Howard Stern Interview Has Both Sides Guessing
By Dan Murphy
Chappaqua resident Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance on the Howard Stern Sirius XM Radio show has resulted in democrats, and Westchester residents, speculating what the interview means about her future plans. Some believe that by agreeing to the Stern interview, which she had rejected to do in the past, means she no longer cares about what the American people and voters think about her every answer because she is out of politics forever.
Others, like my wife, believe just the opposite : that Hillary’s openness and honesty with Stern have made her a more likeable person – and candidate for president. The answer may lie somewhere between both theories.
As democrats watch former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg meet the deadline for getting on the democratic primary ballot is states across the country, what it also means is that Hillary Clinton will not be on the ballot in these same states.
What many Hillary supporters are hoping for is a democratic deadlock, with no presidential candidates getting enough delegates to win the nomination through the primaries. The result would be a democratic convention where delegates and super-delegates (democratic power brokers and elected officials) would pick a nominee. And if they can’t agree on a nominee, how about Hillary Clinton for president… again in 2020?
Clinton was coy with Stern about running for president again, ruling it out… but not ruling it out completely. What Hillary did in the more than two-hour interview with Stern is put part of the blame on her 2016 loss to Donald Trump on Bernie Sanders.
When asked by Stern whether she hates Sanders for the long primary campaign he ran against her in 2016 and the slowness with which he offered his eventual endorsement, Clinton said, “I don’t hate anybody.” But, she added that with the time it took Sanders to endorse her, “He could have. He hurt me, there’s no doubt about it,” she said. “And I hope he doesn’t do it again to whoever gets the nomination. Once is enough.”
Those comments were pulled from the interview by the cable news media as a major putdown of Sanders by Clinton, who still blames him – in part – for her loss to Trump because it showed a lack of Democratic Party unity. Hillary’s comments about Bernie are also damaging because of her belief that he stands no chance at winning the nomination in 2020.
While Stern has definitely toned down his act, from his racy, sex-fueled shows of the 2000s, he still asked Hillary to respond to rumors that she had ever engaged in a lesbian affair. She categorically denied this, saying: “Never, never, never. Never even been tempted, thank you very much… Contrary to what you might hear, I actually like men.”
That response drew criticism of some in the LGBTQ community. “It’s so frustrating when public figures like Hillary feel the need to dispel lesbian rumors in a way that equates lesbianism or queerness with salaciousness, and that’s ultimately what I dislike about the way she phrased it,” said LGBT media journalist Trish Bendix. “I think there’s a way to refute untrue ideas about one’s own identity without saying something damaging to others.”
Clinton appeared relaxed and willing to open up to Stern, and the American people, during the interview, like never before. And while Stern had begged Clinton to appear on his show in 2016, claiming he could have turned some of his listeners into Clinton voters, which perhaps could have turned the election around in her favor, if the interview happened in 2016, Clinton would not have been as open and candid as she was recently.
NY Post reporter Maureen Callahan wrote, “One can only ask: Why now, if she has no plans to run yet again?” After the interview, The Drudge Report started to include Clinton in a list of possible 2020 democratic candidates.
In the interview, Clinton said that when she called Trump to concede, “He was more shocked than me, I think.”
And during the debates between the two, including the time when Trump stood looming behind Clinton appearing to violate her personal space, Stern, who said that Clinton would have been a “spectacular” president, said he thought Clinton to be “too nice,” by not confronting him. Clinton disagreed, saying: “Suppose I had turned around and said ‘Back up you creep, you’re not going to intimidate me,’ the headlines would have been ‘Lost Her Calm,’ ‘Switches Into Being Angry,’” she said.
Clinton spoke with Stern as part of the promotion of her book “Gutsy Women,” co-written with daughter Chelsea Clinton, who did not appear on Stern’s show and has disappeared from the spotlight since setting up a book tour with her mom and declining to run here in Westchester for Nita Lowey’s seat in Congress.
The interview is worth listening to. You can probably find it online if you don’t have Sirius-XM radio.
