Hillary Clinton’s campaign claim in 2016 -- that she
fully supported President Barack Obama’s decision to order the Navy SEAL
raid that would eliminate Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden -- made Vice
President Joe Biden furious, a new book says.
Biden, whom the book characterizes as willing to “fall
on his sword” for Obama’s success, begrudged Clinton for misrepresenting
her position on the decision, the book asserts.
“The a** covering, opportunistic version really rattled
him,” an anonymous aide told Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First in
Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power.” An excerpt
appeared this week in the Hill.
“The a** covering, opportunistic version really rattled him.”
Brower covered the White House for Bloomberg News
during Obama's first term, and has written for several other news
organizations, including Fox News.
During a Situation Room meeting with top Obama
officials on whether to strike the compound believed to be holding bin
Laden, Biden wasn’t the only one who voiced reservations about the plan,
the excerpt says.
“My sense is that [Clinton] was not sold on the idea
either,” says David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, in the
excerpt.
“My sense is that [Clinton] was not sold on the idea either.”
- David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama
Yet in January 2016, Clinton was touting her role in the bin Laden raid in a stump speech that, Politico wrote, left audiences "riveted."
“I was one of those who recommended the president
launch what was a very risky raid ... because if all we had done was
launch a missile and dropped a bomb, we never would have known [if bin
Laden was dead],” Clinton told a crowd in Ames, Iowa, Politico reported.
“It was one of the most tense days of my life sitting
there. For some of it we had the video but once they were inside we had
no video, just an audio connection. ... And some of you who have
followed this may know one of the helicopters hit the tail going into
the courtyard and got disabled ... [but] because of the incredibly
careful planning we didn’t leave anybody behind.”
"I was one of those who recommended the president launch what was a very risky raid."
- Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail in Iowa, January 2016
Clinton has been the subject of other recent books
dealing with the former U.S. secretary of state and U.S. senator's 2016
campaign loss.
Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to Obama, details in his
memoir, “The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House,” that
they’d run against Clinton in 2008 with the same message that Republican
candidate Donald Trump would use eight years later.
That message: “She’s part of a corrupt establishment
that can’t be trusted to bring change,” Rhodes writes in a preview
featured in the New York Times.
Another memoir, “Chasing Hillary,” by Times reporter
Amy Chozick, who followed Clinton on the campaign trail, writes of the
Democratic nominee’s reaction the moment she learned of her defeat to
Trump.
“’I knew it. I knew this would happen to me,’ she said, ... They were never going to let me be president,’” an excerpt in the New York Times reads.
But who was Clinton referring to as "they"? The former
candidate has gone on to blame various groups for her election defeat --
including Democratic socialists, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," James Comey, white men and the press.