“Impeachment” on F/X may be a dud, but not so the long, strange story of Huma Abedin. Seriously — if I’m her agent, I’m calling the producers of “Veep.”
Here’s the comic refrain for her louse of a spouse, whispered timidly in multiple tableaus: “Honey — The New York Post called.”
In Abedin’s new memoir, Anthony Weiner says this a lot. And it’s true — only Tiger Woods may have given us more front-page fodder.
Yet “Both/And” has been covered gently by many media outlets, and this does all of us a real disservice. Anyone who has seen the 2016 documentary “Weiner” (I have, multiple times) knows what I’m talking about: A lot of this is funny. Who can forget the scene in which a duplicitous Weiner, after begging a humiliated Abedin to attend his mayoral concession party, hastily tells her to stay in their SUV and go home — as soon as they’ve arrived?
“I decided against attending,” Abedin writes, as though this were a business lunch declined.
She does not elaborate on what happened next, Weiner running from a 23-year-old online sexting partner named Sydney Leathers, chased through a dimly-lit McDonald’s, camera crew in tow. You can practically hear Leathers laughing as she calls him, essentially, a coward.
Maybe most journalists and reporters feel that was Weiner’s humiliation, not Abedin’s. And I can see that argument — to a point.
But even the late Oscar de la Renta, who designed Abedin’s wedding gown, was eventually stunned by her . . . what would you call it? Loyalty? Codependence? Delusion?
She writes of that scolding:
“Huma, my love! I am very angry with you!” the elegant de la Renta says. He doesn’t understand why she is allowing Weiner to humiliate her. Murder is an option, he says: “I would . . . help you hide the body!”
Abedin is mortified to hear that Gloria Steinem thinks she has Stockholm syndrome, but is later relieved to hear from Steinem herself that those words “were taken out of context.”
Oh yes, of course. There’s so much nuance with Stockholm syndrome.
And the betrayals keep happening and happening. After yet another sexting scandal, while Hillary is running for president a second time and Weiner on the verge of a comeback with a potential TV show, book deal and, of course, a podcast, Abedin writes, “I wondered why Anthony would do this now, just when we had so much at stake in our lives.”
I’m no therapist, but I can confidently tell Huma: That’s why. That is exactly why. He is a self-saboteur who will take down anyone in his vicinity.
Yet she still can’t bring herself to leave.
Late fashion designer Oscar de la Renta hated Anthony Weiner enough to help Huma Abedin “hide the body!” REUTERS/Alberto Lowe/FileAbedin writes of yet another phone call circa 2015, after a photo Weiner took of himself in boxer briefs, sexually aroused, their toddler son sleeping next to him, was about to hit our front page.
She is waiting for the subway when her phone rings. She does not know that the Administration for Children’s Services will soon launch an investigation.
“The New York Post called . . .” Weiner says. Then the call drops out.
Abedin can’t believe it. As she writes, “[Anthony’s] campaign promised better cell service in subways.”
One of Anthony Weiner’s infamous texting photos.
Her reaction sums up the strange, lonely, cloistered existence of Huma Abedin. She admits, in these pages, that she was a virgin until age 32, after her engagement to Weiner. She laments that she doesn’t have a best friend (paging Hillary!). She thanks Harvey Weinstein’s ex Georgina Chapman in her acknowledgements.
Irony does not live here. Nor does Carlos Danger, perhaps the greatest alter ego known to man and tabloid media.
While promoting her book, Abedin has said that she, like her boss and mentor, may run for office someday.
“I’m not saying no to anything,” she told the “Today” show.
Also, guess what?
Huma Abedin was the deputy chief of staff to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. AFP via Getty Images
Disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner had no shame in advancing his career amid his sex scandals… similar to recently ousted governor Andrew Cuomo. R. Umar AbbasiShe’s still not divorced from Anthony Weiner. He still lives in her building. She still considers him, as she told New York magazine, a great partner.
Sure, Huma, run. What could possibly go wrong?




