These Are the Hillary Clinton 'What Happened' Book Revelations Riling Up the Internet (So Far)

Clinton's long-awaited campaign memoir will explain why she thinks she lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election -- in terms of the mistakes she admits to making, and also her list of grievances against her opponents, the media and Russian interference in the election. From the sound of things, she's not holding back about those grievances anymore.

"In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I've often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net," she says in the introduction. "Now I'm letting my guard down."

Excerpts have started leaking online ahead of Clinton's book tour, which starts with a sit-down interview on CBS Sunday Morning on September 10. Here are a few details that are stirring controversy among her supporters and critics.

One of Clinton's most explosive arguments so far is that Bernie Sanders helped usher in the Trump presidency by pushing a narrative that Clinton was corrupt and bought by Wall Street -- an idea that Trump ran with during the general election campaign.

"Because we agreed on so much, Bernie couldn't make an argument against me in this area on policy, so he had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character," she writes. "Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist. When I finally challenged Bernie during a debate to name a single time I changed a position or a vote because of a financial contribution, he couldn't come up with anything. Nonetheless, his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign."

While she concedes that Sanders was right about Democrats needing to focus on working families and acknowledges how he mobilized young voters, Clinton says Sanders ultimately misunderstands what the Democratic Party is about. "I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too."

Her comments have been met with cheers from her still-angry supporters, along with blowback from the Bernie or Bust crowd and other critics who think she isn't taking enough personal responsibility.

In an excerpt that creeps out many of the women who read it, Clinton admits her "skin crawled" when Trump famously stalked her around the stage and loomed over her shoulder during a presidential debate in St. Louis. This was only two days after recordings from Access Hollywood revealed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women.

"It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching: 'Well, what would you do?'" Clinton says. "Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren't repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly: 'Back up, you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can't intimidate me, so back up.'

"I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the microphone extra hard. I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV. Maybe I have overlearned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world."

One big sore spot for Clinton is "Email-gate," when she was put under intense media scrutiny for using a private email server to conduct government business. Though then-FBI director James Comey concluded she hadn't committed any crime, Clinton was (and still is) branded as reckless for her actions -- criticism that she clearly finds unfair to this day.

In an exclusive excerpt from Radar Online, she writes about the "Commander in Chief Forum" in which Today host Matt Lauer spent most of Clinton's 30-minute interview asking about her email scandal, which she found "disappointing but predictable."

"NBC knew exactly what it was doing here. The network was treating this like an episode of The Apprentice, in which [Donald] Trump stars and ratings soar. Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time."

While she denies reports that she stormed off the stage afterwards, "I can't say I didn't fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there." When she watched Lauer give Trump a "soft-pedal" interview, she was "almost physically sick."

In Clinton's eyes, former James Comey is possibly the most to blame for her loss. Comey publicly announced in July that her behavior over her private email server was "extremely careless," though he didn't think it warranted a criminal investigation.

"My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds -- the same argument [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein would make months after the election," Clinton writes in an excerpt published by The Daily Beast.

Ultimately her team decided it would be better to let it go and try to move on. "Looking back, that was a mistake."

When Comey made a last-minute announcement in October that there were additional emails to examine, she was even angrier. "Was this a bad joke? It had to be. The FBI wasn't the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendos. Its job was to find out the facts. What the hell was Comey doing?"

One of Trump's favorite ways to pump up crowds at his campaign rallies was to say he'd send Hillary Clinton to prison for the email scandal -- so after he won, she had to consider the possibility that he meant it.

"In my head, I heard the vicious 'Lock her up!' chants that had echoed through Trump's rallies. In our second debate, Trump had said that if he won, he'd send me to prison. Now he had won. I had no idea what to expect."