Senior Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin argued to top staffers that Clinton should consider not taking questions from the press for fear of overshadowing her presidential campaign’s message, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.
{mosads}“Can we survive not answering questions from press at message events[?]” Abedin, who serves as Clinton’s campaign vice chairwoman, asked in a May 2015 email, according to Politico. “Her [David Dinkins Forum] speech and immigration message broke through because we didn’t take questions.”
In contrast, Abedin wrote, the Democratic presidential nominee’s desired narrative got lost when she took questions after other speeches.
“Her community banks message got lost because she answered questions about the foundation and emails,” she wrote.
“In the fall, starting to do avails at message events, interviews, and q and a with press but having had a series of policy proposals already announced and reported on that she could point to.”
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta disagreed.
“If she thinks we can get to Labor Day without taking press questions, I think that’s suicidal,” he wrote back.
“We have to find some mechanism to let the stream out of the pressure cooker.”
At one point, Clinton went 275 days without holding a formal press conference until breaking the drought in September.
More than 6,500 emails from Podesta’s private email account have been released by WikiLeaks in recent days. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed to be in possessions of at least 50,000.