Saturday Night Live may have famously parodied Hillary Clinton’s disdain for Sarah Palin, but in real life, the former first lady and secretary of state says she actually refused a request from the 2008 Obama presidential campaign to attack his opponent’s newly-minted running mate.
“The day she was nominated, the Obama campaign did contact me and ask me if I would attack her,” Clinton said of Palin in an interview with NBC’s Cynthia McFadden. “I said, ‘Attack her for what? For being a woman? Attack her for being on a ticket that’s trying to draw attention? There will be plenty of time to do what I think you should do in politics, which is draw distinctions.’”
The full interview, due to air Tuesday night on NBC’s Nightly News, comes on the day Clinton launched a highly-anticipated book tour for her new memoir, “Hard Choices,” which many believe will be a prelude to her second presidential campaign. Clinton also made an appearance Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America to clarify a comment she made in an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired Monday where she claimed to be “dead broke” after leaving the White House. Critics pointed to the remark as evidence that she was out of touch with ordinary Americans.
“I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today,” Clinton stressed in an interview with Robin Roberts. “Bill and I were obviously blessed. We worked hard for everything we got in our lives and we continue to work hard, and we’ve been blessed in the last 14 years. So for me it’s just a reality what we faced when he got out of the White House, it meant that we just had to keep working really hard.”
Emma Margolin
Emma Margolin is a reporter at MSNBC.com. Recommended
