Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House

Former Democratic National Committee chair Brazile (Cooking with Grease) refuses to concede that, during her time at CNN, she aided Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign by leaking a question in advance of a town hall with Bernie Sanders; this omission tarnishes her self-serving insider account of the campaign. Although elsewhere Brazile has publicly stated she made a mistake, here she resists that being an admission of guilt and resorts to equivocation (“I still didn’t recall sharing questions with Hillary’s campaign”). That lack of transparency will lead to skepticism about some of her dramatic revelations—especially her assertion that she nearly chose someone else to replace Clinton as the party’s candidate for president. Those surprised that the DNC chair holds such unilateral power will find their reaction validated when Brazile later states that she would have needed to consult with party leaders before making such a drastic decision. Her account of what happened after Clinton nearly fainted during a 9/11 memorial service amounts to a few hours of her internal debate, making clear that the entire episode has been overhyped. Odd sentences (“Women of Hillary’s era, like Eleanor Holmes Norton, are thinkers”) and inconsistencies only further diminish the value of what could have been a warts-and-all postmortem of one of the greatest political upsets in American history. (Nov.)