Huma Abedin’s ‘No Apology’ Tour
(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
“Oh, s---. She’s here, she’s here.”
In the small dressing room backstage at the 92nd Street Y, Huma Abedin looks up from a makeup bag on the counter, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Her back is to the door, but by some familiar instinct, she can feel her boss enter the space behind her.
“Hi, everybody!” Hillary Clinton says to a small collection of staffers, hanging up her coat and scarf. The two women don’t greet each other right away, but instead settle into a comfortable silence, the conversation continuing around them. Clinton lays her purse on the counter, fishes out a powder case, and side by side, the two women prepare to take the stage, hovering around each other. Abedin addresses Clinton as “Madam Secretary.” Clinton addresses her back: “Yes, dear?”
Over the last 25 years, in rooms just like this, Abedin has become the most famous and least understood right-hand woman in politics: adviser, surrogate daughter, friend, “all-around gatekeeper.” When Hillary Clinton meets the world, she says, she is the “bridge.”
On this occasion, Clinton is support staff for Abedin, here to promote her aide’s new memoir, Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds . The panel discussion — “Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton in Conversation” — is the first time they will share a stage.
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