Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas by Edward Klein Read Free Book Online Page B

lot, but they whispered so you couldn’t exactly hear what it was about. But I can tell when people are pissed off at each other, and they seemed to be pissed a lot. In fact, I didn’t see much warmth between the president and the first lady at all. They almost seemed to avoid each other. When the president was going on about something, Michelle would put on her earphones and listen to her iPod. She tuned him out. And they didn’t do much together. Michelle went out with her friends to lunch or dinner, and he stayed at home or went to the gym to play basketball or had a game of golf.”
    Jarrett was the only White House aide who vacationed with the Obamas. But on this trip to Martha’s Vineyard, she chose not to stay with the Obamas. Instead, she rented a house nearby with her daughter, Laura, a Harvard Law School grad.
    “But Valerie Jarrett was at Blue Heron Farm all the time,” said another member of the household staff. “She went out with the president when he visited the home of Professor Ogletree. Michelle didn’t join them. The president and Valerie seemed closer than the president and his wife.”
    Jarrett recalled in a later conversation with a close friend that she used her time alone with Obama to make her case about how to handle Bill Clinton. As on so many other issues, she believed that the president needed to be pushed. He was a ditherer and vacillator. He was most comfortable explaining and lecturing and being intellectual about issues. He expected that when he explained things from his point of view, everyone would see the light and accept his superior wisdom and fall into line. He expected Bill Clinton to fall into line.
    Jarrett told her friend that she didn’t believe for a minute that Obama could seal a secret backroom deal with Clinton without Clinton manipulating the relationship in such a way that he’d be the one in charge. Knowing Clinton, she thought he’d probably veer off message and cause huge and unforeseen problems. Jarrett reminded Obama that when he first approached Hillary to be his secretary of state, Hillary had been reluctant to take the job, because she couldn’t control her husband. He was unmanageable, she said, and at some point could become a big problem.
    Jarrett didn’t stop there. She recounted stories, based on sketchy and unverifiable information, about Bill’s out-of-control post-presidential life: how he jetted around the world on Ron Burkle’s custom-converted Boeing 757 (nicknamed Air Fuck One) with a scandalous posse of skirt chasers; how he’d been involved in shady business deals with dodgy characters, such as Vinod Gupta, a Nebraska multimillionaire who had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Clintons’ political campaigns; and how he’d carried on affairs with countless socialites, female politicians, actresses, wives of fund-raisers, and assorted bar girls.
    She criticized the sloppy way Clinton mixed his philanthropy through the Clinton Foundation with the private business interests of his biggest donors. She said Clinton was venal, corrupt, and unscrupulous. Not the kind of man you could trust.
    Furthermore, Jarrett had collected proof that Clinton had spies—“Clintonistas,” she called them—who reported to him from inside the Obama administration. Clinton interfered with Barack’s running of the government. Clinton didn’t hesitate to call government officials, and he shared his opinions on how agencies shouldbe run. He was constantly talking to congressmen and senators. He had his own agenda, and it didn’t necessarily mesh with Obama’s.
    What was at stake, Jarrett said, was nothing less than the future of the Democratic Party and the destiny of the United States. Clinton’s goal—his sole objective—was to seize control of the party and return to the White House as co-president with Hillary for a third Clinton term.
    That was Bill’s goal.
    “What’s your goal?” she asked Obama.
    If Obama was successful in winning