During a talk on Friday, Hillary Clinton said, “I’d like to be president,” reviving rumors that she would take a third run at the White House in 2020.
At a public taping of the Recode Decode podcast in New York City, Clinton initially said “no” twice when asked if she wanted to run for president again. Her interviewer, Kara Swisher, pressed the point, and the former secretary of state qualified her remarks. She said whoever next took the job would have to restore America’s reputation abroad.
“Well, I’d like to be president,” she said. “The work would be work that I feel very well prepared for having been at the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department, and it’s just going to be a lot of heavy lifting.”
Twitter promptly went into minor meltdown over the prospect of Clinton 2020. So Swisher attempted to clarify the clarification.
“Tweeps, simmer down!” Swisher tweeted. “While it perhaps sounded like @HillaryClinton refused to rule it out, my take is she was basically implying she wishes she were president but doesn’t relish running again.”
Tweeps, simmer down! While it perhaps sounded like @HillaryClinton refused to rule it out, my take is she was basically implying she wishes she were president but doesn’t relish running again. Now back to our regularly scheduled vile tweeting from Trump: https://t.co/OB8g0uXCJI
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) October 29, 2018
During the interview, Clinton acknowledged that some Democrats would prefer for her to step out of the spotlight altogether, dismissing such talk as sexist. “There were no articles telling Al Gore to go away or John Kerry to go away or John McCain or Mitt Romney to go away,” she said. “Mitt Romney is going to the Senate, that’s where he’s going.”
Clinton said she wouldn’t consider a potential 2020 run until after the midterm elections next week. “I’m not even going to even think about it until we get through this Nov. 6 election,” she said. “But I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we have a Democrat in the White House come January of 2021.”
Clinton also discussed the package bombs that had been sent to her, other prominent Democrats and CNN last week. Shortly before the interview, a suspect, Cesar Sayoc, had been arrested in Florida; he had a picture of Clinton, imprinted with a target, in a window of his van. “We’re living at a time when the atmosphere is so volatile, filled with vitriol,” she said. “We have a president who engages in reckless rhetoric all the time, that aims at demeaning, demonizing all kinds of people. He whips up the crowds that come to see him and it’s almost an addiction relationship that we’ve got him up there just urging them on, they chanting, and giving back what he needs, I guess, to make himself feel strong and important. It’s tragic, but it’s also really dangerous.”
