WASHINGTON (AP) – Hillary Clinton takes the blame for her 2016 presidential defeat in her upcoming book but offers choice words for President Donald Trump, her campaign rivals and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Clinton writes in “What Happened” that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders caused “lasting damage” to her presidential campaign and pushes back against the notion raised by Vice President Joe Biden that she didn’t campaign forcefully enough for middle class voters.
“I go back over my own shortcomings and the mistakes we made. I take responsibility for all of them. You can blame the data, blame the message, blame anything you want – but I was the candidate,” she writes. “It was my campaign. Those were my decisions.”
CNN reported Wednesday that it purchased a copy of the book in Jacksonville, Florida ahead of its Sept. 12 release date.
In the book, Clinton says she miscalculated “how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet” and tried to run a traditional campaign “while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans’ anger and resentment.”