Wednesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said she was “very much worried by the actions and rhetoric” of President Donald Trump.
Partial transcript as follows:
HEWITT: I was going to say God love Governor Dukakis, but you…George H.W. Bush wasn’t running against Donald Trump as he was when he was doing the third term campaign. Let’s talk a little bit about President Trump. Great political rivalries in American history either fall into the Hamilton-Burr or the Jefferson-Adams category. Your husband and George H.W. Bush ended up in the latter. But I think you and perhaps President Trump are doomed to the former minus the pistols. Agree?
CLINTON: Well, I don’t know. Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that in defining those two differences.
HEWITT: Well, Jefferson and Adams ended up as great friends and terrific correspondents, and they put aside their rivalry at the end. Of course, Burr killed Hamilton. That’s why I say without the pistols.
CLINTON: (laughing) You know, look, I don’t have any personal stake in this presidency. I have a citizen’s stake. I have a concerned person’s stake. And I am, as you might guess, very much worried by the actions and rhetoric of our current president. And so I was cordial with him before we ran against each other. He supported me when I ran for the Senate in New York. And then he began to traffic in all kinds of conspiracies like the birther conspiracy, and you know, then making all kinds of outrageous and untrue attacks on immigrants and others, and really being an equal opportunity insulter. I really did hope, and as I said in my concession speech, which I talk about in the book, I said we all need to give him a chance. And we all need to support our president. We have one president at a time. And I’ve been very disappointed in the way that he has conducted himself.
HEWITT: After this is all done, do you see becoming friendly with him again?
CLINTON: I don’t know the answer to that question, Hugh. I think that you know, his attacks on so many of the concerns that I’ve always had, I’ll give you just a quick example, I was involved in the bipartisan program called the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Ted Kennedy, Orrin Hatch, I mean real, you know, real Republican-Democratic cooperation at the end of the 90s. My husband signed it into law in a Republican Congress, and George W. Bush continued it. Barack Obama and a Republican Congress continued it. And it takes care of 9 million kids whose families, you know, are too well off, even though they are working families for Medicaid, and they don’t have insurance under an employer that covers the very expensive costs of caring for kids with chronic, congenital, traumatic conditions. Okay, so I don’t think a word has been said by the current president, and certainly the Congress has failed to reauthorize it. So at the end of this year, right around Christmas, 9 million kids and their families are going to start being told they no longer have health insurance for cystic fibrosis, for diabetes, for cancer, whatever it might be. I don’t understand that, Hugh. I don’t get it. And so it’s not just personal with, you know, threats against me and all that stuff that goes on. It’s really a values issue for me, because you know, I do think we’re put on this Earth in large measure to try to help take care of each other. And we can do that in smart ways, and I’ve always tried to be on the smart side of that. But you know, to walk away from caring for kids, I just don’t understand it.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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