Former Obama White House adviser David Axelrod said Thursday on CNN that Hillary Clinton looked "irritated" at the Commander-in-Chier Forum a day earlier and it affected her entire performance.
Clinton was pressed by NBC's Matt Lauer about her seemingly endless email scandal at the outset of the forum, leading to sharp criticism of his questioning from liberal media members.
"What clearly happened there was she got hit with a number of questions right at the top about email, and then they went to the first questioner who also asked about email, and I think in a half-hour show, she felt that too much was being placed on that one question, and she was irritated, and her irritation showed throughout as she was answering the other questions," Axelrod said. "I think it hurt her, and I think there's a lesson in that for her as she prepares for these debates. You have to able to shake those things off."
"You can't allow irritation, even if justifiable in some cases, to kind of impact your performance overall," CNN host Anderson Cooper said.
"No, I think it's really, really important, because she was there to address this room of veterans, and when you start answering questions in an irritated tone, it's as if you're speaking to them in irritation, and that's very counterproductive," Axelrod said. "I thought she got thrown off her game by the way that whole forum opened."