Report: DNC staffer blows up at Donna Brazile at post-election meeting
At the Democrats’ first post-election staff meeting Thursday, a staffer had a tense exchange with interim chairwoman Donna Brazile, according to The Huffington Post.
A staffer only identified as Zach stood up during the meeting and asked Brazile why Democrats should still trust her to lead the party.
“Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” two people in the room told The Huffington Post. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”
The report said that staffers booed and told him to sit down but Zach continued, calling Brazile “part of the problem.”
“You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy,” he said, according to the report.
Zach eventually left, the report said. A third person who attended the meeting told The Huffington Post that despite the exchange, there was “overwhelming” support for Brazile in the room.
Brazile took over the DNC after then-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out in the wake of a DNC email hack revealing staffers appeared to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the primary process. Brazile was also the subject of controversy later in the campaign, when hacked emails released by WikiLeaks suggested that during the primary campaign, Brazile had obtained a couple of debate questions and passed them along to Clinton
The report comes as former DNC chairman Howard Dean expressed interest in leading the party again, which former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is also considering.
Progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has switched his affiliation back to being an independent, supports Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, for DNC chairman. He was the first Muslim member elected to Congress.