Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook became upset over statements Clinton adviser Phillipe Reines made to a reporter about the campaign’s relationship with the press, saying the statements made him “very nervous.”
The email chain, which began Feb. 18, 2015, was published by WikiLeaks. Campaign press secretary Nick Merrill sent the National Journal story to members of Clinton’s inner circle, including Mook, Reines and campaign chairman John Podesta.
“There are three parties to this equation: we’re one, the source is two, and the media is three. And arguably we have the least amount of influence on any of this,” Reines told National Journal. “We just have to sit back. We just have to grin and bear it.”
Reines is later quoted as saying in the article, “What gets lost is there are no consequences for [the source or the media] when they’re wrong — there just aren’t,” he said. “If you were to go back and look at the last three, four, five, six months of coverage about Secretary Clinton, you’re going to see certain reporters who cover her closely whose accuracy rate is less than 50/50.”
“It’s not like you read something and say, ‘Oh my gosh, that could have been 97 people.’ You tend to know. Not 100 percent of the time, but … I think sources would probably shrivel up if they knew that when these things happen, there’s usually a four-minute conversation about, ‘Oh, that was probably X … I think people would be mortified. I don’t think they realize how much that happens,” Reines told National Journal.
Mook was unimpressed with Reines’s statements. “This makes me very nervous,” Mook told Podesta. “Do you know what his status is going to be next year? Is she going to keep him as a consultant.”
Podesta, however, disagreed with Mook’s assessment.
“I may be losing it but I thought Phillipe was fine in this. Actually helpful,” replied Podesta.
Mook responded, “I worry that (a) he’s going on the record without checking about what he should say–not the end of the world now, but definitely a problem after we file–and (b) I don’t think it’s helpful for any of us to be amplifying process stories about our world being fucked up or how reporters aren’t doing their jobs. To me, it reinforces our bad relationship with the press and is a self fulfilling prophecy.”
