Hillary Clinton 'What Happened' Negative Amazon Reviews Deleted After Publisher Complains

Simon & Schuster says it’s “highly unlikely” that the nearly 2,000 customer reviews on Amazon are from people who have actually read Hillary Clinton’s book, What Happened. The widely divided reviews leave nearly no middle ground, with more than half giving it a one-star rating and a bit less than half giving the book five stars.

Amazon deleted more than 1,000 reviews by mid-afternoon Wednesday, although the book’s rating has held steady in the middle-ground between the deeply polarized comments. The screenshots below show a large decline in the total number of reviews between noon and 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday:

The two-time failed presidential candidate’s tell-all book lays out what she was thinking and experiencing during the turbulent 2016 U.S. presidential election, in which Clinton had become the first woman in the country’s history to be named the presidential nominee of a major political party. Clinton reveals emotional details and anecdotal tales on her battles with Bernie Sanders and now-President Donald Trump throughout the long campaign.

A publisher representative told the AP Wednesday that both the very high praise and very critical reviews contained little actual information from the content of the book. "It seems highly unlikely that approximately 1,500 people read Hillary Clinton's book overnight and came to the stark conclusion that it is either brilliant or awful,” said Simon & Schuster representative Jonathan Karp.

In agreement with the opinion of the publisher, a concerted effort on the part of pro-President Trump online groups appears to have helped sway the Amazon reviews of What Happened, which was officially released on Tuesday by publisher Simon & Schuster. And on the flip side, pro-Clinton social media groups have channeled reviewers to blindly review the book as well.

Several pro-Trump Facebook and Reddit groups have taken to ridiculing the book and directing people over to the Amazon review page. Several pro-Clinton groups have adopted a similar strategy, which right-wing online groups were quick to accuse Amazon of with Clinton's 2016 book, Stronger Together.

The latest customer review on Amazon as of Wednesday afternoon is a one-star comment that illustrates the seething reviews seen throughout the comment section: “What happened? A terrible candidate lost. Hillary could be honest and talk about how the DNC cheating to put her ahead of Bernie helped Donald Trump, but she doesn't. She could talk about how her passing out and losing a shoe cast doubts about her health in the eyes of the American public, but she doesn't.”

One negative review simply reads: “Full of HUUUUUUUUUUGE factual errors,” with no relevant commentary on the book’s content.

On the positive side, one 5-star review from a verified purchaser simply writes, “Great book by our rightful POTUS!”

In a bit of a plot twist, some reviewers have taken to giving the book 5 stars in hopes it’s “the last book that will ever be written about the Clintons,” according to several comments.

At the time of publication Wednesday, the number of available reviews on Amazon had been reduced from nearly 2,000 to 782. Most of the deleted reviews were negative, with the 5-star ratings seeing a 20 percent jump and the one-star ratings being cut nearly in half to 35 percent.

There remains almost no middle ground to the reviews.