Donna Brazile says Hillary Clinton lost because ‘cult’-like campaign was impenetrable

The Democratic National Committee’s former interim chair says Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election because her campaign was like an impenetrable “cult.”

Democratic Party insider Donna Brazile shocked political circles on Nov. 2 when excerpts from her new book revealed a fundraising agreement with the DNC and Mrs. Clinton that she called “the cancer.” The author, who said the agreement was “not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” further explained her frustration Wednesday during an MSNBC appearance.

“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough elicited the “cult” remark when he said that “it should have never been a close race” between the former secretary of state and Republican Donald Trump.

“I agree with you on that, Joe,” Ms. Brazile said. “It was a cult; I felt like it was a cult. You could not penetrate them. Look, I’m a grass-roots organizer. I know ’street’ politics better than I know ’sweet’ politics. I know how to touch people where they live, work, play and pray — but I cannot help a candidate, Joe, if I don’t have the resources, if cannot spend the resources that the party is raising because there’s a blind agreement between a campaign.”

Ms. Brazile’s comments come six days after Politico published “Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC,” a excerpt of her book in which she details a call made “in agony” to Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders.

“I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested,” Ms. Brazile wrote. “I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.

“’Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,’ I said,” she continued. “’But I will not kill the patient.’ I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.”

Ms. Brazile said in subsequent interviews that her findings do not constitute a “rigged” system.