Hillary Clinton’s advisers and surrogates spent Sunday explaining away a Wikileaks document dump as “bogus,” and “misleading.” During Sunday night’s debate, however, Hillary Clinton appeared to confirm that the Wikileaks documents were real.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, suggested to Fox News Sunday that the batch of documents that Wikileaks released on Friday afternoon were forgeries. “They’ve put out documents that are purported to be from my account,” he said, noting that he believed the documents were part of a concerted effort on the part of Russian hackers to influence the election.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine told CNN, “I don’t think we can dig in documents dumped by WikiLeaks and just assume they’re all accurate and true.”
But responding to a question from Anderson Cooper Sunday night, referencing a document where Clinton is reported to say you need a “public and a private” position on every issue, Clinton acknowledged that she made the statement.
She claimed that she made the statement in reference to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic, noting that Lincoln used a calculated response to sway both the public and members of Congress.
Clinton likens her private/public positions to Lincoln. "Convincing some people he used some arguments, convincing others he used others."
— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) October 10, 2016
Clinton asked about the leaked speech transcripts. She says that her "public/private" comment was about Lincoln, makes it about negotiation.
— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) October 10, 2016
Her comments met with scorn on social media and a stinging rebuke from Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, but it will also likely be met with frustration from her closest confidantes and her campaign. She implicitly admitted that at least one piece of Wikileaks’s document dump was accurate.
