Former Pennsylvania governor and Hillary surrogate Ed Rendell said on Rich Zeoli’s show on 1210 WPHT Philadelphia radio Wednesday that Elizabeth Warren “is a wonderful, bright, passionate person, but with no experience in foreign affairs and not in any way, shape, or form ready to be commander-in-chief.”
Rendell was arguing against Warren’s suitability to serve as Hillary Clinton’s running mate, which has been the subject of recent speculation.
Late last week, The Boston Globe reported that Harry Reid is looking into whether losing Elizabeth Warren as a senator might negatively impact the balance of power in the upper chamber of Congress. And, on Wednesday, The Huffington Post further reported that Reid’s top choice for vice president is Warren, according to “four Senate sources familiar with Reid’s thinking.”
Rendell also said “I’m not an insider in the campaign but I know her pretty well. I think she will not pick somebody that she feels in her heart isn’t ready to be president or commander-in-chief.”
Either Rendell received some pushback immediately, or he has second thoughts, as he then made it a point to call back into the radio station to add:
I didn’t want it to leave it hanging out there about Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren’s problem would be the same problem I’d have. Let’s assume someone said consider Governor Rendell for vice president. I have no experience militarily, no experience in foreign affairs, and would be a difficult choice because if anything happened in week one and I became president, I would be lost.
This isn’t the first time Rendell put his foot in his mouth this cycle. The former DNC chair had to apologize after suggesting Donald Trump had driven “ugly women” to the Democrat Party back in May. Rendell said, “Will he have some appeal to working-class Dems in Levittown or Bristol? Sure. For every one he’ll lose, one-and-a-half, two Republican women. Trump’s comments like, ‘You can’t be a 10 if you’re flat-chested,’ that’ll come back to haunt him. There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally.”