CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s top strategists sat 15 feet apart from one another on Thursday — and it was clear the anger and raw feelings that defined the general election haven't faded. 
 
 The ugliest presidential campaign in modern American history continued through a raucous post-mortem at Harvard University, where strategists gather every four years to chew over the recently completed contest from an insiders’ vantage point. 
 
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 The scene on Thursday was fraught, from the moment the top campaigns' top officials sat down across the room from each other. There were interruptions, accusations and plenty of cross-talk for more than two tense hours. 
 
 “We’re not at a Trump rally, Corey,” Clinton chief strategist Joel Benenson snapped at one point at Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. 
 
 Later, Trump’s last campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, cautioned her side of the table, “Hey guys, we won. We don’t have to respond.” 
 
 The "we won" line turned into something of a mantra as the night wore on. 
 
 Clinton’s advisers looked pained from the start. They gulped water. They gripped their pens. They crossed their arms. They glared. Then they boiled over. 
 
 After 90 minutes, when Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie called Trump’s campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, “an unbelievably brilliant strategist,” an impassioned Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, jumped in. 
 
 “If providing a platform for white supremacists makes me a brilliant tactician I am glad to have lost,” Palmieri said. “I would rather lose than win the way the guys you did.” 
 
 Palmieri called Clinton’s speech in Reno denouncing the “alt-right” in August one of her “proudest” moments as shouting ensued across the room. 
 
 “Do you think I ran a campaign where white supremacists had a platform?” Conway snapped back. “You’re going to look me in the face and tell me that?”’ 
 
 “I did, Kellyanne,” Palmieri said. “I did.” 
 
 "Do you think you could have just had a decent message for the white working-class voters?" Conway said, adding to no one in particular as the conversation moved on, "You guys are bitter." 
 
 "I can tell you are angry, but wow," Conway chided her Democratic counterparts. "Hashtag he's your president." 
 
 Clinton adviser Karen Finney retorted, "Hashtag if he's going to be my president he's going to need to show me that white supremacy isn't acceptable." 
 
 There was little consensus of what, exactly, led to the Trump victory that shocked the world. 
 
 Still, Trump’s team insisted they were not nearly as surprised as the rest of the political universe. In fact, Brad Parscale, Trump’s digital director, said he had told Trump the Friday before the election that the GOP nominee was headed to victory, even as the public polls suggested otherwise. 
 
 Clinton’s team blamed a tough environment in which voters wanted change, Russian medded through hacked emails, a media that they said over-scrutinized her and, mostly, FBI Director James Comey. Campaign manager Robby Mook said both of Comey’s letters in the race’s final two weeks galvanized Trump’s backers and depressed Clinton’s supporters. 
 
 Trump’s team called the summer tarmac meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton a “defining moment” amid the FBI investigation into her email server. “That event just played right into the hands of those Americans who felt there was a culture of corruption,” Bossie said. 
 
 Conway acknowledged that Clinton had emerged from the two party conventions with momentum but said she lost it with a lackluster August schedule that saw her off the trail and on the fundraising circuit. 
 
 CNN's Jake Tapper on stage with Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway and Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook speak during the event titled "War Stories: Inside Campaign 2016" at the Harvard Institute of Poltiics Forum on December 1. | Getty 
 
 “She got a good bump but then she almost disappeared,” Conway said. 
 
 Shockingly, there was almost no discussion of the controversial October tape of Trump bragging of grabbing women by the genitals. 
 
 Neither side was quick to acknowledge errors — a silence that rung especially loud on the Clinton side of the room. 
 
 Her advisers steadfastly refused to admit any specific fault, as Clinton media strategist Mandy Grunwald noted multiple times that any one person's diagnosis of the ultimate problem was likely correct in a race so close. 
 
 But they didn’t hesitate to point to “headwinds” that disadvantaged Clinton — a phrase used so often that Lewandowski began scoffing at it as Mook repeated it. 
 
 Mook identified the WikiLeaks releases of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails and Comey’s letters as the two points that they never anticipated, but he repeatedly declined to go in depth into his campaign’s shortcomings. 
 
 “No one of those emails that was put out, no one day of that, was a game-changer in the race, however it was a low-grade fever throughout, and that was an enormous strategic disadvantage,” he said. “If you ask me what was the single greatest headwind we had in the race, it was the two letters from James Comey." 
 
 “In retrospect, should we have put even more in terms of schedule and perhaps unpaid communications into Michigan, Wisconsin?” he added, alluding to two states his candidate surprisingly lost. "Absolutely." Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined were decided by less than 100,000 votes. 
 
 One theme throughout the conference was frustrations among Trump’s foes — Republicans in the primary; Clinton in the general election — about the media, in particular the blanket coverage Trump received on cable television. 
 
 “You guys only cover her when she talks about him,” Palmieri complained. 
 
 On Wednesday evening, Republican campaign managers shouted down and heckled CNN president Jeff Zucker when he said that all candidates had been invited onto his airwaves. 
 
 “Wrong!” shouted Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had worked as campaign manager for her father. Later, Sanders rattled off one statistic from August 2015 that in a 10-day period Trump had been on CNN during prime time for 256 minutes, and Mike Huckabee had been on for 17 seconds. 
 
 In fact, Sanders said, she got on television more when she became a Trump adviser than she could get her father on as a candidate. 
 
 Mook, in particular, complained about the lack of focus on Trump refusing to release his taxes and the lack of focus on the Russian connection to the hacked Clinton emails. “The media didn’t seem willing to put that in the proper context,” he said. 
 
 “No one cared,” Conway said of Trump’s taxes. When Mook insisted it wasn’t covered, she responded, “That question was vomited to me every day on TV.” 
 
 The lingering frustrations were also on display on Thursday morning when lead Clinton strategists briefly sparred with two of Bernie Sanders' lead operatives over the result. 
 
 "We probably would've won," said Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver. 
 
 Conway praised Sanders for “softening” Clinton up for the general election. 
 
 Clinton's team acknowledged repeatedly during the afternoon session that Trump had won, but Benenson stopped when Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio noted how clear it was that the country would vote for Trump considering how many voters believe things are moving in the wrong direction. 
 
 "Don't act like you have some popular mandate for your message," said Benenson. 
 
 Other Clinton aides chimed in to note that her lead in the national vote is now above 2 million. Both sides erupted. 
 
 “We weren't running that way,” Conway said. “We were running for 270." 
 
 Grunwald captured the scene with a backhanded compliment as the conference came to a close. 
 
 “I don’t think you give yourselves enough credit for the negative campaign you ran,” Grunwald said of Trump’s team, saying they had executed a “very impressive gassing of her,” citing their use of unreported Facebook ads, fake news and the National Enquirer, holding up the final pre-election edition. 
 
 When Conway objected, saying Trump had closed the race on a positive note, Grunwald cut in, “Take the compliment, Kellyanne.” 
 
 “I would,” Conway retorted, “if it were one.” ||||| Top officials from the Trump and Clinton campaigns clashed angrily Thursday over questions of mandates and alleged associations with white supremacists -- leaving a conference designed to draw lessons from the election turning at times into a shouting match over campaign tactics. 
 
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 The gathering of top campaign aides to all the major presidential candidates, held at Harvard University Wednesday and Thursday, revealed raw emotions and outright anger between staffers who tangled largely from afar over a grueling campaign. 
 
 During the far-ranging series of conversations, a Clinton aide called FBI Director James Comey's letters regarding the email investigation a "game-changer" and a former Trump aide said he thought the race was over after Trump criticized the war hero credentials of Sen. John McCain. 
 
 Clinton aides lit into their Trump counterparts for running a campaign that a top Clinton spokesperson said provided a “platform for white supremacists,” citing bringing former Breitbart chief, Steve Bannon, on the team. 
 
 “I would rather lose than win the way you guys did,” said Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri. 
 
 Bannon has denied being a white nationalist and members of the Trump team have defended him. Trump has disavowed support from white supremacists and said he is the "least racist" person. 
 
 “No you wouldn’t, respectfully,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway countered. She said the Clinton side was ignoring the flaws of their candidate and her campaign operation. 
 
 “How about, it’s Hillary Clinton – she doesn’t connect with people,” Conway said. 
 
 When Trump aides touted campaign tactics that included an aggressive candidate travel schedule -– helping power a sweep of battleground states, and a clear Electoral College victory –- Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook fired a salvo back. 
 
 “I would just say, Hillary did win the popular vote,” Mook said. At latest count, Clinton led by nearly 2.5 million votes, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 That provoked sighs and anger from the six Trump aides seated across from the six Clinton aides in a crowded conference room at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. 
 
 “Oh, God, you guys,” said David Bossie, a Trump deputy campaign manager. 
 
 “Hey guys, we won -– there’s no need to respond,” Conway said. “He was the better candidate -– he won.” 
 
 Countered Clinton pollster Joel Benenson: “Two-and-a-half million Americans thought she was the better candidate.” 
 
 The conference revealed no consensus about how precisely Trump won -– not even from the current and former Trump aides in the room. Clinton campaign leaders rejected the notion that Trump was chosen because of his potential to lead on the economy, and they cited the desire for change as the biggest long-term obstacle they had to confront. 
 
 Mook cited the letters sent by Comey regarding Clinton’s emails as a “game-changer.” 
 
 “If you ask me the single biggest headwind in the race, it was the two letters from James Comey,” Mook said. 
 
 “If the election had been three days later, we would have won,” Palmieri added. 
 
 Palmieri said she wishes she had pushed for a fourth debate, since the Clinton campaign felt those exchanges highlighted Clinton’s superior grasp of policy. Intriguingly, Conway and Bossie said Trump would probably have agreed to another such matchup. 
 
 The Clinton campaign also expressed frustration with Trump’s mastery of the media, and felt the coverage on Clinton was tougher than it should have been because of the assumption that she would win the presidency. 
 
 “He got all the coverage, and you guys [in the press] only covered her when she talked about him,” Palmieri said. 
 
 But they could not agree on a specific change in the campaign that might have changed the outcome. Mandy Grunwald, a senior Clinton adviser who also worked for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said it’s fair to speculate on whether Warren or Bernie Sanders being on the ticket with Clinton would have made a difference – along with any other potential explanation, since the race wound up being so close. 
 
 “My general view about the general is everybody’s right” in their diagnoses of why Clinton lost, Grunwald said. “Everybody who’s got a theory of what we should have done, knock yourselves out.” 
 
 Aides to Trump’s vanquished primary opponents were similarly unable to point to strategies that might have stopped Trump, once he gained momentum after the first debate last summer. 
 
 “That’s the theme of the whole primary: Nothing mattered,” said David Kochel, a former top aide to Jeb Bush. 
 
 Trump aides didn’t pretend to always get their boss, either. Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, revealed that after Trump famously insulted Sen. John McCain, he advised Trump that he should apologize. 
 
 When he didn’t, and instead doubled down on the remarks by slamming McCain’s record on protecting veterans, Lewandowski said he was certain a campaign tailspin was imminent. 
 
 “I told my wife, I think the campaign’s over, I’m coming home,” Lewandowski said. 
 
 He said he also advised Trump not to attack the judge of Mexican heritage who was presiding in a lawsuit against his Trump University venture – another piece of advice the candidate ignored. 
 
 The campaign learned to trust Trump’s instincts, where the spirit of his message was more important than the literal substance. He cited the proposed Muslim ban, which Lewandowski said took days’ worth of deliberations and careful staging for it to be announced on a decommissioned aircraft carrier in South Carolina. 
 
 “The media wants to focus on what the statement said,” Lewandowski said to scattered laughter from attendees, “but the visuals and the timing did not happen by happenstance.” 
 
 He added: “This is the problem with the media: You guys took everything Donald Trump did so literally. And the problem with that is the American people didn’t.” 
 
 Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster, was more blunt: “Everybody in this room needs to pull their heads out of their a----.”
– The post-election forum at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government has traditionally been a respectful meeting of rival campaign strategists. This year, it's a miracle they didn't start throwing chairs. The forum turned into a shouting match as six Hillary Clinton aides and six Donald Trump aides sitting across from each other clashed over issues including the alt-right, Clinton's emails, and even who the real winner was. ABC News reports that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook riled the Trump side by reminding them that Clinton won the popular vote. "Hey guys, we won—there's no need to respond," Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told her fellow strategists. "He was the better candidate—he won." The words "we won" were heard quite a few times during the discussion, Politico notes. "You guys are bitter," Conway said after being accused of running a campaign where white supremacists had a platform. "Hashtag he's your president. How's that? Will you ever accept the election results?" The Clinton team admitted some mistakes, but it largely blamed the loss on "headwinds." In what the Washington Post describes as one of the Trump team's strangest criticisms, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said the media had blundered by taking Trump's words too literally. The American people "understood that sometimes—when you have a conversation with people, whether it's around the dinner table or at a bar—you're going to say things, and sometimes you don't have all the facts to back it up," he said. (Trump launched his victory tour in Cincinnati Thursday night.)