Top Clinton aide Robby Mook: This campaign is about Hillary, not Bill
With Donald Trump and his allies signaling they’re going to put former President Bill Clinton’s infidelity front and center in the campaign, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Sunday that Trump is running against Hillary Clinton, not Bill.
“I think Donald Trump’s campaign is spiraling, they are trying to figure out a way to dig out of this mess,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in St. Louis. “This race is between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.”
“If we need to discuss the issues that were raised in that video with Donald Trump that’s fine, but the question here is what is Hillary Clinton’s take on that issue, not her husband,” he added.
As Trump faces fallout from the Friday release of a 2005 tape, which showed Trump making lewd comments about his attempted advances on women, he and his campaign have made it clear that they consider Bill Clinton’s history with women to be fair game in the campaign.
In his apology video Friday night, Trump said Bill Clinton “actually abused women” and Hillary Clinton “bullied women.” And on Sunday morning, Trump tweeted out a link to an interview with Juanita Broddrick, a woman who alleged Bill Clinton raped her in the 1970s.
Mook said the Clintons’ marital issues have been well-discussed in the last two decades and that voters don’t want to hear about it.
“Look, the Clintons had a rough time in their marriage 20 years ago, that was litigated out,” he said. “At this debate tonight and in the rest of this campaign we want to focus on the issues, and that’s what Hillary is going to do.”
As for the new information that surfaced Friday about Clinton in the latest Wikileaks release, which appeared to show transcripts from Clinton’s closed-door speeches to Wall Street firms, Mook said the documents are an attempt by the Russian government to distract the campaigns. He also said the campaign had not verified the documents, which appeared to be from campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.
“These documents were dumped out there by the Russian government,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security took the unprecedented step this week of saying this was beyond the shadow of the doubt the Russians and they did it to help Donald Trump. They want us to be bogged down in this, we want to be focused on the issues and I can’t verify any of these documents.”
Still, Mook insisted, Clinton’s position on issues relating to Wall Street and trade, both of which were touched on in the releases, are the same publicly as they are behind closed doors.
“She went to the floor of the NASDAQ and said what Wall Street was doing was wrong,” he said. “And Bernie Sanders has come out and said he’s reviewed this information … Bernie Sanders himself has weighed in and said the choice in this election is clear, Donald Trump cannot become president, we have to elect Hillary.”
