The End of the Affair: Knives Out for Huma Abedin After Hillary's Humiliating Loss

This glamorous, striking, highly-accomplished Personal Assistant is in bad odor with other Clintonites.

The "Night Stalkers" -- Clintonite term for hangers-on and favor-seekers -- are out to get Huma (and the rest of Hillary's inner circle) for fencing them out and ignoring their sage counsel.

Now, usually, you'd just say these people are planning to write further episodes of Washington DC's most popular series of books -- If Only They'd Listened to Me: The Ongoing Saga.

But given the Politico story about Hillary ignoring advice that sure looks like good advice in retrospect, and given that she lost, and lost furthermore to Donald Trump, some of this sounds possibly true.

The "Night Stalkers" are also angry that Huma seemed to take a lot of opportunities to turn herself into a celebrity, rather than the assistant to the celebrity.

[A]ccording to [NYT Clinton reporter Amy] Chozick, Clinton appeared to countermand those who suggested that Abedin should be relegated on behalf of the sexting antics of her spouse, the randy former congressman Anthony Weiner. Clinton, Chozick reported at the time, appeared more concerned with quarantining the so-called "night stalkers" -- sycophants and hangers-on from her many decades in public life -- who might try to re-exert their influence. Abedin, meanwhile, was widely expected to get a big job inside a Clinton White House.

But amid Clinton's stunning post-election hangover, some inside the inner circle wonder if Abedin became overwhelmed by the attention, and shut too many people out. "She was enjoying the red carpet and enjoying the photo spreads much too much in my opinion," one Clinton insider told me. "She enjoyed being a celebrity too much." The close Clinton adviser elaborated that Abedin and the other tight-knit circle of people may have suffocated Clinton, preventing the campaign from taking in outside counsel. "The real anger is toward Hillary’s inner circle," the Clinton insider told me. "They reinforced all the bad habits." For instance, the suggestion had been made that Clinton should show her gregarious side, by, for instance, appearing more often on The View. (She appeared once, but Bernie Sanders, her rival for the nomination, appeared a handful of times.)

According to this person, however, the inner circle nixed that idea. It seemed, this person elaborated, that even minor suggestions about changing the narrative fell on deaf ears. "Right away," this person continued, "it was either regarded as an intrusion or a naïve suggestion or maybe someone has an agenda. And so people just stopped bothering. Where in most presidential campaigns the circle grows broader and broader, hers grew smaller and smaller." (A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign refutes this characterization, noting that the campaign may have had up to three times as many people on their plane during the election's final weeks.)

Hopefully the noxious Cheryl Mills will get some of the same back-biting. All of them must fall. All of them.

The article notes this funny/sad little fact:

[P]]erhaps Abedin's biggest challenge is that she may soon have a new boss for virtually the first time in her life. The Clinton insider reiterated that Huma, who has spent 21 years at Clinton's side, might need to prepare for the reality, moving forward, that her "juice" was "tied to Clinton's ascendancy."

But the article also notes she knows plenty of rich, connected people, so she'll probably do fine. As a lobbyist or fixer, one imagines.

posted by Ace at 03:26 PM

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