Bill Clinton blames ‘mainstream media’ coverage of emails for 2016 Hillary Clinton loss

Former President Clinton blamed the “mainstream media” coverage of his wife’s email controversy for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential loss.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” that aired Monday, Bill Clinton discussed an excerpt from his recent book, “Citizen,” published in November.

In the book, he detailed the rage he felt after Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and how he believes the media blew the email scandal out of proportion.

“It’s easier for us to know what happened in 2016 in some ways than it is what happened in 2024 … because in 2016, you had two highly unusual things,” Bill Clinton began, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.

“First of all, the mainstream media told the American people repeatedly that the biggest issue was Hillary’s emails. That’s what they said,” he continued.

President-elect Trump and other Republicans at the time blasted Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to send and receive communication pertaining to her government work. The FBI investigated her practices, but did not end up filing charges. However, it became a major focus of media coverage in the home stretch of the campaign, with then FBI director James Comey publicly releasing information about newly discovered emails days before the election.

In the new interview, Bill Clinton noted that it wasn’t just right-leaning outlets that flocked to his wife’s email story.

“When in fact, even the Trump State Department said she neither sent nor received a single solitary email on her personal device marked classified,” he said.

“And two, she followed the rules as they then existed. The rules were changed after she left office. And yet, the whole story was written as if she had done something hideous."