“Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, hits bookstores on Tuesday, offering an inside look at the events that resulted in Clinton losing to Donald Trump on Election Day last November. Among the revelations claimed in the book: Clinton apologized to President Obama when it became clear Trump would win.
“Mr. President, I’m sorry,” Clinton told the sitting commander in chief as her unexpected election loss became reality, according to a Washington Post review of the book.
“Shattered” also recounts how Obama urged Clinton to admit defeat shortly after it became clear that Trump had won Wisconsin around 11 pm.
“You need to concede,” Obama apparently told his former secretary of state over the phone.
Mike Allen’s Axios AM newsletter also received an early look — he called a few interesting tidbits from the book “appetizers.”
Among the appetizers, Allen shared that “Pod Save America” co-host and President Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau was brought in to help with Clinton’s speech but dropped out because he became “frustrated with the process and the product.”
According to Allen, the book details that Favreau “thought Clinton’s campaign was reminiscent of John Kerry’s, where he had gotten his start in 2004 — a bunch of operatives who were smart and accomplished … but weren’t united by any common purpose larger than pushing a less-than-thrilling candidate into the White House.”
Allen also recapped that the book alleges longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin “couldn’t be counted on to relay constructive criticism to Hillary without pointing a finger at the critic” and confidants wanted campaign manager Robby Mook to lose his job.
There’s also some humorous moments in the book, per Allen, including a passage about President Bill Clinton explaining that Mick Jagger used to give his mother-in-law “wet dreams.”