NEW YORK CITY, New York — Another former Secretary of State’s leaked emails are causing more headaches for the Democratic Party at a time things couldn’t get worse for presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Leaked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell undermine a looming potential endorsement of the Democratic ticket for president. They also show that Powell, major Democratic donors, and even U.S. Senators supporting Clinton have been seriously concerned about whether she is physically fit enough to serve as president of the United States for more than a year.
Former New Jersey GOP governor Christine Todd Whitman, in one leaked email first reported by The Daily Caller, wrote to Powell asking why he had not yet endorsed Clinton for president.
“Have you endorsed her yet?” the late July email, subject line “Hillary,” from Whitman to Powell, read.
“Nope,” Powell responded. “By the way, if you have a WSJ today take a look at my piece on immigration. I can send it you missed. On Oped pages.”
“You’ll recall that in 2008 and 2012 I waited until early fall,” Powell also said, hinting a Clinton endorsement was potentially coming.
On Aug. 2, The Daily Caller also reported, Powell friend and adviser Harlan Ullman asked him: “when are you going to throw the knock out blow?”
“I try not to bother someone who is beating himself and the GOP up. And please, don’t start bugging me like every newsie and getter in town,” Powell answered. “If and when I do it will be known.”
The emails surfaced on the website DCLeaks.com.
Powell, who at one time served as GOP President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, infuriated Republicans when in the 2008 election he endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Obama went on to win, and many Republicans considered Powell a traitor for his actions.
Powell’s leftist views and ties to Democrats—and abandonment of the GOP—is no longer shocking, so that’s why when he called GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump a “national disgrace” it hardly stunned readers.
“Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who served under three Republican presidents, slammed GOP nominee Donald Trump as a ‘a national disgrace’ and an ‘international pariah,’ according to his personal emails seen by BuzzFeed News,” BuzzFeed wrote in a piece hyped by their fellow progressives at The Huffington Post.
Powell said in the email to Emily Miller—a former staffer for Powell at the State Department, now a television journalist—that Trump “is in the process of destroying himself” so there was “no need for Dems to attack him.”
In the pre-Republican National Convention email—when speculation was mounting that Republicans would steal the nomination from Trump on the floor with delegate games, something they ultimately did not do—Powell added that House Speaker Paul Ryan “is calibrating his position again.”
In another email to Miller, on Aug. 21, Powell blasted so-called “birthers”—people who believe that President Obama was not born in the Untied States. Trump has gotten a reputation for having furthered the theories by pressing the president for answers on them back in 2011, but it was the 2008 campaign of Hillary Clinton—against Obama, a race she lost—that drove such questions about the president into the mainstream.
“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote in the email. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”
Perhaps the most important email discovery, however, were March 2015 emails between Powell and major Democratic Party donor Jeffrey Leeds—in which the two discussed how Hillary Clinton’s failing health concerned several senior Democrats, including a U.S. Senator.
In the email chain about Clinton’s health, and the stories that were brewing in the media, Powell wrote to Leeds on March 14, 2015—more than a year ago—that “I think there is something to it.”
Also back in 2015, Leeds & Powell discussed Hillary's health pic.twitter.com/dm4G1WJvus
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 14, 2016
“On HD tv she doesn’t look good,” Powell wrote. “She is working herself to death. After speaking at the UN and doing the crummy press conference she flew to SF to go do a paid gig for EBay and then went to Marc’s house to get ready for a money dinner for the Clinton Foundation. I was in Marc’s second house behind it and ducked her so we didn’t turn loose another email story by being seen together. She then flew back east the next morning. She will turn 70 her first year in office.”
Leeds replied moments later by revealing that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a sitting U.S. Senator, had concerns for Hillary Clinton’s health.
“Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a huge Clinton supporter, said they were both giving speeches at the same event a few months back and she could barely climb the podium steps,” Leeds replied.
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