Back in the early days of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, shortly before her official announcement video (and a couple months before her second official campaign kickoff), her campaign manager wondered where his candidate stood on trade.
In an email illegally obtained and released by Wikileaks, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook was asked if the former secretary of state would be willing to sign onto a letter in support of trade. The letter was presented to Mook by White House aide David Simas, who presented the letter as a bipartisan effort among Republicans and Democrats.
Mook forwarded Simas’ email to other top members of Team Clinton, including Jake Sullivan, Jennifer Palmieri, John Podesta and Kristina Schake. Mook at the time didn’t know where Clinton stood on the issue of trade.
“I can’t recall where we landed exactly on trade,” Mook wrote. “Is she going to say she supports it?”
He followed up by directly addressing the letter: “Regardless of her position, signing a letter feels like poking the bear with labor to me.”
Clinton had voted for multiple trade agreements as a senator, and once called the Trans-Pacific Partnership the “gold standard” in trade agreements. But in March of 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders was looking more and more like he was about to run for president, and gave a speech on the Senate floor against TPP.
Sanders based much of his campaign on his opposition to TPP, and Clinton began changing her tune on the issue as she struggled against the openly socialist senator from Vermont who was giving her campaign a run for its money. Clinton is now against TPP and pretending she always was, but this email shows that even in the early stages of her campaign, her position wasn’t clear.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
