Hillary Clinton made her debut on The Howard Stern Show Wednesday — and nothing was off-limits because she touched on pretty much everything.
Clinton, of course, talked President Trump and politics — the upcoming election, the impeachment hearings and losing to him in 2016 — but also about her dating life pre-Bill Clinton and rumors about her sexuality.
At the top of the show, Clinton confirmed a long-rumored story (with its own Snopes page) about George W. Bush’s reaction to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech.
“Obviously I was crushed,” she said of her demeanor after losing the 2016 election to Trump. “I was disappointed and I was really surprised because I couldn’t figure out what had happened. So when he’s going to be inaugurated, I was going as the former first lady. That was the reason I was there — I was no longer in the Senate. Secretaries of state don’t attend.”
Clinton attended as a sense of duty, she said despite people telling her, “Don’t go,” and it being “one of the hardest days of my life.” But she said Bush lightened the mood a little.
“Bill and I were sitting with George and Laura Bush and then [Trump] started on that speech which was so bizarre. That’s when I got really worried. I thought: Wait a minute. It’s not rational, but it’s also not politics. It’s not what a president does. A president is supposed to try to reach out to people who weren’t for him or her... I hoped I would hear a little of that but then the carnage in the street and the dark dystopian vision. I was sitting there like just: Wow. I couldn’t believe it, and George W. Bush says to me, ‘Well that was some weird sh**.’”
Clinton didn’t mince words when it came to her feelings about her political foe, talking about Trump being egotistical, a narcissist and calling him an “admirer of dictators.” She said, “If I had lost to a normal Republican, I would have been unhappy but I wouldn’t have had that pit in my stomach: What the heck? What is going to happen? What’s he going to do next? His impulsiveness, his vindictiveness — where does this lead?”
She didn’t save her criticism just for the president, criticizing “cowardly” Republican senators for not taking him on. And of Lindsey Graham, whom she said she once “admired and liked enormously” (and vice versa as he openly praised her in a 2006 Time magazine essay), she said she doesn’t know what happened to him.
“Lindsey was good company, he was funny, he was self-deprecating,” she said.“He also believed in climate change back in those days. I saw him as somebody who, you know, had been working to try to figure out what he believed and how he could do things.”
When asked by Stern if he sold his soul to the devil, Clinton replied, “I don’t know. That’s a fair question, however. I'll be honest with you. I haven't talked to him in a long time... It's like he had a brain snatch, you know?”
The Book of Gutsy Women author said she’s not endorsing anyone ahead of the 2020 presidential election. She’ll support whoever the Democratic nominee is, explaining that she doesn’t want “to get in the middle.” She thinks Joe Biden will likely win the nomination as he’s leading the polls. She also admitted that Bernie Sanders “hurt” her campaign by not endorsing her immediately. She said she’s still “disappointed” about it — and hopes he doesn't do it again to whoever gets the nomination, adding, “Once is enough."
Clinton called her own husband a “terrific support” following her 2016 loss after Stern brought up a story he had heard about Bill holding her hand as she fell asleep just devastated after the election. She also spent a lot of time talking about them getting together in their college days. Clinton said she had a boyfriend at the time — whom she said looked like a “Greek god” — and ended up breaking up with him for Bill.
“He was a good guy,” she said of the ex, who has since passed away. “He was so handsome, really handsome. He looked like a Greek god. He was very attractive.”
That led to her referencing rumors, generated by political rivals, about her sexuality.
