Kansas City’s Emanuel Cleaver Talks Clinton Loyalty, 2016 DNC
WASHINGTON
When Hillary Clinton was trailing in delegates to Barack Obama in 2008, she called her old friend Emanuel Cleaver.
Clinton told the Democratic congressman from Kansas City, Missouri, that she knew he’d been taking heat from the black community over his decision to endorse her over then-Sen. Barack Obama.
“ ‘I’m hearing about people getting angry with you because you’re staying with me,’ she said. ‘Listen to me, you don’t have to stay with me if it’s going to cause problems,’ ” Cleaver recalls her saying to him.
But Cleaver told Clinton he’d stick by her, come what may.
“I’m not going to abandon my friends,” he recalls saying to her.
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