Mark Halperin said many Iowa Democrats around him "gasped" when Hillary Clinton joked Friday about the private email scandal dogging her campaign, saying for many Democrats this is not a "joking matter."
Reporting from Des Moines for MSNBC's Morning Joe, Halperin told host Joe Scarborough that the response to Clinton's quip that she liked her new Snapchat account because "those messages disappear all by themselves" was not simply a positive one.
"When she told that joke, there were people around me who gasped because it's not a joking matter for a lot of people," he said. "She said here at the fair, when she had a press availability, real voters don't talk to her about this. They never bring it up here. Well, you know what, Joe? Real people never bring up to me that I need to lose some weight."
Halperin said many Democrats at the state fair came up to him and brought up real concern about the email scandal. The number of her emails on her unsecured server flagged for having classified data has grown to 60, according to a new Washington Times report.
"I have never in my career dealt with a presidential campaign who's as unresponsive to basic questions," Halperin said. "There's lot of facts that they won't respond to on a daily basis. You can ask them every day ... She is not dealing with this issue, and between the FBI and the congressional investigations, this is not only not going away, but it shouldn't go away on the substance, and voters do care about it."