Nearly two years ago the addition of an unintentional “r” helped CNN’s Brianna Keilar land a coveted sit-down interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
There was only one problem: Clinton had actually wanted to speak with Yahoo! Finance’s Bianna Golodryga. But one of Clinton’s aides added a single consonant to Golodryga’s name in communicating with other staffers, and the rest is political history.
The error was revealed in a new book, “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which documents a campaign that was far from letter-perfect in many other ways as well.
“There was a press strategy laid out by the press team,” explained Keilar during a joint appearance with Golodryga on CNN’s “Newsroom” Tuesday, noting that Clinton’s plan was to conduct interviews with a collection of beat reporters on the trail. The series of conversations was supposed to begin with Golodryga.
“This was transmitted for approval to Huma Abedin,” said Keilar, who joined CNN’s Newsroom on Tuesday. “Huma Abedin approved it thinking I was Bianna.”
On set with Keilar and host Brooke Baldwin, Golodryga admitted to being in the dark throughout the entire mix-up.
“I had no idea this was going on. I found out when I was reading the book because I’m interviewing one of the authors,” she explained. “It happens all the time that my name gets butchered. I never thought it would impede me from participating in what would be one of the biggest stories of my life.”
Baldwin and Keilar together recalled the evening that Keilar learned she would be given the interview.
“I was in your apartment when you got the call that you got the interview,” Baldwin said.
“It would have been a fantastic interview if Bianna had done it,” Keilar quickly noted.
As minor a mistake as it may have been, there’s an argument to be made that it was emblematic of the Democratic candidate’s campaign.
“It’s indicative to the bigger problem that her entire campaign was plagued with,” Golodryga said. “If this had been the biggest issue her campaign had, they wouldn’t be sweating it today… in a normal campaign, especially of this size and magnitude, I don’t think something like this would have happened.”
There is no tension between Keilar and Golodryga even after the revelation of the mix-up.
“We like each other,” laughed Golodryga during their appearance, reaching to her left to embrace Keilar.