Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to barnes and noble upper west side. Tonight i have the pleasure of introducing authors Jonathan Jonathan allen. He is the head of community and content for sideway and writes a weekly column for [roll call]. Amy is a senior White House Correspondent for the hill newspaper in washington. She covered Hillary Clinton during the campaign and will cover the trump administration. They have written the acclaimed biography, hrc. Tonight they bring us their new book shattered inside Hillary Clintons campaign. From insiders from top to bottom jonathan and amy have reconstructed the key decisions and on ceased opportunities the wellintentioned misfires and hidden thorns that turned a winnable contest into a devastating loss. The New York Times writes, although the Clinton Campaign was widely covered and many autopsies have been conducted in the last several months, the blowbyblow details and shattered and observations made here by campaign and Democratic Party insiders are nothing less than devastating. Sure to dismay not just her supporters, but also everyone who cares about the outcome and momentous consequences of the election. Without further and do please help me welcome jonathan and amy. [applause] good evening and thank you for coming there is my family waiting over there, they must have been drinking already what will do is read a little bit of the early chapters of the book, Chapter Seven and the world talk about what a process was and then take questions to anna starting the . 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 were going to lose. Bill clinton was pissed off. He hollered at john podesta loud enough to be heard through the walls of the little room he lay claim to on the tenth floor of the Historic Hotel in downtown tamoi, iowa. It was the goddamn pendency was watching on tv. Theyre getting it all wrong again. As result of the iowa caucus trickled in again. Hillary was leading but it was going to be tight. Omg will blitz are set on cnn, it does not get a hold closer than that. That assessment invited parallels to hillarys 2008 loss to barack obama. It was in bills view, an absurd comparison. After all, that had been a threeway race and she was still likely to come out the winner in this night, not the thirdplace finisher. The journalist on upstart challenger competing with her on iowa and deja vu was a hard storyline to resist. The outcome tonight ensures this race is going to go on for months and months on the democratic side, blitzers colleague reported from sanders headquarters. The perceptional night was that hillary was such a prohibitive front runner heading into the democratic nomination that she should have cleaned up easily. Bill had a much different perspective. Iowa has never been clinton country. Hillary had increased her share of caucus share from under 30 in 2008 to 50 , give or take little in 2016. Plus, unlike obama, bernie was tailormade for iowa. The state is overwhelmingly white littered with colleges and workingclass cities. Even if bernie managed a victory that was hillary showing strength not weakness. Why couldnt they see the difference . On one level it was just another one of bills routine fits about television personalities. He cursed timorous its name after meet the press host declared obama the winner of the 2008 primary in may of that year. It was another sign of his ability to tamped on his emotions that political moments of his wifes career. He had gone for a walk earlier in the day and at one point he played all hell, a combination of card game and bs with them. He was a protective husband and concerned democrat and now he was shouting eight years of pentup frustration at his longtime friend and advisor. And when bill had spent himself, podesta, walked into an adjoining space. There, mid hillarys anxiety ridden consultancy from the man he was looking for. I was state director, matt paul. Holding the spectacle and in his mid 40s, he had a job for agriculture secretary, tom phil sector run by one operation. He had been with her was stops across the state for better part of the her. Having served on howard deans president ial campaign in iowa and as a former aide to fill second harkin, paul knew the states electorate as well as anyone. Podesta beckoned paul with a quick not. You go in and deal with them. Paul gathered himself and walked into find the former president sitting in a weather chair. Bill was wearing a suit and apparel leather gloves. His arms were crossed. Even if it had not been audible through the walls of the hotel it wouldve been clear that he was in a foul mood. His eyes were fixed on paul. If theres ever a time to make sure i know my stuff, this staffer thought, this is it. Bill fired questions at him. What is outstanding in polk county . What about Johnson County . What about cedar rapids . Paul walked bill through the state and work caucus results havent been reported county by county. Slowly, the president s anger says subsided. Even if its a untried anxiety did it. Hillary had a lead as to where they thought she would be on caucus night. Sanders was slowly closing in on her. After paul big briefed bill they repeated the conversation in the room where the rest of hillarys titeam was assessing the situation. Bill bore down on paul again. One source noted a market shift in bills personality. Usually when you are with him he is a storyteller, the source said. On this night, he was just an information gatherer. He wanted to know what the staff did not know and why they did not know it. It is much harder to figure out who is winning a caucus state and particularly in iowa because the results are not measured in cast instead there are reported as the number of state delegate equivalents based on the proportion of the vote that each candidate gets from his or her performance at caucus locations. The numbers come in a small fractions. Paul gave updates to the president. He remained u upbeat if not rosy about hillarys chances appointed out. Paul concluded about what caucuses remained unreported. If they were in the core of des moines, hillary was screw. If those outside the city she would win. The pollster john looked at the state numbers, same numbers and got a bad feeling. He back channel to podesta while paul was reporting to bill. This is not getting better. This is going to keep going down. He could overtake us. Let me just say before we go further, were happy to have cspan here. We love cspan, it is local television for us in washington. We like to thank barnes noble for hosting us. We found out as were walking in here today that this book showed up as number one on barnes noble on their website today. Across the country, so were happy to be here. We would like to think our team and publisher many people might help make this book possible. We be remiss in not mentioning all of them. They stand along the wall ensures on and theyre really responsible for a lot of what appears in the book. Without might be interesting for you as if we talked a little bit to each other and kind of interview each other for a few minutes. Then take some of your questions. You want to kick it off amy . I think this is fun. Even though john and i worked together for two books and five years, i think was so that really i have an idea of johns favorite moments in the inner workings, but i kind of dont too. Well kick it off this way and let you chime in as well. So, maybe lets start off by talking about your favorite moment of the book. There is an interesting thing that happened on Election Night. You may have had similar experience to us which is were expecting Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States. On like us i assume most of you were not well into writing a book about the selection. One of the first things we discussed in the immediate aftermath of the election, i think a lot of people are trying to get adjusted to the surprise of the election to the transition. For us we had to make an assessment of postal had to go after that was from the preelection time from the pregeneral time and what were the things were going to need to focus in a at the end of the campaign. We had a lot of reporting from before the election of the some of the last month or two we havent had a chance to really talk to folks on the campaign because they shut down around the election. Nobody wanted leaks out. We need to do all new reporting on that go back and get things from earlier. One of the decisions we made early was that we thought it would be a tremendous failure on our part if we cannot get a ticktock of Election Night of what was going on behind the scenes in the Clinton Campaign. My favorite part of the book and the thing i feel most invested in is the effort we went to, to talk to people about what was going on. We have a three or four location ticktock at the Peninsula Hotel where Hillary Clinton and her top aides were in a suite another words rounded all night. A boiler room in midtown, manhattan where her data analytic folks and pollsters and people who are crunching numbers and talking to people out in the states, where they were working. The brooklyn headquarters there are people there as well. And of course the center where her plan Victory Party was. We spent time trying to piece together what happened in trying to get the time element. There are a lot of things in the book that have not appeared anywhere else. Amy and i were the first report in late november because were afraid somebody would report it before the book came out that president obama had urged Hillary Clinton to concede when she was not yet ready to on Election Night. There is more of that story of Election Night what was going on, what the feelings were and what the emotions and debate were among her staff and among her family even. To me, that is the part that i am most proud of that we have all of this reporting that no one else did. About this really incredibly shocking moment for not only for the country but also for the clinton people and also the country as well. So what is your favorite part of the book . Will that obviously. It took a lot of work. I should also say if you dont mind, every authors favorite part is the byline. This is really the second favorite part. It was great actually, i think everybody wanted to know what was going on inside that room. I would have to agree with you. We wanted to know the real story. Obviously they kept trying to pretrade a Joyful Campaign and we cap seen signs that it was not such a Joyful Campaign. So john and i made it a mission to get the real story from people. Initially people were like its great, its going well. And slowly we started hearing the real story. We were interviewing one source in the brooklyn headquarters because the stories about the people in the brooklyn headquarters mostly. A source told us at the tail end of the interview, yes, there was one moment right after risk good, she was really mad but i cannot really tell you more. You will have to talk to the people who were in the room for that. I was so angry is like, come on, tell us more about what happened. And he said no, talk to other people in the room. I got him to tell us who is in the room and he gave us these names. We try to make it a mission in every interview after that to find out what exactly went down in that moment. Finally, we circled back a month later. Nine months later, separately we could have had children in that time. [laughter] i love you honey. Finally, this one source said, on, we want to know what happened and we have bits and pieces of what happened. This is postelection the, no it was before election. No, postelection. This was like preinauguration but i think it might have been after christmas. Finally the source tells us what happens. Basically resulted in us finding out that she was frustrated by what had happened in michigan during the primary. She was angry at her aides and telling them our message is not resonating, what is happening here. These are the moments that make this book what it is. A real book about what happened told through the people, not through outsiders, told to the people inside the campaign. I think that kind of moment shines in this book. 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 was impossible. If i was to chalk chalk up what my proudest accomplishments were is breaking into the circle and getting people to tell us stuff. Especially in this campaign a group that was not leaking a lot not talking a lot very afraid of the repercussions of having leaks come back on them and something that we write about here is that Hillary Clinton is obsessed on 2008 without having leaks. She believed the leaks from her campaign had hurt her in 2008 rather than seeing them as symptoms of dysfunction or feel like their grievances were not being aired effectively. She looked at the leak says something that was plaguing her campaign one of the reason she lost. A lot of these people thought they were gonna be working in the administration. And in the white house. There is a lot of incentive not to bring problems not to air problems externally or internally. So i think the hardest part was getting people to talk. He was really unlocking people person by person in detail by detail going back to the same people i matching what someone said in april with what they said in april and december. The whole process was a reminder of the thing that reporters know in their hearts which is that if you want to get something good you have to work at it. I am proud we are able to bring to light so many things that people didnt know. You can agree or disagree with conclusions and i dont think the analysis was right, but at the end of the day there is a ten of new reporting in this. Im proud of that was hard work for us. I know my family sacrifice word and your family sacrifice for it. I want to know from you what your biggest fear is now that it is out . Because, we have been sitting on this a finished product for a few weeks waiting for it to come out. Just to redo it to the experience of the author i think we can say this, we heard there is likely to be a review on friday. It came out before we expected it to and it was very good. For weeks to sit around with a finished product that nobody has read or you dont know if anybodys going to like it or if it is going to sell. It was just as hard to write no matter if they go well or poorly. But now that it is out and people get to look at this finished product what is your fear. So many fears. I want people to understand that we have gotten feedback on twitter another social media that we are biased reporters are we would into this trying, we shoot from the hip. We wrote what some people thought was a largely sympathetic book the first time around. This one is basically what we saw on heard from everyone in the campaign. My big fear is that this will be misinterpreted. As explained in the introduction we actually went about reporting this, we thought obviously she was going to win. Our reporting change. It didnt change but the direction did not even change his we had seen signs of problems all throughout the campaign. What happened was she lost, we had to quickly come to interview and form conclusions about what happened and do that right after the election in january. Thats a quick turnaround. I want people to understand that process without judging how we did this and whether or not were taking sides and who we voted for and a disclaimer i dont vote even. Because i feel like my reporting is my Public Service and i dont take sides. So i want people to judge this fairly and read it before they judge it. Before the election happened we had picked up on a lot of problems in the campaign and some of the misery in the campaign. We picked up on Hillary Clinton not feeling like she had a handle on the electorates on her same i dont understand whats happening with the country right now. I dont get it which we saw was a problem in terms of in the democratic primary and general election regardless of the popular votes the certainly she wouldve liked to have gotten a larger share in the right state. There is something that sanders was tapping into that she had trouble understanding. Part of it was her general believe in systems and breaking down the system to make change. We saw all of this going on for months and months in the dysfunction of the campaign. It was weird because we saw the polls and shes going to win because the polling not only said she was going to win but there seem to be a good pad there. I hope im not talking out of school too much. They said this book makes it sounds like she is going to lo lose. Im having trouble understanding because it looks like she is going to win. You guys think shes going to in but yet this book feels like shes going to lose. And were like yeah, thats a problem. Were going to have to figure that out. Look where were reporters. This is whats going on in these might be forward projections. And then on election day she lost and we had seen all of the signs. Obviously was close enough the election could have gone either way. Any number of things could have ticket one way or the other. We had seen the signs and a necessarily, we trust our gut in terms of doing the reporting. Thats the reason were able to produce this fairly quickly after the election because we did not have to pull up a lot of roots or reformulated assumptions because we laid out with reporting was. Lets do a more quick question. What is your favorite quote from the book . Thats rough. That someone else said . Or something that is so awesome . Im sorry you still mine. Not only am i sorry and i apologize for taking this time, the longer quotas mr. President , im sorry. I would have to agree. I can give you another one if you want. Sorry. Like abbott and costello are dumb and dumber appear. Anyway, will open it up to questions because we want to hear from you. I have a q a microphone. I would like to know if you have any theories as to why former Vice President biden didnt run and secondly, id lik