Hillary Clinton's enemies emerge in upcoming book, 'What Happened'

close

Video

Hillary Clinton attacks Sanders, Comey, Lauer in new book

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton goes on the attack in her new memoir, 'What Happened' by bashing everyone from rival Bernie Sanders to former FBI director James Comey, NBC host Matt Lauer, and former Vice President Joe Biden

Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-released book, “What Happened,” is supposed to be a memoir about her failed 2016 presidential run, but at times it appears to read more like an enemies list than a campaign chronicle.

While the former secretary of state acknowledges “my mistakes burn me up inside,” according to leaked excerpts of the book, she also doesn’t hold back punches when putting some of the fault for her loss on everyone from political rivals to television morning show hosts.

Here are just a few of the people that Clinton takes aim at in her upcoming memoir:

In this July 9, 2015 photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at the Alliance for Retired Americans 2015 National Legislative Conference in Washington. From his run for mayor of Burlington to numerous campaigns for Congress, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has for more than three decades eschewed traditional party labels in his pursuit of political office, winning election after election as an independent. (AP Photo/Molly Riley) (AP)

Bernie Sanders: According to excerpts from her book, Clinton accused the socialist Vermont senator who ran against her for the Democratic nomination of resorting to “innuendo and impugning my character” during the contentious primary because the Vermont senator “couldn’t make” a policy argument against her. She goes on to compare him to the “deranged hitchhiker” in the 1998 Ben Stiller movie “There’s Something About Mary.”

“A deranged hitchhiker says he’s come up with a brilliant plan,” Clinton writes, describing a scene in the movie. “Instead of the famous ‘eight-minute abs’ exercise routine, he’s going to market ‘seven minute abs.’ It’s the same, just quicker. Then the driver, played by Ben Stiller, says, ‘Well, why not six-minute abs?’”

Clinton added: “That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would propose a bold infrastructure plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept proposing four-minute abs, or even no-minute abs. Magic abs!”

She also lamented how many high-profile Democrats – including President Obama – warned her not to “hit back against Bernie’s attacks” because they “didn’t want to alienate Bernie’s supporters,” but said that Sanders’ goal was not “to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party.”

“I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too,” Clinton wrote.

FILE - In this May 24, 2017, file photo, former Vice President Joe Biden delivers the annual Harvard College Class Day address on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass. Just days after launching a new political action committee, former Biden will join Republican officials and donors at a weekend retreat hosted by former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File) (AP)

Joe Biden: Clinton expresses shock in her book that former Vice President Joe Biden said following the election that one of the reasons she lost was because the Democrats failed to focus their efforts on the middle class.

"Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 'did not talk about what it always stood for — and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class,’” Clinton writes, according to the Hill. "I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class."

Biden, who was rumored early in the primary process to be considering a run for president himself, made the comments this May that Democrats didn’t have a solid strategy to win over working class voters.

"Because of the negative campaign that [Donald] Trump ran, how much did we hear about that guy making 50,000 bucks on an assembly line, the woman — his wife — making $28,000 as a hostess?" Biden said. "They have $78,000, two kids, living in a metropolitan area, and they can hardly make it."

Biden added: "When was the last time you heard us talk about those people?"

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst - RTX39NW5 (REUTERS)

James Comey: This one seems kind of obvious given Comey’s decision to revisit Clinton’s email scandal just days before the election, but her memoir details Clinton’s regret at not going after him “hard” from the moment he announced the investigation’s results back in July 2016.

“My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds—the same argument [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein would make months after the election,” Clinton writes, according to the excerpts. “That might have blunted the political damage and made Comey think twice before breaking protocol again a few months later. My team raised concerns with that kind of confrontational approach. In the end, we decided it would be better to just let it go and try to move on. Looking back, that was a mistake.”

She also reprises her criticism of Comey’s October announcement regarding the discovery of new emails.

“Was this a bad joke?” she writes. “It had to be. “The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of IFs or Innuendos. Its job was to find out the facts. What the hell was Comey doing?”

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on the development of transport infrastructure in Kaliningrad, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (AP)

Vladimir Putin: While the official investigation into Russian meddling into last year’s election is far from over, Clinton firmly believes that Trump won the White House with the help of Putin, who she writes was on a “personal vendetta” against her” and has a “deep resentment” toward the U.S.

“I never imagined that he would have the audacity to launch a massive covert attack against our own democracy, right under our noses -- and that he'd get away with it," Clinton writes, according to Axios.

She added that since the election she follows “every twist and turn of the story” about Russia’s involvement in the election and regrets not being able to tell Putin that Russia’s efforts to influence the election didn’t work.

"There's nothing I was looking forward to more than showing Putin that his efforts to influence our election and install a friendly puppet had failed," she writes. "I know he must be enjoying everything that's happened instead. But he hasn't had the last laugh yet."

Matt Lauer (2015 Gilbert Carrasquillo)

Matt Lauer: Comey and Putin seem like obvious targets for Clinton wrath, but NBC "Today" show host Matt Lauer?

In her memoir, Clinton slams the journalist for conducting an interview that she says was more like a hit job.

During the “Commander in Chief Forum” last September, Lauer was supposed to focus his questioning on the candidate’s stances on foreign policy, but instead immediately brought up Clinton’s email scandal and stayed on it throughout much of the 30-minute interview.

“Now I was ticked off. NBC knew exactly what it was doing here. The network was treating this like an episode of "The Apprentice," in which [Donald] Trump stars and ratings soar,” Clinton writes, according to Radar. “Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time.”

An incensed Clinton added: “I can’t say I didn’t fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there.”

Female Voters: One would think that the first female presidential nominee for a major U.S. political party would want to keep solidarity with her fellow women, especially after thousands of them marched in opposition to Trump shortly after his inauguration.

But despite winning the majority of the female vote in November, Clinton asked in her memoir where that anger toward Trump that the marchers had was before the election.

“I couldn’t help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election,” Clinton writes in her memoir.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., before his departure to Yuma, Arizona, August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas - RC14000D5270 (REUTERS)

Donald Trump: It’s not surprising that Clinton saves some of her harshest words in her memoir for the man who beat her in the election.

In one of the campaign’s most infamous moments, Clinton talks candidly about how Trump paced behind her during their second presidential debate.

“My skin crawled,” Clinton said, in an audio clip of her reading the passage about that debate at Washington University in St. Louis. “No matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable, he was literally breathing down my neck.”

She then entertained an alternative past – one where she confronted Trump.

“It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’” Clinton writes in the book. “Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up you creep, get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”