(Headline USA) Former President Bill Clinton reportedly bashed his own wife’s 2016 presidential campaign, claiming she couldn’t sell “p***y on a troop train.”
In his new book, The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution, Ryan Grim of The Intercept wrote that the former president was frustrated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and blasted her team for being ineffective communicators. He allegedly made the statement to a close confidante during the fall of 2016.
“Former president Bill Clinton, surveying the landscape and the ham-handed efforts at identity politics, was bereft, lamenting to a longtime friend in the fall of 2016 that Hillary’s campaign ‘could not sell p***y on a troop train,'” Grim wrote, according to Fox News.
This wouldn’t be the first time Bill Clinton confronted his wife’s campaign. According to journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen, Bill also chastised Hillary’s team for ignoring the swing states and opting to campaign in bigger blue states, such as California, instead.
“He thought, these eggheads don’t really know politics. They don’t understand persuasion,” Allen said during an ABC News podcast at the time.
Bill also allegedly advised Hillary’s campaign to visit suburban and rural areas where Hillary likely would not garner most of the votes, because he “knew there was some power just in showing up,” Allen said.
Former President Donald Trump, who beat Hillary in 2016, argued Hillary’s campaign should have taken advantage of Bill Clinton’s charisma and political experience.
“I think they did a great disservice by not using him when I went against Hillary. I think that they had this unbelievable weapon known as Bill Clinton, who was a natural politician,” Trump said last year.
“Bill Clinton had an instinct, a natural instinct,” Trump explained. “People who are good at things have a lot of natural instinct. They said, ‘No, no, no, the polls indicate that he can’t win Wisconsin,’ and I ended up winning Michigan and Wisconsin.”
