clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

This new Hillary Clinton email is the most Veep-like yet

Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.

As Matt Yglesias wrote a few weeks back, the Hillary Clinton emails from her time as secretary of state so far have tended to show that Washington is "more Veep than House of Cards." There was the time she heard on the radio about a Cabinet meeting that day, and asked her staffers, "Can I go?" There was the time she asked her personal aide for several pieces of information she could have easily Googled. There was the time she sent a mysterious message with the subject "Gefilte fish" and the simple text, "Where are we on this?"

But this one released today, via Emily Schultheis, may be the most Veep-like yet. On February 10, 2010, the frustrated secretary of state emailed her aide Huma Abedin about her unsuccessful struggle to convince the White House phone operator that she is, in fact, Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton sad email

When the White House operator asked Clinton what her direct office number was, she writes, "I told him I had no idea what my direct office # is since I didn't call myself." Of course, that's just what a creative prankster trying to impersonate Clinton would say, now isn't it?

VIDEO: Hillary Clinton on her private email