Former President Clinton blamed “mainstream media” coverage of Hillary Clinton’s email controversy for her 2016 presidential defeat.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe” that aired Monday, the former president discussed an excerpt from his recent book “Citizen,” published in November.

In the book, he detailed the anger he felt after his wife, the former secretary of state, lost to President-elect Trump in the 2016 election and how he believes the media blew the email scandal out of proportion .

“In some ways it’s easier for us to know what happened in 2016 than what happened in 2024… because in 2016 there were two highly unusual things,” former President Clinton began in a clip highlighted by Mediaite .

“First of all, the mainstream media repeatedly told the American people that Hillary’s emails were the biggest problem. That’s what they said,” he continued.

At the time, Trump and other Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to send and receive communications related to her government work. The FBI investigated their practices but did not press charges. However, in the home stretch of the campaign, it became the focus of media coverage when then-FBI Director James Comey publicly released information about newly discovered emails days before the election.

In the new interview, former President Clinton noted that it wasn’t just right-wing media that came across his wife’s email story.

“In fact, even Trump’s State Department said she neither sent nor received a single email on her private device marked confidential,” he said.

“And secondly, she adhered to the rules in force at the time. The rules were changed after she left office. And yet the whole story was written as if she had done something heinous.”

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