In the days leading up to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign announcement on Sunday, her advisers were busy schmoozing with prominent journalists from the likes of The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and Reuters.
It started on Thursday night when Clinton's chief of staff John Podesta held a private dinner for two dozen journalists and staff members at his Washington, D.C., home, where they were served homemade pasta puttanesca, a special pasta with walnut sauce, and of course, alcohol, according to Politico. Journalists from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, McClatchy, the Huffington Post and Politico also attended.
Then on Friday, an off-the-record dinner was held in New York. According to CNN's Brian Stelter, reporters in attendance included ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Diane Sawyer and David Muir, CBS's Norah O'Donnell, NBC's Savannah Guthrie, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, Politico's Mike Allen and a half-dozen reporters from CNN, reported Breitbart.
Hillary herself didn't attend the meetings, noted the Huffington Post, but Clinton's "Campaign Manager Robby Mook, Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, Strategic Communications Adviser Karen Finney, Senior Adviser Mandy Grunwald and pollster Joel Benenson" were all in attendance.
The dinners are an obvious move to improve the, as Clinton calls it, "complicated" relationship with the media dating back to her husband's presidency in the 1990s.
"I am all about new beginnings," Clinton recently said, according to NPR. "A new grandchild, a new email account. Why not a new relationship with the press? So here it goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy. But first of all, before I go any further. If you look under your chairs, you'll find a simple nondisclosure agreement."
