Politics

Former White House Staff: Clintons Were ‘Paranoid,’ Called Secret Service ‘Pigs’

Alex Griswold Media Reporter
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An excerpt from former Bloomberg News reporter Kate Anderson Bower’s new book “The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House” was published by Politico Magazine, and it doesn’t exactly paint the Clintons in the best light.

For one thing, a White House florist confirmed the longstanding rumor that Hillary Clinton once threw a lamp at Bill during a heated argument, while shouting “goddamn bastard!”

“You heard so much foul language” in the Clinton White House, he said. (RELATED: Does Hillary’s Secret Email Address Reveal She’s Ashamed Of Being A Clinton?)

White House help also confirmed that the Lewinsky affair was common knowledge, and that the staff even kept track of “Lewinsky sightings.” “Some on the staff have said that Hillary knew about Lewinsky long before it came out, and that what really upset her was not the affair itself but its discovery and the media feeding frenzy that followed,” Bower writes.

Former White House usher Skip Allen tells Brower the Clintons were “about the most paranoid people I’d ever seen in my life.” Another usher Chris Emery was fired because he taught former first lady Barbara Bush how to use a computer, and later took her call when she had technical problems. But the Clintons saw his call log, became convinced he was informing on them, and found a pretense to fire him.

“I was out of work for a year,” Emery says. “They ripped the rug right out from under me. You wonder what they’d do to someone who’s really powerful.” (VIDEO: Hillary Clinton: Let’s Put Adults In Camps To Fix America’s ‘Fun Deficit’)

One White House staffer shared the disturbing time Chelsea Clinton called a Secret Service Agent a “pig” to his face, a derogatory term for law enforcement:

Chelsea was on the phone. ‘Oh, I’ve got to go,’ she told her friend. ‘The pigs are here.’

The agent turned ‘crimson,’ [White House florist Ronn] Payne recalls. ‘Ms. Clinton, I want to tell you something. My job is to stand between you, your family, and a bullet. Do you understand?’

She replied: ‘Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.’

Other former White House residence workers Bower interviewed were more sympathetic to the Clintons’ desire for secrecy. “I think protecting Chelsea may have had a lot to do with, for lack of a better term, their standoffishness with the staff,” said florist Wendy Elsasser.

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