This week’s WikiLeaks publication of stolen emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta reveals some inner turmoil about negative campaigning against Democratic primary opponents — and it seems to be Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves who are on the nastier side of the debate.
On Saturday, January 16, 2016, Neera Tanden, who currently helps run the Clinton campaign transition team, wrote to Podesta to tell him “well done tweet!”
The tweet in question, sent that day, was likely one from Podesta to David Brock, telling him to stop demanding that Clinton’s then-rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, release his medical records.
“Chill out,” Podesta tweeted to Brock. “We’re fighting on who would make a better President, not on who has a better Physical Fitness Test.”
Podesta responded that he was irritated because he’d wanted to send the tweet the day before but had been told to hold it.
“I am passed (sic) about one thing,” Podesta responded. “I suggested doing that at 4:30 and got held.”
“You mean pissed?” Tanden asked. “Got held by who? Hillary. God. Her instincts are suboptimal. Pretty typical though. I would not be surprised if wjc told him to do it. Just as I’m pretty sure mark Penn didn’t do his cocaine rang against Obama without some higher up approval.”
Tanden here is giving voice (in a private and since stolen email) to a concern that President Bill Clinton told Brock to attack Sanders’ health, and also suggesting that in 2007 when Clinton aide Mark Penn on MSNBC repeatedly mentioned then-Senator Obama’s high school era cocaine use, he had been told to do so by someone much higher up.
Tanden could not be immediately reached for comment.