Clinton aide brushes off email story as media-driven controversy

Top Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri brushed aside criticism surrounding Hillary Clinton’s private email server, arguing the controversy is media-driven a day after Clinton defended her conduct at a press conference. 

“The press has a lot of questions about the emails but voters don’t,” she said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”

{mosads}“During her time in New Hampshire and Iowa and doing a lot of town halls, she’s actually never gotten one question about it,” Palmieri told guest host Luke Russert. “People are asking her about questions that affect her lives.”

The message is similar to the one Clinton gave at the Tuesday news conference in Las Vegas, where she pushed back against criticism of her use of a private email server amid questions over whether it contained classified information.

Palmieri also characterized press coverage of Clinton’s recent dip in the polls as “pretty skewed,” noting that the media is focusing on her decline despite the fact that she’s still outperforming her GOP rivals.

“She has a higher favorability rating than any Republican candidate,” she said, noting a recent CNN/ORC poll that came out this week.

“That CNN poll also confirmed that she beats every Republican candidate in head to head. The press coverage of her poll numbers is pretty skewed, when I talk to people they are pretty surprised.”

The CNN poll released Wednesday morning shows Clinton’s unfavorable rating, 44 percent, tied for its lowest since 2001. But as Palmieri said, that’s higher than the favorable ratings of the Republican candidates CNN recently tested: Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump, former Gov. Jeb Bush (Fla.) and Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.). 

The poll also shows Clinton beats those four candidates in hypothetical general election match-ups.

There’s increasing sentiment that Clinton’s repeated email woes, which stem from revelations back in March that she used her own private email server while at the State Department, has impacted her numbers at the polls. Intelligence agency officials are investigating whether Clinton housed classified material on the server after officials found two emails that they believe should have been classified as top secret.

Clinton defended her conduct as legal on Tuesday, adding that she never sent or received any email “marked” classified.

When Russert asked Palmieri about a possible connection between the email issue and dips at the polls, she flipped the question back around to tout Clinton’s favorability numbers compared to the rest of the field.

Long-time Clinton ally James Carville, who appeared on the show a few minutes after Palmieri, also pushed back against perceptions that Clinton’s poll numbers could be worrisome,

“Polls go up and down, this is foolishness. I’m having to come out of my vacation to deal with this kind of stupidity that these people are putting out,” said Carville, who’s nicknamed “The Ragin’ Cajun.”

“It’s mostly stupid media people talking to stupid media people … what they need to do is calm down and enjoy the race.”