Former interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile has taken aim at Barack Obama and his alleged ‘Titanic ego’ in her new book.
Brazile, who took over the DNC from Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz after the email leaks last summer, also claimed that the former president ‘leeched’ the Democratic party of its vitality, leaving Hillary Clinton to ‘bail it out.’
In an excerpt from her new book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, she accused Obama of caring ‘deeply about his image’ and using DNC funds to bankroll his ‘pollster and focus groups’ – even into his second term when he was unable to run again.
Former interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile (left) has taken aim at Barack Obama (right) and his ‘Titanic ego’ in her new book
Brazile wrote that the ‘three titanic egos’ of Obama, Clinton and Wasserman Schultz had ‘stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes.’
‘We had three Democratic parties: The party of Barack Obama, the party of Hillary Clinton, and this weak little vestige of a party led by [Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz] that was doing a very poor job getting people who were not president elected,’ Brazile wrote.
Obama ‘used the party to provide for political expenses like gifts to donors, and political travel,’ Brazile continued, in the book. ‘This was not working to strengthen the party.
‘He left it in debt. Hillary bailed it out so that she could control it, and Debbie went along with all of this because she liked the power and perks of being a chair but not the responsibilities,’ Brazile wrote.
In an excerpt from her new book (above) Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House, she accused Obama of caring ‘deeply about his image’
The 57-year-old former Al Gore campaign manager added that it was clear Obama, Clinton and Wasserman Schultz all ‘loved’ the Democrat party and would never act in any malice against it, it hadn’t stopped them, when they ‘leeched it of its vitality and were continuing to do so.’
Brazile is promoting her book which details her time as DNC chair after Wasserman Schultz resigned over the email leaks.
In it she also attacked Clinton for her insular campaign, claiming it was like a ‘cult’.
During her appearance on Morning Joe, Wednesday, she agreed with co-host Joe Scarborough who said that President Trump didn’t get himself into the White House, but instead his win was because of mistakes the Clinton campaign made.
Clinton is famous for keeping a cache of close aides at her side and not letting a lot of new faces in.
‘It was a cult. It felt like it was a cult,’ the New Orleans native said. ‘You could not penetrate them.’
Brazile, in a preview of her book that ran in Politico Magazine, had already outed what she referred to as the ‘cancer’ of the party, a joint fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, which gave Clinton and her cohorts decision-making power over the political party.
‘The cancer was that the DNC had signed the – the staff of the DNC, not an officer … had signed a memorandum with the staff of the Clinton campaign to take over certain departments in exchange for bailing us out,’ Brazile explained.
Brazile is promoting her book which details her time as DNC chair after Wasserman Schultz resigned over the email leaks. In it she also attacked Clinton (pictured last week in New York) for her insular campaign, claiming it was like a ‘cult’
She added that Obama (in Chicago last week) sued DNC funds to bankroll his ‘pollster and focus groups’ – even into his second term
Clinton’s former Campaign Manager Robby Mook has countered that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was given the same offer from the DNC, but declined.
Brazile said that Clinton’s version of bailing the DNC out was putting the political party on a ‘starvation diet,’ which the former DNC chair said was a bad thing.
‘Because it stopped me from doing my job,’ she said. ‘It stopped me from doing my job as chair.’
Hacks also blasted Wasserman Schultz and the FBI for their ‘incompetence’ over the hacks.
‘On June 14, Debbie invited the Democratic Party officers to a conference call to alert us that a story about hacking the DNC that would be published in the Washington Post the following day,’ Brazile writes in the book – excerpts of which were posted Tuesday on Fox News.
Brazile writes that Wasserman Schultz had a tone that was ‘so casual’ in response to the hacks.
‘That call was the first time we’d heard that there was a problem.’
Just before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last year, WikiLeaks dumped a massive cache of over 19,000 emails – some of which showed that Wasserman Schultz expressed a clear preference for Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders.
The embarrassment over the revelations resulted in Wasserman Schultz resigning and Brazile taking over as interim chair.
Former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile (left) writes in a new book that her predecessor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (right), did not respond quickly enough to the hacking of emails
After senior Democratic Party officials were made aware of the hacks, Brazile says that both the party leadership and the FBI displayed ‘incompetence.’
Brazile writes that the Democratic Party’s IT contractor simply ‘let it go’ after being contacted by the FBI once it learned of the hacks.
She writes that it took seven months before Wasserman Schultz was made aware of the hacks.
‘By the time Debbie finally found out about the hack, the Russians had been in the system for almost a year without anyone noticing,’ Brazile writes.
She also criticizes the FBI for failing to directly notify Wasserman Schultz sooner about the hacks.
Instead, according to Brazile, the FBI made numerous calls to the DNC about alleged Russian hacking ‘but never got anyone to respond.’
Brazile writes that two senior Obama administration officials, then-Attorney General Eric Holder and former national security adviser Susan Rice, both told her that the DNC ‘took a long time’ to respond to the FBI.