By Andrew Stiles
HEATSTEET
Hillary Clinton was so enraged that Bill Clinton was forced to cancel a paid speech at Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley in 2015 that she “needed a cool down period,” according to email published by WikiLeaks on Friday.
“Morgan Stanley is coming down,” wrote Robby Mook, Hillary’s current campaign manager, in an email to top Clinton aides, adding that John Podesta, Hillary’s current campaign chairman, had made the call.
Huma Abedin explained that Hillary would not be happy about it. “HRC very strongly did not want him to cancel that particular speech,” Abedin wrote. “I will have to tell her that [Bill] chose to cancel it, not that we asked.
Mook explained that, because Hillary was planning to launch her campaign on April 12th or 13th (she launched on the 12th), the optics of Bill giving a paid speech to a Wall Street bank could make for a “bad rollout.”
After consulting Hillary, Huma relayed that “HRC is reiterating her original position. She does not want him to cancel.”
Mook wrote back with a long explanation for why allowing Bill to go forward with the speech would be a “very consequential unforced error and could plague us for months,” mostly because voters in Iowa, the first primary state, have very low opinions about Wall Street.
Mook, however, did recognize “the sacrifice and disappointment that canceling will create,” presumably because of the Clintons’ insatiable quest for money. Both Bill and Hillary were pulling in about $200,000 to $300,000 per speech at the time.
Huma apparently was able to persuade Hillary that canceling was the right think to do. Hillary “just needed a cool down period” to process her rage.
