Hillary Clinton’s inner circle gathered for an autopsy of her failed presidential campaign and concluded that media bias in favor of Donald Trump contributed to his historic win.

A political postmortem of the Democratic Party’s Election Day results has concluded that FBI Director James Comey and a media “pass” for Mr. Trump translated into an electoral landslide for the billionaire.

A private conference call Thursday with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri and other aides addressed what Ms. Palmieri called “the most devastating loss in the history of American politics,” The Hill reported Thursday.

The group’s conclusions differ from assessments of Mrs. Clinton from previously released WikiLeaks documents belonging to Mr. Podesta.

“The media always covered [Mrs. Clinton] as the person who would be president and therefore tried to eviscerate her before the election, but covered Trump who was someone who was entertaining and sort of gave him a pass,” Mr. Podesta said. “We need to reflect and analyze that and put our voices forward.”

Mr. Podesta’s analysis of his boss in stolen emails given to WikiLeaks tell a different story. A Jan 22 exchange between Mr. Podesta and Morgan Stanley vice chairman Tom Nides revealed he was at a loss for ways to politically “lift” the former secretary of state.

“How goes it,” Mr. Nides, a Clinton bundler, asked as the campaign struggled to defeat Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders.

“I’m down. Our team is all tactics and has no idea of how to lift her up,” Mr. Podesta responded.

“This was bound to happen. We are lucky Sanders will not last. Assuming she losses [sic] both she bounces back with ‘fighter’ Hillary. How many times have we seen this movie?” Mr. Nides replied.

The “movie” Mr. Nides mentioned ended with Mrs. Clinton’s defeat early Wednesday.

“That last week, it was just one too many things,” Ms. Palmieri said in reference to the FBI’s decision to reopen an investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s private email server as secretary of state.

Mr. Comey closed the agency’s case into the secret server for a second time on Nov. 6.

“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton,” Mr. Comey wrote in a letter to House and Senate committee leaders. “I am very grateful to the professionals at the FBI for doing an extraordinary amount of high-quality work in a short-period of time.”

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