WikiLeaks on Wednesday released audio recordings apparently hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s servers, including a message from an irate Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter demanding the party stop “bending over backwards” for Bernie Sanders.
Links to the 29 recordings were posted on Twitter a few hours before US President Barack Obama took the stage in Philadelphia to address the party’s national convention, a meeting that formally nominated Clinton as the Democratic candidate for the White House.
The convention was meant to be a show of party unity, but instead has exposed the raw anger of Sanders supporters, who feel disenfranchised by the primary process.
The WikiLeaks files seemed timed to embarrass the party and Clinton, although the audio recordings did not appear to contain any bombshell revelations.
They came after the anti-secrecy Web site on Friday last week leaked 19,000 e-mails from the accounts of several top Democratic party leaders.
At least two e-mail messages suggested an insider effort to hobble Sanders’ upstart campaign against Clinton — including by seeking to present him as an atheist in deeply religious states.
The uproar following the leak forced Democratic Party chairwoman, US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz to abruptly announce her resignation on the eve of the convention she was meant to preside over.
In one audio recording, the angry Clinton supporter said in her minute-long voice-mail that she was “furious” about what she perceived as party support for Sanders and giving the self-described democratic socialist “too much influence.”
“Bernie is the worst person in the world to even be running in the Democratic Party because he’s not a Democrat,” said the unidentified woman, who noted she was on a fixed income and had donated US$300 to Clinton.
“Quit acquiescing to this person who likes to play the victim card and who also has been attacking Hillary, which gives Trump all his talking points. I will leave the Democratic Party if the Democratic Party continues to coddle Bernie Sanders,” she said.
It was not known which party official the woman was trying to reach.
In another voice-mail recording, a woman — possibly the same person as in the earlier call — was upset the party was letting Sanders supporter Cornel West serve on the platform committee, calling him “trash.”
The audio files also provided a small glimpse of the daily inner workings of the party, with a staffer from an ambassador’s office calling to make sure her boss received an invitation to a St Patrick’s Day reception at the White House.
Former ambassador to Austria William Eacho left a message to get details of an invitation from Wasserman Schultz to attend a dinner with Obama.
It was not immediately clear if the latest audio recordings were part of the original cache of 19,000 e-mails and attachments released by WikiLeaks on Friday last week.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in