Leaked emails purportedly sent between staffers at the Democratic National Committee and reporters show that some in Hillary Clinton’s camp were worried that the DNC strategy for fighting Donald Trump might actually help to make Donald Trump seem like a legitimate choice by some voters come November.
Thousands of emails and documents were published online Friday by Wikileaks. In one published exchange between DNC spokesman Luis Miranda and treasurer Andrew Tobias, staffers discuss the Clinton campaign’s concern that voters will see Trump as a “viable option.”
“[T]here is a faction within Clinton world that seems to be in the mindset that they can win without anyone else,” Miranda said in an “off the record” email to Tobias on May 22, which laid out what he saw as flaws in Clinton’s logic. “[T]hey’re promoting the idea that the focus should be on showing how Republicans are shunning Trump because he’s so extreme.”
Miranda then made it clear that Clinton’s team didn’t like the DNC’s plan, which was to focus on criticizing and blaming Republicans in Congress. Clinton’s team apparently thought that plan would only help Trump, since it could offer him legitimacy by comparing him to elected officials.
“They worry that our narrative, the points you make about who to blame, make Trump look like everyone else, and thus a viable option,” he wrote.
His comments came after arguing that they should “blame Republicans in Congress for the rise of Trump.”
“[M]ost of the R’s in Congress are more extreme and more dogmatic,” Tobias replied.
The DNC has not confirmed or denied the authenticity of the 167 emails leaked Friday, but reporters who have had their communications exposed, such as CNN’s Jake Tapper, have spoken out to defend the contents of some of the records, suggesting at least a portion of the conversations are real.
