It’s no secret that Hillary Clinton confidant Sid Blumenthal and the Obama White House never exactly got along. But new e-mails released Friday by the State Department show just how far Blumenthal went to boost his benefactor by insulting her then-boss President Obama — and they reveal that Clinton sometimes agreed with his caustic remarks about the man in the Oval Office.
In one e-mail, titled “AXELROD AND THE MONKEY BUTT” and sent to Clinton on December 17, 2011, Blumenthal was nearly apoplectic over David Axelrod, a White House aide then acting as the senior strategist for Obama’s reelection campaign. He accused the Obama campaign team — in all caps — of “POLITICAL MALPRACTICE” in its attack on then-president candidate Newt Gingrich. (Team Obama had compared Gingrich unfavorably to a monkey climbing a pole.)
“WHY IS THE OBAMA TEAM ATTACKING GINGRICH?!?!” Blumenthal vented. “WHY ARE THEY ACTING AS ADJUNCT TO THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN!?!?! . . . THE STRATEGY SHOULD BE TO LIFT NEWT, UNDERMINE ROMNEY, ANYTHING TO PREVENT HIS NOMINATION, CREATE WEDGES WITHIN THE GOP PRIMARY. WHY IS THE OBAMA TEAM HELPING ROMNEY TRY TO BRING DOWN NEWT!?!?!”
“Who knows????” Clinton replied incredulously, signaling agreement with Blumenthal’s observation.
Several e-mails also show Blumenthal working to boost Clinton’s ego by tearing down Obama — effort s Clinton appeared to do nothing to stop. On March 25, 2009, he specifically e-mailed the new secretary of state to tell her that a new CNN poll put her favorability rating at 71 percent, “seven points higher than Obama at 64 (higher than any recent president at this point).” Blumenthal explained that “you are now credited by Americans as the one who above all represents the US and the world. Obama is now seen as a more political, contentious, partisan figure. You’ve achieved supra-political status.”
An e-mail sent on June 18, 2009 takes another jab at President Obama. “See [New York Times] poll on the public beginning to divide Obama persona from policies?” he asked Clinton. “That’s the vulnerability of charisma. To protect it requires successful policies.”
And in an e-mail from January 9, 2010, Blumenthal slammed the “self-damaging NYT piece planted by WH in today’s paper” about Afghan troop deployments. “[It’s] near insane, WH picking open fight with military over Afghan deployment,” he wrote, accusing the Obama White House of being in “out of control campaign mode.”
Blumenthal was specifically barred by the White House from working for Clinton’s State Department, largely due to his work digging up dirt on Obama during his 2008 run against Clinton. But the thousands of pages of e-mails released by the State Department show the ex-Clinton aide was a constant source of both foreign and domestic political advice for the Secretary of State.
His extensive presence in Clinton’s inbox was a source of concern for Republicans on the House Benghazi committee, with many lawmakers questioning why Blumenthal had Clinton’s ear, day and night, on such a wide variety of subjects.
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.
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