Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to bind a noble on the upper west side. Tonight i had the distinct pleasure of introducing actors Jonathan Allen and amie parnes. Jonathan allen has covered for political, bloomberg and box. He is sad wired right to weekly political column for roll call. Amie parnes is a White House Correspondent for the holidays tapering washington. She covered Hillary Clinton during the campaign and will cover the trump administration. Theyve written the acclaimed biography hrc. Tonight they bring us shattered inside Hillary Clintons doomed campaign. Deep access from the top to the bottom of the campaign, Jonathan Allen and amie parnes have reconstructed the unsaved opportunities, the wellintentioned misfires in the head and thorns into a devastating month. The shoe carpet time he writes although the Clinton Campaign was widely covered and many have been in the last several, the blowbyblow details shattered in the observations made here by campaign and Democratic Party insiders are nothing less than devastated. Sure to dismay not just supporters, but everyone who cares about the outcomes than momentous consequence is that the election. Without further ado, join me in welcoming authors Jonathan Allen and amie parnes. [applause] good evening. Thank you for coming. People we dont know yet, there is my family waving over there. They mustve been drinking already. They are laughing like they were. So i think what we are going to do here is read a little bit of one of the early chapters of the book, chat or seven. We will talk a little bit about what a blast and it will take questions from anybody who has a question. Do you want to start, amy . We are going to read a little part of chapter seven, which is a chapter that centers around iowa. It is called i was certain we were going to lose. Bill clinton was off. He hollered at john podesta loud enough to be heard through the walls of the little rooms he laid claim of a historic savory hotel in downtown des moines, iowa. It was the pond and he was watching on tv. Theyre getting it all wrong again as the result of the Iowa Caucuses trickled in. Hillary was reading, but he was going to be tight. Omg wolf blitzer said on cnn. It doesnt get a whole lot closer than that. That assessment invited parallels to hillarys 2008 last two barack obama. It was then builds absurd comparison and i had been a threeway race and she was still likely to come up a winner on this night, not the thirdplace finisher. The upstart challenger competing in iowa in deja vu was so hard storyline to resist. And ensures the race will go on for months and months on the democratic side reported that night and sanders headquarters. Hillary was such a prohibitive frontrunner heading into the democratic nomination by that she should have cleaned up. Bill had a much different days. Iowa has never been clinton country and increase your share of the return from under 30 in 2008 to 50 give or take a little in 2016. Plus unlike obama, bernie was tailormade for iowa. The state is overwhelmingly white littered with colleges and decidedly workingclass workingclass cities, even if you manage to eat out he got a victory, that were showing strength, not weakness. Why couldnt i see a difference . It was just another of those routine about television personalities. He cursed him after the meet the press host had declared obama the winner of the 2008 primary in may of that year, and that another sign of the inability to tamp down his emotions that Pivotal Moment of his wifes political career. At the start of the day he went for a walk to release some of the builtin stress and at one point he played a combination of card games, and stayed simple ship with them. He was a protective husband and a concerned democrat and now he was shouting eight years of pent up frustration of his longtime adviser. When bill had spent himself, podesta locked into an adjoining space that is part of the caucus night. Hillarys length of anxiety would consultant to come in and he was looking for. I was state director matt paul, the spec to quote in his mid40s had left his job as Communications Director for agriculture secretary tom vilsack to run the iowa population. For the better part of a year, having served on howard deans president ial campaign in iowa to vilsack in senator tom harkin, ponder the state electorate as well as anyone. But it did back in appointment not. You go in there and deal with them. Paul gathered himself and walked in to allow the chair. Bill was wearing a suit and a pair of other. His arms were crossed. Even if it hadnt been audible through the walls of the hotel, it wouldve been clear he was in a foul mood. His eyes were fixed on paul. If theres ever a time to make sure i know my shit, this visit. He fired questions at him. But his ousting in polk county . How about cedar rapids . Ill watch go through the state of our caucus results hadnt been reported county by county, slowly the president ingrid society even if society didnt. You cannot delete consistent with where his team thought she would be heading to caucus night. She was up a handful of points. Sanders is slowly closing in on her. After palfrey still come in the two men repeated conversation the nearby room of the rest of hillarys team is nervously assessing the situation. In front of the others, one source in the room noted a market shift of those personality. Usually he is a storyteller the source said. On this night, he was just an information gatherer. He wanted to know what the staff didnt tell them why didnt know it. Its much harder to figure out whos winning a caucus state and particularly in iowa because the results are measured in both cast. Instead reported as a number of state delegate equivalent on the worst of the vote each candidate gets from his or her performance the caucus locations. Numbers can come in this very small fractions. Over and over, and more often that were meaningful updates. What really matters remained unreported. If they were in accord morning taylor was screwed. You also knew his alabama home with the state numbers, the same number say not a bad feeling. Paul was reporting to bill. This is not Getting Better he told podesta. This is going to keep going down. He could overtake us. Let me say before we go farther, we are really happy to have spin here. We love cspan. Its like local television for us washingtonians. We would really like to thank her and the noble for hosting. We found out as we were walking in today that this book showed up as number one on barnes noble on their website today across the country. We are really happy to be here and we would really like to thank our team, kevin dallas over there along with rachel ricky key and many other people to help make this book possible. They stand along the wall and they are really responsible for a lot of what actually appears in the book. What we thought might be interesting is we would talk a little bit to each other, and take some of your questions as you want to kick it off, maybe . Is this kind of fun because even though john and i were together now for two books in five years, i have an idea of johns favorite moment in the inner workings, but i kind of dont, too. I figure well kick it off this way let you guys chime in as well. So maybe lets start off by talking about your favorite moment of the book. There is something that happened on election night. You might have had his similar experience to us which is that we were expecting are claimed to be the next president of the United States. I assume most of you are not well into writing a book about this election. One of the first things that we discussed in the immediate aftermath of the election, it think a lot of people were trying to get adjusted to the surprise of the election to of course the transition period for us, we sort of had to make an assessment of what we were still had to go after from the preelection period. From the pregeneral. Im all for the things we were really going to focus in on at the end of the campaign in a different way because we have a lot of reporting from before the election. Some of the last month or two, we hadnt had a chance to talk to folks because they really shut down around the election. Nobody wanted the leaks out. One of the decisions we made early was that we thought it would be a tremendous failure on our part if we did not get a tick tock of election night, of what was going on behind the scenes in the Clinton Campaign. My favorite part of the book in the thing i feel most invested in is the effort that we went to to really talk to a lot of people about what was going on. We have sorted a three to four ticktock of the Peninsula Hotel or Hillary Clinton and her top aides during this weekend at their rooms surrounded all night. The boiler room and made town manhattan ordered data analytic spokesman pulls yours in some people really crunching numbers and talking to people in the state, where they were all working. To brooklyn headquarters people were there as well and of course the Javits Center where her victory party, her plan to tory party was. We spent a tremendous amount of time to be together would have been putting together a tick tock, trying to get the time element. There are a tremendous there are a lot of things in this book that have not appeared anywhere else. Amy and i were the first to report in late november because we were afraid that he would reported that for the book came out that president obama had urged Hillary Clinton to secede when she was not ready to get a lot more of the story of election night, what was going on, with the feelings are, what the debates were among our staff and among her family even. To me that is the point im most proud of is that we got all this reporting that no one else did about this really incredibly shocking moment for not only for the country, but obviously for the clinton people were not only the clinton people, but the country as well. So you, what is your favorite part of this book . Labatt obviously because it took a lot of work. I should say if you dont mind, every authors favorite part is the byline. So this is really the second favorite part. No, it was great to actually everyone wanted to know what was going on inside the room. Id have to agree with you. We wanted to know the real story. Obviously they kept trying to portray a Joyful Campaign and we kept seeing signs that it wasnt such a Joyful Campaign. John and i kind of made it a mission to get the real story from people. Initially people would be like yes, great, if going well and slowly, slowly we started hearing the rails dory and were interviewing one source in the brooklyn headquarters because the stories about the people of the brooklyn headquarters mostly. A source actually told us that the very tail end of the interview, yeah, there was one moment right after michigan. She was really off. But i cant really tell you anymore. Youre going to have to talk to other people in the room for that. I was so angry i was a come on, tell us a little more about what happened here. We want to know about it. He was like now, talk to other people in the room. I got him to tell us who was in the room and he gave us these names. We tried to make the mission in every interview after that to find out what exactly went down in not moment. Finally, we circled back months later. Ninemonth later. Separately we could have had children in that time. Love you, honey. Finally, this one source had come on. We really want to know what happened here. We kind of have it in pieces of what happened. This is postelection now. Postelection. This was like premoderation, but i think it mightve been after christmas. Finally, the source tells us what happened and basically it resulted in us finding out what was happening in michigan during the primary. She was angry at her a she was telling them are messages that resonating. What is happening here . These are the moment. It is a book about what happened, not for outsiders, the people inside the campaign. I think that kind of book that kind of shines in this book and this is what we aim to do. Your turn. Truth or dare. I want to know what you think the hardest part of reporting out this book was . I think getting people in clintons orbit to talk about anything is impossible. If i was to chalk up whatever my proudest accomplishments were just as a reporter breaking into the circle of them getting people to tell us that because this is a famously especially in this campaign, a group that was not allowed, afraid of the repercussions of having leaks come back on them is something we write about here that Hillary Clinton is obsessed after 2008. She believed that the leaks from her campaign had really hurt her in 2008, rather than singing them as symptoms of dysfunction are excepting people who didnt feel their grievances were being aired effectively internally to the outside. She worked the league says something that was plaguing her campaign and one of the big reasons she lost. This time around, live these people thought they were working in administration. A lot thought they would work in the white house. There is a lot of incentive not to bring problems not to air problems externally or even internally. So i think, you know, to be the hardest part was getting people to talk. It really was unlocking persontoperson, detailed going back to the same people over and over again, matching the people cited in april to september, december. It was a reminder. The whole process was a reminder of the faith that reporters know in their hearts, which is if you want to get something good, you just have it work at it and work at it in work at it. I am proud we were able to bring to light so many things that people didnt know in terms of the basic story. You can improve his conclusions. You can disagree with things in the book and add i dont think your analysis is right or wish they had more about that. At the end of the day, theres a ton of the ton of new reporting and im so proud of that and it was hard work for us. I know my family sacrifice for it, your family sacrificed for it. I am proud of that. I want to know for a new what your biggest fear is now that it now. Waiting for a few weeks to come out, just to reach into the experience of the author. I hope her publishers dont get mad at us. We heard that there is likely to be a review on friday, the first review likely to come out of friday night came out before we expect it to them is really very good. For weeks to sit around with a finished project that nobody else has read. You dont know if anybodys going to like it. You dont know if its going to sell. It was just as hard to write them matter whether those things go well or poorly. But now that its out and people get to look at it, if the finished product, like what is your fear . So many fears. I want people to understand with guidance and be back on twitter and other social media that were biased reporters. We went into this basically trying. We shoot from the hip. We are reporters. We wrote with some people thought was a largely sympathetic book the first time around. This one is basically what we saw, what we heard from everyone in the campaign. So i kind of want people my big fear is this will be misinterpreted. As we explained in the introduction, we actually went about reporting that. Without obviously that she was going to win and are reporting changed. Well, it didnt change, but the direction didnt even change because we had time to problem solve throughout the campaign. It would have been when she lost. We had to kind of quickly interviewed people and quickly form conclusions about what happened and do that right after the election in january. That was a really quick turnaround. I kind of want people to understand that process without judging how we did that and whether or not we were taking sides in who we voted for in a disclaimer i dont vote even because i feel like my reporting is my publics nervous and i dont take sides. I want people to kind of judge this fairly and kind of read it before they actually judge it. The mac if i could add to that, you know, before the election have been, we picked up his seemingly sane on a lot of problems in the campaign and the misery of the campaign and we picked up on Hillary Clinton feels like she didnt have a handle for the electorate. The couple anecdotes about her saying to people very close, i dont understand what is happening with the country right now. I dont get it, which we have a seesaw was a problem in the democratic primary and general election. Certainly she would like to have gotten a larger share of the popular vote and certainly in the right state for the electoral college. There is something Bernie Sanders and donald trump or trap them into, part of which was her general believe, not just general, but strong belief in systems and working inside the system to make change rather than breaking down the system to make change. But we saw all of this going on for months and months, and ability to touch what is going on in the country and dysfunction on the campaign. It was weird to us because we saw the polls on election is going to win because theyre looking at the point and it says there seemed to be a pretty good pad there. I hope im not talking too much here. They said to us before the election, you know, it sounds like she is going to lose. Im having trouble understanding because it looks like shes going to win and you guys think shes going to win, but this book feels like something where shes going to lose here and we are like, thats the problem. We are going have to figure that out. We are reporters. This is what is going on and it may be this is for projections of an administration. We are struggling with that. And honestly close to honestly close enough they honestly close enough they could have gone either way. In a number of things could have taped it one way or the other. We had seen all the signs and not necessarily ending to a trusted archive in terms of reporting and not paid off and it was the reason we were able to produce this fairly quickly after the election because we didnt have to up a lot of her and reformulate assumptions because we just sort of laid out with the reporting was. Lets do one more quick question. Lets make this a lightning question. What is your favorite quote from the book . Thats rough. My favorite quote from the book. That somebody else said or that we think is so awesome . A powerful quote. Im sorry. [inaudible] yes, yes, not only to apologi