Adviser to Pro-Hillary Super PAC: Campaign Needs To Disavow Mateen and ‘Fire the Advance Person’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” CNN Political Commentator and Adviser to a pro-Hillary Super PAC Paul Begala stated that the Clinton campaign should disavow the support it received from Seddique Mateen, the father of the perpetrator of the Pulse nightclub terrorist attack, who showed up to a Clinton rally, and “fire the advance person.”

Begala said that if he could advise them, he would tell the Clinton campaign to “disavow him. She doesn’t want his support, and her campaign doesn’t want his support. It may take a while to get their act together. Candidate’s here. The vice presidential candidate’s here. The campaign chairman’s here. I’ve run campaigns. At this stage, they’re a very big battleship, but they need to go to battle stations here. They need to disavow this guy, and, I guess I can say this because I can’t coordinate with the campaign, they need to fire the advance person. Now, thousands of people came to that rally, you can’t screen every one of them to find out if they posted something crazy or their son is a terrorist, I get that, but he was in the shot. He was behind the candidate.”

Begala later guaranteed Clinton’s campaign would disavow Mateen, but after anchor Jake Tapper said he hadn’t gotten a response from the Clinton campaign despite asking for one, Begala stated, “Bet you do now.” He added that the failure to denounce was due to logistics and the size of the campaign. Begala further said that the campaign should have run some sort of check on someone who would be in the shot of the rally, and predicted that an advance person would be “in a lot of trouble right now.”

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