Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said on Wednesday night she had no problem with the way Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton handled a man in New Hampshire who said he wanted to “reach through the TV and strangle” the former technology executive.
Making her first comments about the incident, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO said during an interview on the Fox News show “The O’Reilly Factor” that she wasn’t rattled by the man’s comments and passed up a chance to criticize Clinton for laughing at the man’s comments instead of calling him out.
The man had told Clinton at a campaign event on Tuesday that he had been fired by Fiorina and was still angry. Some conservatives took aim at the Democratic frontrunner for her response, but Fiorina didn’t go there.
“I don’t take umbrage with him. I don’t even take umbrage with Mrs. Clinton,” Fiorina said. “I do take umbrage with the clear double standard that exists in the media. If this happened with the conservative candidate the liberal media would be all over and asking to apologize and all the rest of it. “
Fiorina said she understood the man’s frustration about losing his job.
“I can understand why someone who is laid off might feel badly about it,” she said. “It was a very tough time.”
Fiorina’s camp similarly stepped around the issue earlier this week when asked by TPM. A campaign spokeswoman merely pointed TPM to a tweet from another staffer that criticized the media.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and Fiorina agreed with each other the man wasn’t threatening her and was joking.
“It’s not going to rattle me,” she said.
Here’s the original incident at a Clinton campaign event in New Hampshire:
h/t Mediaite
