AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
From left, outside advisor Philippe Reines, press aid Varun Anand, and Traveling Press Secretary Nick Merrill, right, smile while speaking with members of the media aboard Hillary Clinton's press plane on Nov. 2, 2016.
Staffers who worked on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for president are pushing back on how they were characterized in a devastating new book on the Democratic nominee's White House bid.Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote in "Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign" that Clinton's campaign lacked vision and was filled with infighting staffers who were more concerned about their own careers than they were about helping the candidate win.
Many staffers have publicly voiced their issues with the book.
Christina Reynolds, a deputy communications director for the campaign, wrote in a post on the website Medium that "it's hard to read a depiction of the campaign that paints a dedicated, cohesive team as mercenaries with questionable motives who lacked a loyalty to a candidate described as 'imperial' and removed from the campaign."
"That's just not the campaign, the staff or the candidate I was in the trenches with for 18 months," Reynolds wrote.
While Reynolds didn't dispute any specific allegations in the book - she said she wasn't writing the post to "fact check" Allen and Parnes - she wrote that "contrary to the 'mercenary' description in the book," the campaign staff "knew that there was only one goal, and one night, that mattered."
Other Clinton staffers shared the post on Twitter and described their own memories of the campaign:
Clinton's former traveling press secretary, Nick Merrill, tweeted a long series of photos of happy moments from the campaign trail. Longtime aide Philippe Reines and communications director Jennifer Palmieri also joined in.
Allen and Parnes defended their reporting this week in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
"You know, they can say what they want to say, that it wasn't the campaign they knew, but, you know, we talked to hundreds of people," Parnes said. "This is their story from inside the campaign. This is what they told us. You know, we weren't talking to outsiders for this book."
I was in hospital for 3 wks aftr 2 surgeries & tough diagnosis. HFA staff + HRC + WJC made me a video. Thats not "shattered", thats family https://t.co/xUo715TosR
- Tyrone Gayle (@TyroneGayle) April 20, 2017I had same experience as @creynoldsnc, came late (April '16) & was only supposed to stay 2 weeks, stayed until the end b/c of the HFA family https://t.co/Nq2R5Hc6Pc
- Glen Caplin (@GlenCaplin1) April 19, 2017@NickMerrill @HillaryClinton Found this picture of quarreling factions of HFA staff having what appears to be some kind of intense argument into microphones pic.twitter.com/iy9eRUe6Oe
- Rob Flaherty (@Rob_Flaherty) April 20, 2017this is all spot on.
in those brutal days right after the election, the office was a hug-fest, not a knife-fight. https://t.co/nxI93CsI0V
- Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) April 20, 2017❤️ this. ❤️@creynoldsnc and ❤️ ' d working for @HillaryClinton and the team. Sometimes bad sh_> happens to good people. That covers it. https://t.co/pJfLS8M4F3
- GregHale1 (@GregHale1) April 20, 2017I don't recognize the campaign depicted in Shattered. It was tough but we stuck together & all our proud of how hard our candidate fought. https://t.co/fJMeYtS0PK
- Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) April 19, 2017tfw the office fight spills over to the karaoke bar pic.twitter.com/XJvKe51yCa
- Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) April 20, 2017Agree 100%
Was part frm drafting announce press rls 2 e-night
We made mistakes
We lost
But depiction in book doesn't resemble campaign I saw https://t.co/Q9zMRtnRaF
- Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) April 19, 2017