Donna Brazile: I’m sorry only that I got caught cheating with debate questions

Interim DNC chair won't apologize for helping Clinton, recycles discredited claims that Russians altered emails

Published November 10, 2016 4:27AM (EST)

Democratic National Committee Interim Chair Donna Brazile   (AP/Paul Sancya)
Democratic National Committee Interim Chair Donna Brazile (AP/Paul Sancya)

Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, is not only refusing to apologize for giving debate questions to candidate Hillary Clinton. She's also saying she would do it again if given the opportunity.

“My conscience — as an activist, a strategist — is very clear,” she said in an interview with talk-radio host Joe Madison that aired on Monday.

Brazile argued she was simply doing her job as a strategist to know what questions the debate moderators might pose: “You're doggone right I’m gonna talk to everybody. Joe, I will never go out on TV or go on radio without the facts. I will ask. I will submit things. I will circulate things. And guess what? I also enjoy the exchange that I have with my colleagues.”

The far-from-contrite political veteran also recycled her discredited claims that the hacked emails that exposed her perfidy against presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders were somehow altered by Russian intelligence agents.

“Had the Republican National Committee been hacked, had the Republican Party’s emails and other assistants been altered and hacked, the country would be in selective outrage if they found out this was from a foreign source,” she argued.

As Salon and others have already demonstrated, regardless of their provenance, the emails that showed Brazile had divulged questions to Clinton officials during the Democratic primaries were not altered.

If there’s one thing that she regrets, Brazile wishes she had been smarter about leaving a digital trail, she said. “If I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity,” she argued.

CNN had suspended her from being a contributor once she became the interim DNC head but permanently severed her contract after her leaking was exposed.

According to an anonymously sourced item in The Huffington Post, CNN's president, Jeff Zucker, told employees he regarded Brazile’s behavior as “disgusting” and something for which he would “have no tolerance.”


By Matthew Sheffield

Matthew Sheffield is a national correspondent for The Young Turks. He is also the host of the podcast "Theory of Change." You can follow him on Twitter.

MORE FROM Matthew Sheffield