Clinton Loses His Cool
This morning, in response to question from Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, President Clinton embarked on one of the more extraordinary rants in modern political history.
Think Progress has the complete video. I suspect others will have it up soon as well. Take ten minutes and watch the whole thing.
I have to say, at the moment, my reaction is confined to a stunned stupor. Seriously. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it.
Clinton’s anger is palpable. His indignation at his interview comes through repeatedly. Especially since Clinton apparently believes he was lured into the interview under false pretenses. I’ll also throw in that I think Wallace retreated in the face of Clinton’s anger a little bit too readily.
Substantively, Jeff Harrell points out that Clinton may have admitted to violating federal law. Jeff is on the money. Don’t miss it.
Beyond that, I think Clinton’s argument that no one could have foreseen that pulling out of Somalia would empower our enemies is patently absurd. Under President Clinton’s leadership, we shrank away like scared puppies whenever we were challenged. Don’t believe me? Read chapter four of Jim’s book.
Much beyond that, there’s little substantive material to respond to from Clinton’s rant. He really only dealt with Somalia and then put the rest of his eggs in Richard Clarke’s basket. Granted, I haven’t read Clarke’s book, but his credibility doesn’t strike me as exactly sterling.
Nevertheless, it’s the site of Clinton – the ultimate master of being on message – losing his cool in a national interview that is most revealing and astonishing to me. I mean, like, wow.
UPDATE: Well, in addition to possibly admitting to a federal crime, President Clinton apparently told at least one big fat whopper. Jim gives the former President the truth smackdown at TKS. Hopefully, he’ll regale us On Tappers with some thoughts soon.
Jim: I, too, react with ”Wow.” The part that I never expected to come out of Clinton’s mouth:
CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.
WALLACE: About the USS Cole?
CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.
WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.
CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?
You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch’s supporting my work on climate change.
And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.
Thought One: Chris Wallace is far from a right-wing firebrand; if there’s a case to be made that Wallace, with his long career at ABC News and the son of Mike Wallace, is a conservative hatchet man, I want to hear it, because it strikes me as pretty thin. He’s always struck me as a fair questioner. For Clinton to go off and accuse Wallace of being some pawn of Rupert Murdoch… Well, that hits close to the bone for a career newsman like Wallace. I don’t think Clinton started the interview an enemy of Wallace, but he certainly ended it one.
Thought Two: I thought the Clintons had left the whole “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” talk behind them long ago. There are few postures more pathetic for an elected official than to play the victim. But now, that sinister Rupert Murdoch has launched his minions to deride Clinton’s record on terrorism…. to offset the p.r. impact of his work with Clinton on climate change? Huh? I’m sorry, but even in the realm of secret conspiracy theories, this doesn’t make sense.
Thought Three: ”I was tough enough to handle al-Qaeda, Chris, I’m just not tough enough to handle your questions.”
Cam: I was away this weekend and didn’t get a chance to see Clinton’s meltdown live, but watching this afterwards… boy, as a talk show host, part of me desperately would love to be able to pontificate about the Clintons in the White House again. That’s a very selfish thought though. And I’d really like to see some followup questioning regarding the point that Jeff Harrell raised.
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 5:05 pm
The Clinton Freak-Out
Watch the delicious highlights over at Hot Air. It’s really quite amazing.
I think K-Lo nails it when she calls it Clinton’s “Tom Cruise” moment. I would not have been very surprised to see him jump on the couch.
Marshall Manson is…
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 5:37 pm
Good post. It’s hilarious. However, I don’t know what’s funnier - Clinton’s freak-out, or the slavering comments at ThinkProgress . . . I bet they’re all piling on Wallace at DKos as well. “Reality”-based my behind!
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 5:39 pm
P.S. I think Chris was taken aback b/c he expected Clinton to react like a halfway-normal human being, not the egomaniac that he is. Just a guess. Though you would think he’d know better.
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 8:31 pm
Was it just me or could you hear the infamous ” I did not have sex . . . ” comment in Clinton’s defense, “I did more to get bin Laden than blah, blah blah.” Priceless.
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 9:44 pm
This is not the first time that Clinton lost his cool in a national interview. I remember, well, Clinton turning a bright shade of red and pointing his finger at Peter Jennings during an interview on November 17, 2004 that started out by covering the opening of Clinton’s Presidential library.
A partial transcript is here: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=260445&page=1
It includes this regarding his attempts to capture OBL:
“If you look at the 9/11 Commission’s report about what we did, and how we prepared for, we had 9/11-style threats for the millennium. And the extent of our preparations, and the work we did, the number of terrorists we brought to justice, the 20 al Qaeda cells we broke up, if you look at all that, and the fact that we apparently still came closer to getting bin Laden than anybody has since, even though they have a lot more options — military options — than we had — I wish that I had gotten him.”
I’ve tried to come up with a video of it, but no luck so far. Carol Platt Liebau wrote about it two days later. http://carolliebau.blogspot.com/2004/11/peter-jennings-interview-with-bill.html
Here’s part of what Carol wrote: “Clinton became visibly angry, and inveighed against Ken Starr and the historians, even as he insisted that ‘I don’t really care what they think.’ Jennings disagreed, and then Clinton, pointing at Jennings, says, ‘You don’t want to go there, Peter. You don’t want to go there. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked.’ He doesn’t get it — really. And it’s scary.”
Clinton’s reaction in the Chris Wallace interview is nearly identical to the November 2004 one with Peter Jennings. He went from altar boy to raging bull with the flip of a switch.
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 10:44 pm
“Beyond that, I think Clinton’s argument that no one could have foreseen that pulling out of Somalia would empower our enemies is patently absurd.”
Clinton argued that he actually stayed longer than the right wingers wanted to - they wanted out right away. Don’t forget that Bush ran on an isolationist platform and opposed us getting involved militarily around the world. Bush’s platform was diametrically opposed to doing anything close to tracking down Bin Laden. It was only after 9/11 that Bush had any interest in acting militarily against our enemies around the world. To argue that Bush had any interest in getting Bin Laden before 9/11 is nothing short of revisionist. As a Republican who despises this administration, I do not see how other conservatives have fallen for this fallacy.
September 24th, 2006 at September 24, 2006 - 11:22 pm
Liveblogging The Clinton Interview
First, before I get into the Clinton interview, let me say that I watched a lot of the talk shows and the other news stories that were playing throughout the day on this. Besides the usual things, the one thing that stuck with me is Chris Wallace himself