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Morning Joe: The Problem With Clinton Is She’s Not Talking About Herself

September 14, 2016

Hillary Clinton has been campaigning for president for nearly 18 months and has been in the national public eye since 1992, but Morning Joe diagnosed the problem she’s having on the trail as not talking about herself enough.

The MSNBC panel gushed about President Obama’s performance as her surrogate the day before while Clinton recuperated from a bout of pneumonia, but polls show the race between her and Donald Trump is tightening nationally.

Clinton talks about her vision for the country and her achievements in every campaign appearance, but co-host Mika Brzezinski said she needs to "talk about herself."

"I think Hillary Clinton ought to do something that a lot of women are really bad at, and that she ought to talk about herself," co-host Mika Brzezinski said. "She has a lot to say about what she’s done and about what she can do, and quite frankly, I think America is ready, and it is time and refreshing to hear a woman saying, ‘Here’s what I can bring to the table.'"

Brzezinski, who has written books helping women promote themselves more in the workplace, said it was the sort of race where Clinton could "forget to talk about herself."

Former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean called Brzezinski "incredibly insightful."

"Historically, women, especially of my generation, don’t like to talk about themselves," Dean said.

Brzezinski has strongly criticized Clinton over the course of the campaign, particularly for her email scandal, but she and co-host Joe Scarborough gave examples of how Clinton could talk about herself and her achievements in the campaign.

Former Republicans strategist Nicolle Wallace finally broke in and pointed out Clinton gets criticized for keeping secrets, such as the pneumonia diagnosis she hid from the press for more than two days.

"She doesn’t show us anything," she said. "The instinct is always to hunker down and hide."

However, Wallace added it is hard as a woman "to advocate on your own behalf."

"There’s this incredibly long list, decades of work that she’s done," Brzezinski said. "She should be proud of it. She should be nailing it out there."

Dean said Trump had been controlling the "narrative" of the race since the beginning.

"In order to control the narrative, you have to be able to talk about yourself," Dean said. "You guys are dead on."