Clinton press aide defends rope line

Hillary Clinton’s communications director is defending the campaign’s decision to rope off reporters during a weekend parade.

“We try to give as much access as possible, but my view is, it can’t get in the way of her being able to campaign,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

{mosads}“I wasn’t there, but I saw some press reports that described it as chaotic, so they put the rope up so that the parade could continue and that she could talk to voters.”

Palmieri said that she understands the media’s frustrations over access and acknowledged that they “pay a price with the press” over the lack of availability.

But the campaign’s decision to prioritize smaller meetings with voters over interactions with the press is colored by lessons Clinton learned from the 2008 campaign, where she fell from the smart-money favorite and lost the Democratic nomination to then Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Palmieri said.

“She’s been Secretary of State. For four years she hadn’t been able to campaign. She wanted to do a lot of one-on-ones, you can’t do that forever in a country of 300 million people, but she really wanted to get that part done before we started talking to the national media,” Palmieri said.

“The press is important, but they are not as important as voters, but they are an important part of the process and now we are ready to do, she’s been doing a lot of national interviews.”