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
There have been at least five instances of everyday citizens and the usual ‘Obama is a Muslim dictator’ meme. One of those times involved an opportunity for Fiorina to say something about positive discourse. Naturally she kept quiet or later made the diner incident into some sort of first amendment matter.
Trump on the other hand pretended like he was Jay Z and just brushed his shoulder off…
nice try though…
Yeah, after watching the video, he was obviously speaking metaphorically about how he felt after the scenario he describes.
I also think it’s wise for Fiorina’s camp to let it pass by. The observations the man makes about her tenure at H-P are the exact opposite of how she’s trying to fluff her executive credentials… “saving money” by laying off 20,000 employees, then buying two corporate jets the following week to fly Executives around. Yeah, I think she’d want that one to pass her on by.
Hell, the “So Called Liberal Media” (thanks Eric Alterman!) doesn’t ever notice the every day horseshit spewed by the Tea Baggers anymore… it’s only when they make comments that directly threaten a Democrat or President Obama do they even get noticed. And just how many times in the last… 10 years?.. has a liberal actually gone after a Republican with a gun/knife, etc.
Very smooth. I was wondering if it would be made out to be a double standard by her campaign. I don’t think it’d be ENITRELY false equivalency to point out the potential shitstorm if the exact thing had played out with a conservative candidate. One can say her double standard remarks amount to false equivalency largely on the tone of the comments made by the Clinton supporter. “I wanted to wring her neck” is an expression of past outrage and is a pretty well known hyperbolic expression of displeasure…clearly it can’t be construed as either A) a threat, B) Clinton condoning said threat, or C) Clinton allowing a supporter the forum to lob untrue accusations and not correct them.
Look, I question the rationale of her being in the race to begin with, other than a cynical attempt to mitigate usurp some of the history behind a potential female candidate. If by some miracle she gets the nomination, the whole “first female president precedent” will be a non-issue for each candidate. So, she may be a better politician than I though she would be. She’s shown some reasonably good political instincts, as with her reaction to this story and she’s put the whole thing to bed by planting the seed of objection to a perceived double standard, while avoiding the typical “irrational, thin skinned woman” attack that female candidates often encounter.
IS an IMAGIned ThreaT OF KNIFe Violence Perpetrated BY LIBtards AGAINST conservatives ANY LESS STABBY??? I say NO!
Besides, where do all the wingnuts get their inspiration for violence than those pinko commies spewing anti-American sentiments all over the movies?!