “Timberlan” write a song for Hillary Clinton.

The revelation is part of a collection of thousands of emails posted by the organization Wikileaks, alleged to have come from the email account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

In an August 2015 email, Capricia Marshall – former Chief of Protocol in the State Department while Hillary Clinton ran it and described in a September 2016 Politico profile as one of the friends “tamed” by the Clinton campaign – fires off some ideas for the campaign. Marshall, who is of Latin American descent, says the ideas are intended to help the campaign in “my focus – women and Latinas,” but are “goof ball [sic] suggestions” intended only as a jumping off point.

One of these suggestions involves millennial engagement:

The song – Not sure you are thinking of it yet — but I watched my son and his pals listen to music – they are similar to millennials. They only really listen to about 30 seconds – 1 minute then switch to another song. With that in mind – if a producer like Timberlan [sic, producer Timbaland], Common or Pitbull produced a song for her – with an intro – i.e. “scratch” at the top and then have songs of the same theme from 2-3 artists who like her, cut into this produced song – it could be quite cool – I think?? Completely understand rights and costs here – but could be a cool factor.

 

Campaign manager Robby Mook responds to this suggestion, “I’m culturally inept so I leave this to JP [Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri] and others.”

 

 

The Clinton campaign debuted a song during this year’s Democratic National Convention which did not feature any of these individuals. Instead, it was a cover of the Rachel Platten song “Fight Song,” sung acapella by a host of celebrities including actresses Elizabeth Banks, Jane Fonda, and America Ferrara.

While both Common and Timbaland have endorsed Hillary Clinton, Pitbull has not, though he has vocally opposed Republican nominee Donald Trump.