Hillary Clinton uses her new campaign memoir, What Happened, to take a shot at the friendly New York Times over its decision to endorse her campaign — while also reporting on her email scandal.
In the book, Clinton mentions the Times’ role in breaking the scandal surrounding her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. The Times was one of the outlets, along with the Associated Press that broke the various developments in the scandal that eventually helped sink her campaign.
But, in noting that the paper would go on to endorse her campaign, she took a swipe at the outlet that has traditionally been friendly to her candidacy and aggressive toward Trump’s.
“The Times, as usual, played an outsized role in shaping the coverage of my emails throughout the election,” she wrote. “To me, the paper’s approach felt schizophrenic. It spent nearly two years beating me up about emails, but its glowing endorsement applied some sanity to the controversy.”
“Then in the homestretch of the race, when it mattered most, the paper went right back to its old ways,” she added.
She then blasts the Times for devoting its entire top half of its front page to Comey’s October 29 letter that reopened the investigation into her emails. While this was top news in most major coverage at the time, Clinton slams the Times for airing it “even though there was zero evidence of any wrongdoing and very few facts of any kind, and continued to give it breathless coverage for the rest of the week.”
She then accuses the Times of running “one of the single worst stories of the entire election” when it reported that the FBI saw no link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
“In both cases, it seemed as if speculation and sensationalism trumped sound journalism,” she wrote.
Clinton goes on to claim that “going all the way back to the baseless Whitewater inquisition” in the 1990’s, the Times has viewed her with “hostility and skepticism” and applied “the Clinton Rules” to her.
Finally, adopting a conspiratorial tone, she says: “I suppose this mini-rant guarantees that my book will receive a rip-her-to-shreds review in the Times, but history will agree that this coverage affected the outcome of the election.”
The Times’ subsequent book review of What Happened notes: “[Clinton] needs a separate storage unit to hold her grudges — and her sets of tiny knives.”
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY
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