Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman Donna Brazile said Saturday that her party “got cocky” during the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Examiner reports.
Brazile, a CNN commentator during the election, shared questions with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton before a town hall debate. She also blames Russian hackers for the unexpected defeat.
Brazile was speaking in Phoenix, Arizona, at a DNC event where she ventured to explain why the party lost the presidency, the House and the Senate.
In a preface to her presentation, Brazile said, “I’m not going to sugercoat it. We failed. We came up short. We made some serious mistakes. Some stategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”
But Brazile also repeated U.S. intelligence suggestions that the Russians were responsible for “denigrating” Clinton’s presidential hopes.
WikiLeaks released hacked Democratic Party emails and emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta throughout the election.
Brazile praised the DNC staffers for their perseverance during the election.
“Let me just say how proud I am of the DNC and all the staffers who lived through that,” Brazile said. “They were attacked and harassed every day — often attacked by the people who should know better.”
Brazile blamed a third phenomenon for adverse Democratic fortunes: “extraordinary circumstances.”
“They turned our own media into a weapon,” Brazile said. “They hired an army of trolls to spread lies and distract from the real issues.”
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