"... if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House."By Jack Davis
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During the 2016 campaign, Democratic president candidate Hillary Clinton and former first lady Michelle Obama gave the impression they were inseparable allies.
However, an email from 2011 paints a very different picture.
The email was unearthed as part of a trove of documents recovered from the private email server Clinton used as secretary of state. It was made public Thursday by Judicial Watch, which had filed a Freedom of Information request to get access to the documents. Judicial Watch released about 2,000 Clinton emails Thursday.
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The email related to Obama is part of a chain in which Clinton told top aide Huma Abedin she would attend the funeral for former first lady Betty Ford, but that there was a condition.
“I’d be honored to speak,” Clinton wrote. “Is it OK that we and Mrs. O take two separate planes?”
The 2011 funeral came only three years after the Obama campaign was attacking Clinton with an ad that showed Michelle Obama criticizing Clinton in remarks that were understood to refer to the affairs of former President Bill Clinton.
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The ad featured video footage of Michelle Obama telling a crowd, “One of the things, the important aspects of this race is role modeling what good families should look like. And my view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. Can’t do it!”
A 2016 book by Kate Anderson Brower said the impact of the campaign lingered.
“The 2008 presidential campaign left deep and lasting scars on both the Clinton and the Obama camps, and they are still shockingly fresh,” she wrote then.
The emails released by Judicial Watch Thursday also show the Clintons made free use of government travel.
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One July 2011 email chain shows Abedin telling Chelsea Clinton’s travel agent that Chelsea Clinton would not need to pay for airfare to go to Germany to see the U.S. women’s soccer team play.
Abedin said Clinton and a Clinton Foundation employee would be made part of the “official delegation” going to the game.
They would “fly on official govt plane both ways and they will take care of hotels and all transportation,” Abedin wrote.
At the time, Chelsea Clinton was employed full-time by the Clinton Foundation.