A bombshell excerpt from former Democratic National Committee Chairman Donna Brazile’s new presidential election memoir suggests that party leaders, under the direction of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, “rigged” the nomination in her favor — and according to Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, that’s exactly what happened.
The Cambridge Democrat admitted as much during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Brazile’s account walks readers through the tactics Clinton’s campaign apparently used in order to control the party’s fund-raising mechanisms, an agreement forged between top Clinton handlers like former campaign director Robby Mook and the DNC which “specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy and all the money raised.”
“This is a real problem,” Warren told Tapper during a discussion about Brazile’s book, slated for a November 7 release. “But what we’ve got to do as Democrats, now, is we’ve got to hold this party accountable.”
Warren explained that when current DNC Chairman Tom Perez, who replaced U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, first ascended to the position, the first conversation she had with him involved her telling him he must “put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats rather than Democrats are working for the party.”
“He’s being tested now,” Warren said of Perez. “This is a test for Tom Perez, and either he’s going to succeed by bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders representatives into this process, and they’re going to say it’s fair, it works, we all believe it, or he’s going to fail, and I very much hope he succeeds.”
Tapper then turned the focus back to the nomination process and asked Warren directly: “Do you believe with the notion that it was rigged?”
“Yes,” Warren said.
Warren, however, had this to say ahead of last November’s presidential election:
Warren previously made headlines for initially removing herself from the primary process that pitted Sanders, whose campaign was built on small donations, and Clinton, who was a vocal opponent of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision recognizing the right of corporations to get involved in national politics.
Warren, whose own progressive political leanings more closely mirror Sanders’s than Clinton’s, finally voiced her endorsement for Clinton during a June 9, 2016, appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show — the same day that then-President Barack Obama announced he would be backing Clinton over Sanders.
“I’m ready,” Warren told Maddow at the time. “I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States — and to make sure that Donald Trump never gets anyplace close to the White House.”
On the same day that she spoke with Tapper, Warren released a video via social media showing her and Sanders teaming up to denounce the tax package being floated by Trump and Congressional Republicans:
The GOP unveiled their tax proposal this morning. Who wins and who loses in their plan? Bernie and I will tell you. pic.twitter.com/AjXyKyA8AA
