CBS Host to Podesta: How Did Russians Know to Focus on Purple States, but Hillary Didn’t?
Former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had a brutal exchange on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday when asked about the campaign’s failure to focus on so-called “purple states” in 2016.
Host Nancy Cordes noted that an indictment handed down by special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday showed that Russian operatives who meddled in the election appeared to realize the importance of focusing on those battleground contests.
“How is it that these Russian operatives knew to focus on purple states like Michigan and Wisconsin and your campaign didn’t?” Nancy Cordes, the host of Face the Nation, asked Podesta.
“Of course we spent a lot of time and energy and effort in all those states,” Podesta insisted.
“Hillary Clinton did not spend much time,” Cordes interjected.
“We had [Vice Presidential nominee] Tim Kaine was there, Barack Obama, and she spent enormous time in Pennsylvania and Michigan,” said Podesta.
“We spent a lot of effort, we had staff in Wisconsin that even President Obama had in 2012.”
Clinton and her campaign have been heavily criticized for failing to campaign heavily in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all of which the former secretary of state lost in a surprise upset to Trump.
Clinton did not visit Wisconsin at all during the campaign. By contrast, Trump visited the state five times during the last three months of the campaign.
Clinton has attributed her loss to Russian active measures, which included purchasing social media ads and leaking hacked emails. She has also blamed former FBI Director James Comey for re-opening the investigation into her email server just days before the election.
Copyright 2018 The Daily Caller News Foundation
