Brazile: Clinton Campaign Like a 'Cult'

Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile said Wednesday she wanted Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, but her campaign became a "cult" that could not be penetrated.

"I felt like it was a cult," Brazile, who is in the news for her bombshell book about the 2016 presidential election, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.

"You could not penetrate them. I'm a grassroots organizer. I know street politics better than I know sweet politics. I know how to touch people where they live, work, pray and play."

The former DNC chair, however, continued that she could not help a candidate when she could not spend the resources that the party is raising because there was a "blind agreement" between Clinton and the DNC.

The Clinton campaign made several mistakes, meanwhile, Brazile said, including not traveling to battleground states like Michigan or Wisconsin, and that led to her loss. She also agreed that there was an arrogance about the campaign that was hard to break through.

Even with the issues, however, Brazile disagreed with show co-anchor Mika Brzezinski's opinion that had things been different, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have won the Democratic nomination.

"[Clinton] won three out of the four contests," said Brazile. "I know the Democratic Party. She won three out of four. I think if the election went on and on, he would have caught up but I don't know if he could have won."

In her book, "The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House," Brazile wrote that she had discovered that there was a "Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America."

The document, Brazile claimed had been signed four months before Clinton announced her presidential campaign, and gave the Clinton campaign financial control of the National Democratic Party, and eventually left leaving little to support Democrats in down-ballot races.

While her words at first were construed to sound as if Brazile was accusing Clinton of rigging the election against Sanders, on Wednesday, she insisted that she did not mean that the race was rigged, but that there was a "cancer" inside the DNC.

"I stand by what I wrote in the book," said Brazile. "On Aug. 19, the night that Donald Trump said 'what the hell do you all have to lose?' I was so angry. First of all, he was coming at the black folk. He was coming at the Democratic Party. And I wanted to fight back. All I could do was write a column. What the hell? I need to do more than write a column. I need to spend some money."

However, she continued, she was told there was no money to fight back.

Brazile said she then went back and told Sanders that she "found what you wanted me to find. It's a cancer."

But still, she insisted Wednesday, "the process was not rigged," but admitted that she did say that she would "get to the bottom of whether or not Hillary's team had rigged the party process in her favor."

Then, on Sept. 7, she said she called Sanders to tell him that she had "found my proof," and what she found had broken her heart, as she had thought the Democratic Party, "that I had given so much of my life to, was better than this."

The proof, or "cancer," was that the staff of the DNC had signed the memorandum over allowing Clinton's campaign "to take over certain departments in exchange for bailing us out," said Brazile.

"Also I said in the book that Hillary bailed us out. She put us on a starvation diet, that's Hillary, but she bailed the party out."

However, the former chairman said, the constraints stopped her from doing her job as chairman.

The Clinton campaign and other Democrats have said that the joint financial agreement was meant for the general election, not for the primary, but Brazile disagreed.

"First of all, let me say this for the record," she said. "I was an unpaid officer for eight years. I took this job, given up everything in my life to go over there because I wanted Hillary to win. The attacks on me don't bother me. I've been attacked by the Russian and the Chinese. I'm so over people trying to threaten folks."

That money was not utilized, said Brazile, as the party's staff "made sure none of these resources were for primary purposes."