Huma Abedin: ‘It Does Take a Village to Support Hillary Clinton’

Hillary Clinton’s top aide says she enjoys being “behind the scenes,” working for her boss as part of the “village” that is needed to provide ongoing support for the Democrat presidential candidate.

During a recent Call Your Girlfriend podcast interview, Huma Abedin – the vice chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign – told hosts Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow she prefers to have a role that is “behind the scenes.”

“I prefer to be behind the scenes and stay behind the scenes,” Abedin asserted.

“And I really work as part of a village, as my boss coined the phrase perfectly,” she explained. “It does take a village to support Hillary Clinton. I am part of that village.”

Abedin went on to describe the amount of support that is required to insure Clinton “has all of the policy updates and information that she needs.”

She continued:

I am truly honored and thrilled to be a part of it. And I think every day, here at the campaign at least in Hillary for America’s team it’s a little bit of everything. The way I see it is I work in a startup that started about a year ago and I help keep the trains moving on time. I often am on the road with her, so everything from insuring that we know what we’re doing, that she has all of the policy updates and information that she needs. Working with our communications team, with our policy team, with our scheduling and advance teams.

And, you know, it’s like moving – it’s like a living, breathing, moving organism, particularly when the campaign’s on the road and she’s on the road a lot. And I just am there to help keep it all together and help people be at the best including my boss but also this incredible team that supports her. And I love doing it.

While presidential campaigns involve keeping track of many details, Abedin’s repeated emphasis on the amount of support Clinton requires echoes emails sent by her to a State Department staffer when Clinton was Secretary of State. In those emails – reviewed by Judicial Watch last November — Abedin advised the staffer that it was “very important” to review phone calls with Clinton because she was “often confused.”

Abedin emailed State Department Clinton aide and companion Monica Hanley from her “Huma@clintonemail.com” account to alert her about the need to go over phone calls with Clinton.

On January 26, 2013, Abedin had the following email exchange with Hanley:

Abedin: Have you been going over her calls with her? So she knows singh is at 8? [India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh]

Hanley: She was in bed for a nap by the time I heard that she had an 8am call. Will go over with her

Abedin: Very imp to do that. She’s often confused.

“Huma Abedin’s description of Hillary Clinton as ‘easily confused’ tells you all you need to know why it took a federal lawsuit to get these government emails from Clinton’s illegal email server,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These emails also show that Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s decision to use the Clinton email server to conduct government business was dangerous and risky.”

In the Call Your Girlfriend podcast interview, the liberal hosts apologetically raised the issue of Clinton’s email scandal with Abedin.

“I know that we on the podcast read with great interest although probably without the same political motivation as others all of the email disclosures from the state department days in part because we’re such fans of Hillary Clinton and of yours…” said Friedman. “I’m curious about what that felt like to just know that it’s out there in that way.”

Abedin responded:

Terrifying, but with…and I haven’t – I confess I have not read anything that has become public, but I think the story that I was most …I found most interesting was a woman, and I don’t remember any of the details, but a woman who said she didn’t support Hillary until she read all of her emails. And then she saw – she saw what a warm, caring, thoughtful, determined person she was. And I don’t know if it was that she flipped or she just didn’t support her before, whatever it was. But I can’t . . . it’s something I can’t really think about because I can’t even imagine what’s in those emails. But I’m sure I would be – I would probably be mortified. I have no idea. I haven’t read any of them.

Asked how she handles controversy, Abedin replied, “[S]o I have a policy. First of all I never read anything about myself.”

“You kind of just get into this zone, and then if it’s about me personally I just – honestly I just ignore it,” she added. “Sometimes people will tell me, ‘I’ve read this thing about you,’ and I’ll say, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’”