Politics

Hillary Clinton aides joked about Ted Kennedy’s death

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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Years after Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential primary campaign against then-Senator Barack Obama, unnamed former Clinton aides joked to one another about what happened to various Democrats who they “felt had betrayed them” in the primary, according to The Hill:

“‘Bill Richardson: investigated; John Edwards: disgraced by scandal; Chris Dodd: stepped down,’ one said to another. ‘Ted Kennedy,’ the aide continued, lowering his voice to a whisper for the punch line, ‘dead.'”

Bill Clinton desperately pleaded with Sen. Kennedy over the phone in 2008 to not endorse Obama, even reminding the senior senator that Clinton as president in 1999 kept the Coast Guard looking for John F. Kennedy Jr.’s missing plane days longer than usual, according to the 2008 campaign tell-all book “Game Change.”

“A few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee,” Clinton told Sen. Kennedy, according to Kennedy’s remembrance of the conversation to a friend, which was paraphrased in the book.

The Clintons sat beside the Obamas at Kennedy’s funeral on Aug. 29, 2009.

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