Fmr Clinton Spox: Coverage of Email Story ‘Was Irrational’ – ‘We Don’t Have a Way of Thinking About a Woman in This Job’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” former Clinton Campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri criticized the coverage of Clinton’s emails as “irrational” and that there was “something vexing” about Clinton because people don’t have a way to think about a woman president.

Palmieri said, “I feel like, in the campaign, there was very ugly misogyny. There was irrational hatred of her. … I would say the way the way the email story was covered was irrational and the hatred that that problem –.”

She continued, [T]here are other cabinet secretaries, for example, that used personal email. It didn’t blow up to be the kind of story –. … I would press the reporters on this, and I would say, ‘If Barack Obama did this, you wouldn’t have the same questions.’ ‘Well no, but because — but it’s Obama. So it’s different.’ It’s like, well, why? But why, but why? You keep pressing, but why? And eventually, there’s not an answer for –. There’s something vexing about her. There’s something that makes people suspicious.”

Palmieri added, “I think that this is very — it’s deep. It’s not necessarily sinister. I mean, misogyny is sinister, but there’s something else at play here. Which is, I think, we don’t have a way of thinking about a woman in this job.”

She concluded, “[T]hat doesn’t mean everybody’s sexist who didn’t vote for her, or had these questions about her. But it does mean that as a society, I think we haven’t wrapped our heads around what that looks like.”

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