Hillary Clinton's "hubris" and Donald Trump's "brilliant branding" triggered the billionaire businessman's surprise victory in the 2016 presidential race, Doug Wead told Newsmax TV.
"It was a combination of hubris and overconfidence on the Clinton part and brilliant branding on the Trump part, in my humble opinion," Wead told Thursday's "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"I have multiple sources inside the Clinton campaign that were so frustrated. There was so much left on the table and she [out]spent him 8-1, if you count her super-PAC money and the soft money, 5-3 on the regular campaign funds.
"She out-staffed him 5-1, she had 960,000 people on the ground to identify and turn out voters. She had 249 newspapers endorse her, Trump had 19. All Trump had was $1 billion of earned media."
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Wead, the author of "Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy," said Clinton's "hubris" was also to blame for her skipping campaigning in important states like Wisconsin.
"In fact, Bill Clinton was so furious. There's a scene in my book where he's talking on the phone [to Hillary] . . . he said 'You're going to lose the Catholic vote,'" Wead told Malzberg.
"[He] tried to get her to go to Notre Dame University to speak for St. Patrick's [Day]. No, can't do that. They don't want to disturb their base. And he got so mad he said, 'You are blowing it.'"
Another time, Wead said, Bill Clinton was so frustrated during a conversation with his wife "he hangs up and he throws his cell phone off the roof of his pad in Little Rock, Ark. . . . He threw it toward the Arkansas River, but I'm sure it didn't make it."
Wead said President Barack Obama tried to convince the Clintons they were losing the large evangelical Christian vote and "should at least ask for it."
"How do they justify turning down Barack Obama?" Wead asked. "They thought, that's four years ago. In the digital age, four years is a lifetime, they thought, he doesn't know what he's talking about."
"Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy" is published by Center Street and available on Amazon.com.
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