Click & Close Ads
Click & Close Ads
Bill Clinton is dismissing the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton and their Clinton Foundation, insisting he trusts his wife “with my life and have on more than one occasion.”
“A — I know her. B — I know the truth. And C — I trust the American people,” Clinton said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” And the controversy, he said, is “not happening 15 hours before the election.”
Story Continued Below
Clinton’s campaign rally rollout in New York on Saturday was preceded by persistent questions about her relationship with Clinton Foundation donors and their influence, if any, on her decisions as secretary of state and her personal email account during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat.
Her “honesty-and-trustworthiness” poll numbers dropped by 5 points in the last two months and 12 points in the last year, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier this month.
The former president also highlighted what he saw as silver lining in the attacks on her trustworthiness. “When people go to personal attacks this far before the election, that means they’re scared of you,” he said. “And they should be.”
Polling Center
MORE ON POLITICO
Polling Center
He also discussed the large Republican presidential field, saying it’ll be interesting to watch them debate.
“They’ve got some significant diversity, and they’re no dummies,” he said. “I predict that at some point … there will be a move by people who think they can influence the process to settle on the one that’s most electable because they figure they’ve already got what they need.”
Appearing later on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who was a chief of staff in the Clinton White House, was asked by host Chuck Todd when the campaign was going to “officially outline exactly what a President Hillary Clinton’s relationship would be with the Clinton Foundation?”
And, should she be elected president, Podesta pledged “an appropriate separation.”
“She has dropped off the foundation board and severed a relationship with the foundation,” Podesta noted. “If she is successful and we get the nomination, which we’re fighting for every vote for, and she’s elected president, then we’ll put in an appropriate separation.”
Former President Bill Clinton on Sunday blamed the recent unrest in Baltimore on people owning too many guns in this city, combined with a lack of trust in the local police department.
Click & Close Ads
Click & Close Ads
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Clintonfirst suggested that development opportunities and more jobs could be the solution in Baltimore. He cited the Baltimore-based athletic clothing company Under Armour as keeping 17,000 jobs in the city.
“I’d go get that guy from Under Armour and I would bring all these leaders and all these kids and I’d figure out what to do and come up with a strategy. You don’t have to solve it all overnight, you just have to make it better than it was,” he said.
“The Baltimore thing came on the heels of what happened in Ferguson, what happened in New York City and all these other places. And there is a big national movement about whether the lives of young African-American men count,” Mr. Clinton said, referring to the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
“You can’t have people walking around with guns. I used to tell people when we did Bosnia, Kosovo, anything like that: You get enough people with weapons around, and there will be unintended consequences. People make mistakes. People do wrong. Things happen,” he continued.
“To hold a community together, you’ve got to have a high level of community trust. Somebody that’s in your family gets shot, you want an answer from somebody you know, and you want to be able to ask questions and get them answered and resolve that. So I think that in addition to economics, we need to look at the places in America where these things happen and they don’t drive people into the streets because they actually trust the process in resolving them. There’s such a trust deficit in America today,” Mr. Clinton said.Bill Clinton lifted the veil on America’s most enigmatic political couple—at least slightly. In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, which is to air in its entirety on Sunday at 9 a.m., Clinton described the couple’s personal and political relationship, and how they constantly negotiate the two.
The former president admitted that his political aspirations took the front seat during the first two decades of their marriage, and referred to Hillary as his “rock” during politically and personally tumultuous times.
He pointed to his 1980 loss to Republican Frank D. White in the Arkansas gubernatorial election as one such moment.
“I was the youngest former governor in American history in 1980 on election night…My career prospects were not particularly bright,” he said to Tapper. “And she never blinked. She just said, ‘Hey. It’ll turn around. I believe in you. You’ve got this.'”
Bill implied that now was Hillary’s time, echoing sentiments he shared in a 2014 interview with “BBC Newsnight” in India. In that interview, he described their marriage as a 52-year pact.
“We were married a very long time when she was always, in effect, deferring to my political career,” he said. “I told her when she got elected to the Senate from New York that she’d given me 26 years, and so I intended to give her 26 years. Whatever she wanted to do was fine with me. If she wanted to know my opinion, I would tell her, but she had carte blanche to make whatever decisions she wanted, and tell me what I was supposed to do about it.Click & Close Ads
Click & Close Ads
Bill has taken a backseat in Hillary’s campaign. Though he plans to be by her side at her first rally of the campaign on Saturday, he has yet to travel or raise money for her. This was not the case in her 2008 bid.Stevie Wonder and Prince had a jam session at the White House over the weekend, but the public and the press weren’t invited.
The event was not included on the President’s public schedule, though a White House spokesman confirmed it after the fact. Most information about the event came from social media posts of guests, many of whom were celebrities.
During a regularly scheduled press briefing Monday, White House reporters grilled spokesman Josh Earnest, who said that the Obamas will personally foot the bill for the party.
“The point is that the President and First Lady—and I think most people across the country would acknowledge, that is an appropriate thing for the president and first lady to do,” Earnest said. “Which is to open their house up to guests for a private party on a Saturday night.”
Earnest repeatedly stressed that the event was not an official function.
“President and First Lady did hold a private party at the White House over the weekend, but given the private nature of that event I don’t have a lot of details to discuss from here,” he said.
The party’s guests, however, weren’t so tight-lipped.
Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted from Washington that it was “awesome to see Prince and Stevie Wonder on the keyboards together,” at the White House party.Click & Close Ads
Click & Close Ads
Friday, June 19, 2015
