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Authors: Edward Klein
Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas
Copyright © 2014 by Edward Klein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
First ebook edition © 2014
eISBN 978-1-62157-314-2
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Klein, Edward, 1936-
Blood feud : the Clintons vs. the Obamas / Edward Klein.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.
United States--Politics and government--2009- 2.
Obama, Barack. 3.
Clinton, Hillary Rodham. 4.
Clinton, Bill, 1946- 5.
Obama, Michelle, 1964-
I. Title.
E907.K554 2014
973.932--dc23
2014016147
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ALSO BY EDWARD KLEIN
NONFICTION
All Too Human:
The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy
Just Jackie:
Her Private Years
The Kennedy Curse:
Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years
Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days
The Truth about Hillary:
What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President
Katie:
The Real Story
Ted Kennedy:
The Dream That Never Died
The Amateur:
Barack Obama in the White House
NOVELS
If Israel Lost the War
(With Robert Littell and Richard Z. Chesnoff)
The Parachutists
The Obama Identity
(With John LeBoutillier)
In loving memory of DeeDee
CONTENTS
Chapter Two:
“No Place for Amateurs”
Chapter Five:
Top of the Pecking Order
Chapter Six:
The Third Member in the Marriage
Chapter Seven:
Making the Case against Bill
Chapter Nine:
Marginalizing Hillary
Chapter Thirteen:
The Oracle of Harlem
Chapter Fourteen:
Secret Doubts
Chapter Fifteen:
Warring Interests
Chapter Seventeen:
The Illusionist
Chapter Eighteen:
The Story of a Lifetime
Chapter Nineteen:
“You Can’t Get Him off the Stage”
Chapter Twenty:
The Benghazi Deception
Chapter Twenty-One:
The Full Ginsburg
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Bill’s Palace
Chapter Twenty-Four:
A Pack of Lies
Chapter Twenty-Five:
“There Will Be Blood”
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
Chelsea at Whitehaven
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Hillary 2.0
Chapter Thirty:
“A Ghost of Clintonworld Past”
Chapter Thirty-One:
The Thinnest of Red Lines
Chapter Thirty-Two:
Wooing Oprah
Chapter Thirty-Three:
The Clintons Triumphant
“I
’m not sure what Bill and I expected from the Obamas,” declared Hillary Clinton, “but there was bad blood between us from the start.”
It was a sunny afternoon in May 2013, and Hillary was in a corner booth in Le Jardin du Roi, a French bistro in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons have a home. She was dishing the dirt with a half-dozen women, all of them members of the Wellesley College class of 1969.
Forty-four years ago, these women had chosen Hillary Diane Rodham to be the first student graduation speaker in Wellesley’s history—a speech that won her a write-up in
Life
magazine and her first brush with fame. Now her classmates were still dreaming of the day she would fulfill her destiny and become the first woman president of the United States.
Surrounded by this trusted band of sisters, and liberated from the constraints of being a member of the Obama administration, Hillary was in her comfort zone. She felt free to speak her mind.
“I still wonder if I should have joined Obama as his secretary of state,” she said, according to the recollection of one of the women at the table, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “History will be the judge of that. Long after I’m gone, historians who are now babies, or who haven’t even been born yet, will debate it at my presidential library.”
The next race for the White House wouldn’t begin in earnest for another year and a half, not until after the 2014 midterm elections—an eternity in politics—and Hillary insisted in public that she hadn’t made up her mind yet whether she was going to run. However, her reference to “my presidential library” struck the women as a revealing slip of the tongue, and it set off a round of applause and clinked wineglasses among her classmates.
They were drinking Château Hyot Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux and Croix de Basson rosé. The wines had been carefully chosen by Roi, the owner of the restaurant, to complement the scallops in an orange vanilla sauce, paté and sausage, mussels, and linguini with bacon and cream. Hillary’s friends shared and tasted each other’s dishes, while Roi waited on Hillary personally and prepared a special vegan dish for her after the former first lady told him that she was trying to lose weight. A waiter stood nearby, refilling their wineglasses, and soon the room was filled with the sounds of mildly intoxicated female laughter.
The women had been planning this reunion for quite some time, but they had been unable to set a date until now, because
of Hillary’s relentless travel schedule as secretary of state. They were in a festive mood and turned out for the occasion in their best jewelry and handbags. They basked in the reflected glory of their most famous classmate.
For a woman who had recently suffered a concussion and a blood clot on her brain, Hillary looked amazingly well. Gone was the second set of bags under her eyes; gone, too, were some of the extra pounds she had packed on during her million-mile sprint as secretary of state. She had been working out, jogging, and watching what she ate, all of which explained why her pantsuit appeared to be a size too big. She was no longer the haggard, bloated, and burned-out figure who had resigned from office just four months before.