Editor’s Note: Edited to add segments from the extended interview posted online.
Thursday on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, former DNC chair and ex-CNN analyst Donna Brazile appeared to talk about her time as chair and the scandal that ousted her from her 14-year-run at CNN. While host Trevor Noah asked her why she gave questions to the Clinton campaign before a town hall, he didn’t push back when Brazile defended her actions and downplayed the controversy as media spin.
From the moment Brazile appeared on the show, it was clear that she had an already established friendship with Noah. Brazile teased Noah, saying he must’ve “lost her number” for not inviting her on the show sooner.
BRAZILE: You should have put my number on the bottom of your shoe.
NOAH: I never lost your number, Donna Brazile.
BRAZILE: Baby, you still have my number?
[Noah laughs]
After that friendly exchange, Noah asked Brazile to explain what it was like serving as interim DNC Chair. Brazile blasted the “thankless job” that she had during the “break from Hell.”
BRAZILE: Thankless job. First time I was chair was over Easter break and it was really nice. This time it was over the break from Hell because the Russians invaded us.
Brazile then blamed the Russians and Wikileaks for Clinton losing the election, saying how “tough” it was to “navigate” Clinton’s campaign after Wikileaks. She lamented how “fearful” she was to go “up against” a “hostile military force,” who was going through her emails, ripping her files and “harassing” her donors and staff “every day.”
In the extended version of the interview posted on Comedy Central’s website, Brazile adds nuance to her argument, stating that Democrats lost certain states because they didn’t campaign very well and took those voters for granted. However this part was cut from the broadcast version.
Noah responded by asking her about the leaked email that revealed she gave questions to the Clinton campaign before a town hall. Brazile started off joking that it was the season of Lent, so she could make a confession for her “sin.” But then she quickly backtracked, saying she was only doing her job, “advancing the cause of justice and equality:”
BRAZILE: Well, first of all, I didn't have my hands in the cookie jar. I'm an operative, I'm a strategist, and part of what my role was, in addition to being a "political pundit" was to help advance the cause of justice and equality. Okay. So think about, we have six debates. I started to fight for more debates. I started to fight to ensure that Bernie and Hillary had an opportunity to talk about these issues, talk about the Flint water crisis, talk about criminal justice reform, and that was my role. Now, the Wikileaks version is the Russian version. My own version is that, had you saw my e-mails to Bernie, you would have known that I was communicating with Bernie just as much as I was communicating with Hillary, Martin O'Malley. Because that's what you do.
As Noah starts to interrupt, the video then does a jump cut, clearly editing out what happens next. That part can be seen in the extended online version where Noah argues against Brazile’s point, saying that Donald Trump was fair in calling out CNN and Brazile for feeding Clinton questions ahead of time. The two get in a back and forth argument briefly, with Noah standing his ground that it was a fair point to hold Brazile accountable for.
During the segment that aired on television however, that part is cut out and it picks up with Brazile saying that the media needed to “go to her” to get the truth of the situation, instead of relying on leaked emails which only told half the story. Noah then asks, “So, are you going to write a book?”
Brazile responds emphatically, “Hell, yeah!” to audience applause.
“Because we want the truth,” Noah adds. Brazile then seems to defend giving the questions to the Clinton campaign again as an effort to promote “inclusion” and “diversity:”
BRAZILE: The truth is politics is a hard-fought game, and when you're in the battle of fighting to make sure that you have inclusion, to make sure you have diversity, to make sure you have the kind of not just communication but the kind of conversation with voters, you want to make sure that those questions, those topics, that is out there.
Brazile goes on to add more to her explanation in the version posted online. She seems to deny feeding questions to Clinton again, after seemingly defending doing so multiple times before this.
“But the question you raised with me,” she begins, “‘Sister did you give out something?’ No baby! I ain’t give out nothing. I didn’t have nothing to give you. But what I did stir, was something you could cook with. And baby, what you could cook with, was burning all over the stove,” she says, continuing the cooking analogy to Noah’s amusement.
Afterwards, Brazile urged the comedian to run for Congress, saying she would “come out of retirement” to support him if he did.
Brazile has criticized her former network before, saying she wish she had the chance to defend herself from “Wiki-lies.” Well she certainly got her wish granted by Noah last night.
