More Blood Feuding

Much as I am skeptical about the total veracity of Ed Klein’s new book, “Blood Feud,” it is nonetheless very entertaining in that it has its characters behaving just as I imagine that they would.  Now I know that not many of you readers follow the links I insert in these blogs, so I am, in this case, going to insert the passage from the Huffington Post article which has me in stitches:

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton has a penchant for drinking wine and dropping F-bombs. And if President Barack Obama had his way, he'd gorge on fudge and potato chips and go to bed alone.

That's according to Ed Klein's new book, Blood Feud, the latest installment from an author notorious for his loosely sourced depictions of the Clintons and the Obamas. On Sunday, BuzzFeed offered the nine most insane passages from the book. Since we couldn't do that again, The Huffington Post has pulled out the 10 most hilarious quotes. Read them out loud. Or, better yet, re-enact them in a video and send your dramatic readings our way. We'll post them below!

Here they are, in no particular order:

10. Klein writes that "Hillary did undergo a small nip and tuck shortly after the State Department," after Bill Clinton "had been on her case to do something about her sagging neck." It didn't end there. Klein writes that Bill advocated "a complete makeover" that ditched her signature pantsuits for “power outfits.” Then it gets really weird:

“Dowdy and old doesn’t win the White House these days,” he told Hillary, according to her friend.

To which his wife responded, “Fuck you. Get your own face lift.”

And that’s exactly what Bill did. He went to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and got a platysmaplasty, or neck lift. He also received Botox treatments and had work done on his bulbous red nose.

“I was starting to look like W.C. Fields,” he joked afterward.

9. At a dinner at a French bistro in New York, Hillary Clinton got very dishy with about a half-dozen women, Klein writes. Amid cursing Obama (she calls him a motherf---er, per Klein's retelling of the affair) and enjoying some Chateau Hyot Castillon Cotes de Bordeaux and Croix de Basson rose, the topic turned to her potential 2016 presidential bid. Here is what she says, according to Klein.

Now we are going to be together on the campaign trail, and it’s going to be complicated. Plus, there is the dynamic that when I run for president I'm going to be the boss, and I'm not sure Bill will be able to handle that. He says he’ll be my adviser and loving husband, but I'm afraid that if I'm elected, he'll think he's president again and I'm first lady. If he starts that shit, I’ll have his ass thrown out of the White House.

8. Desserts come and, naturally, the topic turns to Benghazi. Hillary Clinton dishes a bit more to her friends, Klein writes.

Bill was very disappointed in my performance. In fact, he was shattered. But we don’t fight anymore. We’ve gotten past that years ago. We accept each other as we are and chase our collective dream. All that shit of throwing things at him and yelling is in the distant past.

7. Klein writes that the Obamas sleep in different beds, and while they don't take antidepressants, a doctor has recommended they should. When staying at Blue Heron Farm in Martha's Vineyard, he adds, the pattern persisted. Klein quotes an anonymous "domestic servant" at the farm:

"The president ate in bed. You had to change the sheets every day. He smoked cigarettes and didn’t try to hide it at all. And he snores. I heard him. He ate a lot of junk food, chips and stuff. He loved fudge and bought it from Murdick’s Fudge. It was a wonder he stayed so thin."

6. Here, Klein quotes Bill Clinton discussing Obama, citing a source he describes as "someone who was present at the gathering and spoke on condition of anonymity."

"I really can't stand the way Obama always seems to be hectoring when he talks to me. Sometimes we just stare at each other. It’s pretty damn awkward."

5. Apparently, according to Klein, Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wanted Hillary Clinton to go on the Sunday talk shows to discuss the Benghazi attack instead of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Bill wasn't having it.

"There is no way I’m going to let you do those TV shows with those talking points,” Bill said, according to one of the participants in the meeting. “I’m ordering you to turn the White House down.”

“Fuck you!” Hillary said. “Nobody orders me around.”

“It’s a fucking trap,” he said.

“I know it’s a fucking trap,” she said. “But how do you say no to the president?”

“Easy -– you say N period O period,” Bill said. “Look, I'm thinking of you and the 2016 campaign. Those bullshit talking points manufactured in the White House sausage factory aren't going to hold up. Axe and the rest of them are trying to hang the whole mess on you."

After the fact, the Clintons discuss the Susan Rice Sunday show fiasco.

“I’m almost sad to see Susan take the fall,” Bill said.

“I'm not,” Hillary said.

4. Klein has the goods on Bill Clinton's reaction to the "60 Minutes" interview with his wife and Obama shortly before her departure from the State Department.

“That [60 Minutes] show was an attempt to defang me,” Bill told a friend. “But that shit doesn’t work on me. I do what I think is the right thing, I say what I think is right, and nobody stops me.”

3. According to Klein, Bill Clinton fears that people think he's near death and is telling his friends about this fear.

“Everybody thinks I’m about to die,” he told a friend. “They’re already trying to bury me. But I’m going to stick around and surprise everyone. I’m not going anywhere until we get back in the White House.”

2. The obsession with getting a Clinton in the White House extends to Chelsea, Klein reports.

“If Bill should falter,” said a knowledgeable Clintonista, “I'm absolutely convinced that Chelsea would take her mother aside and tell her, ‘Dad wants us to fight on, to keep the dream alive.’”

1. Bill's fear of dying is not being considered absent political calculations. These are the Clintons, after all. And, according to Klein, the former president wants an elaborate funeral in the unfortunate possibility that he croaks, so that Hillary might get some sympathy votes. Here is Bill's quote:

"Obviously you have to have a big state funeral for me, with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. … Wear your widow's weeds, so people will feel sympathy for you. Wear black for a decent mourning period and make my death an asset. The images on television of the funeral and the grieving widow in black will be priceless. … So you'll have to take maximum advantage of my death … It should be worth a couple of million votes."

To see the actual source of this passage, please click on: Huffington Post Story.

And for good measure (now that I have your attention), peruse even more Clinton-Obama goodies in the Buzzfeed article referenced above: Katherine Miller Writings.