Hillary to explain ‘What Happened’ in new book
Clinton memoir looks at 2016 election, Russia
NEW YORK, July 29, (Agencies): Defeated Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton promises to let her guard down and explain what happened in her shock electoral defeat to Donald Trump, including the mistakes she made, in a book to published in September.
Publishers Simon and Schuster revealed that the previously unnamed tome would be entitled “What Happened” and would be the former secretary of state’s “most personal memoir yet.”
“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I’m letting my guard down,” writes Clinton in the introduction.
Her publishers said the book would reveal what Clinton thought and felt during the bruising 2016 campaign that saw her make history as the first US woman to win the presidential nomination from a major party.
It will describe “what it was like” to run against Trump, “the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up,” they said in an announcement ahead of the Sept 12 release date.
Clinton would take the reader “inside the intense personal experience” of an election “marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules,” Simon and Schuster added. The tome will also see Clinton double down on her belief that Russian interference cost her the White House.
Clinton has repeatedly blamed her loss on Russian cyberattacks and has alleged that associates of Trump likely had a hand in the effort.
She also says then-FBI director James Comey dealt her campaign a severe blow when — just days before the November election — he briefly revisited an inquiry into the scandal over her use of private email while at the State Department.
“Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future,” Simon and Schuster said.
Divert
Trump has recently revived a campaign-era rallying cry that his former rival be prosecuted, setting off alarm bells in Washington and sparking accusations that he is seeking to divert attention from the widening probe into his campaign’s alleged ties with Russia.
Clinton is the author of five previous books, most recently “Hard Choices” published in 2014, as well as “An Invitation to the White House” and “It Takes a Village,” all published by Simon and Schuster.
Clinton’s memoir about her failed attempt to win last year’s US presidential election will be called “What Happened,” a declaration rather than a question, her publisher said in the runup to its Sept 12 release.
Among the things the Democratic nominee will say happened are sexism against the first woman to be the presidential candidate for a major US party and “an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary,” according to publicity material from the publisher, Simon and Schuster.
This file photo taken on Nov 16, 2016 shows Hillary Clinton speakign at the Children’s
Defense Fund Beat the Odds Celebration at the museum in Washington, DC. (AFP)
Staff in Clinton’s campaign and at Democratic party headquarters saw thousands of their internal emails stolen and published online last year. US intelligence agencies have said that Russian intelligence agencies stole the emails as part of an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to foil Clinton’s chances of becoming president.
Putin has denied the charges, and US President Donald Trump has expressed doubt about the conclusion of intelligence agencies he oversees. Clinton has at times faced intense scrutiny by the media and political opponents for more than 25 years since her husband, Bill Clinton, successfully sought the US presidency in 1992.
“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net,” Clinton wrote in the book’s introduction. “Now I’m letting my guard down.”
Despite polls showing the former secretary of state was expected to triumph in the election last November, Clinton won only 227 electoral college votes to Trump’s 304. She won the popular vote by about 2.9 million votes.
Since then, she has made a handful of speeches and public appearances while working on the book.
In April, she told the Women in the World Summit in New York City that she had no intention of running for another public office and that she was writing a book that, in part, delves into what derailed her attempt to become America’s first woman president.
“For people who are interested in this, the nearly 66 million people who voted for me, I want to give as clear and as credible an explanation as I can,” she said. Clinton has also faulted the manner in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under director James Comey, investigated how she managed her email, some of which involved classified information, when she was secretary of state.