New Clinton emails reveal she has fawning Republican fans, calls Harriet Tubman 'my home girl'

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last updated 1 October 2015

The fifth batch of emails Hillary Clinton exchanged from a private server while secretary of state were released by the State Department Wednesday, and the more interesting ones show that she had issues with White House phone operators and warned of a "Fox-generated media storm" led by Sarah Palin.

On Feb. 10, 2010, Clinton wrote to aide Huma Abedin that she wanted to call California Rep. Diane Watson upon her retirement, but "right now I'm fighting w the WH operator who doesn't believe I am who I say and wants my direct office line even tho I'm not there and I just have him my home # and the State Dept # and told him I had no idea what my direct office # was since I didn't call myself and I just hung up and am calling thru Ops like a proper and properly dependent Secretary of State — no independent dialing allowed." During a Jan. 24, 2010, exchange with Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski (who told Clinton the Supreme Court "just screwed us"), Clinton said that she missed her and would try to call soon, then gave her a pep talk: "Keep going, as your and my 'home girl' Harriet Tubman would say!"

In an early 2011 email, Clinton said she could not defend to Congress the "decision that State will not use the terms 'mother and father' and instead substitute 'parent one and two.'" She said she could "live with letting people in nontraditional families choose another descriptor so long as we retained the presumption of mother and father. We need to address this today or we will be facing a huge Fox-generated media storm led by Palin et al." Clinton was forwarded a praise-filled email on March 20, 2011, from Laura Bush's chief of staff, Anita McBride, who wrote that "longtime Reaganites" told her they "feel safe with Hillary," and "I can't tell you how grateful I am as an American for Hillary's leadership and hard work. Really — it kind of makes me weepy — and it does make me proud." On Oct. 13, 2011, Clinton also shared "the weirdest exchange ever" that her husband, Bill Clinton, had in the receiving line after a speech. Clinton told friend Betsy Ebeling "a woman loudly announced that her father 'circumcised Bin Laden!' What a claim to fame."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.