Jennifer Palmieri, who served as Hillary Clinton's communications director in the 2016 presidential campaign, said Tuesday that her former boss ought to respect all voters.
MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough asked Palmieri whether she agreed with Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D., Mo.) criticism of Clinton’s recent comments in India. During an interview earlier this month, Clinton blamed her 2016 defeat on voters who "don’t want black people to have rights," among other factors. Palmieri concurred with McCaskill’s disapproval.
"I agree with Claire McCaskill that you need to respect all voters: voters who vote for you and voters who don't," Palmieri said.
Palmieri went on to argue that presidential candidates need to connect with voters by speaking to the whole country, which is a point she makes in her new book, Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World.
"Something that I wrote about in the book is that candidates need to talk to all voters, whether they're going to vote for you or not, particularly presidential candidates," she said. "At a minimum, you want to be the president of the entire country and you need to speak to everyone."
Palmieri said the politics of late has not given voters a sense that "they have a place in America" and she accepted some responsibility for the campaign overly focusing on its own voters.
"That's something that I own in the book as a mistake as a political professional—that you think about just talking to the voters who are going to vote for you," Palmieri said. "And I think that's partly to blame for why we have such divisions."
Earlier this month, Clinton did an interview at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai, India, and said she won the election among voters in areas of the country that are "diverse, dynamic, moving forward."
"If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts," Clinton said. "I win Illinois, Minnesota, places like that, but what the map doesn't show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product, so I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign ‘Make America Great Again,' was looking backwards."
Clinton said later that she "meant no disrespect to any individual or group."
McCaskill has criticized Clinton for the remarks.
"For those of us that are in states that Trump won, we would really appreciate if she would be more careful and show respect to every American voter and not just the ones who voted for her," McCaskill said Sunday in an interview on MSNBC.