Politics

Pelosi favors Hillary for president over Biden: ‘I think the country is ready for Hillary’ [VIDEO]

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi indicated Thursday she would be all in for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Pelosi, the first female House speaker, said that Clinton’s resume gives her the edge over other potential candidates.

“I think the country is ready for Hillary,” Pelosi said. “I certainly hope that she will choose to run. I think if she does, she will win. I think — and when she does, I think she’ll be the best prepared person to enter the White House in decades. With all due respect to everybody else, but who has the credentials she has in terms of being a first lady and having a front-row seat and active participation at the highest level of government and power? A United States senator, secretary of state, even first lady of Arkansas — every level of experience. So I think the knowledge she has gives her great judgment. The respect she commands signals that she would be successful should she decide to run, and I think it would be a great thing for our country to have a woman president.”

“I always thought it would be easier to elect a woman to be president of the United States than to be speaker of the House,” she continued. “When I became speaker, I thought how could it be in this bastion of — well, it has been dominated by males for over 200 years, and the last thing you would say to somebody is we need a woman speaker because you would completely turn them off. But one thing and another, I became speaker. But I know that the American people are way ahead of the politicians in Washington when it comes to women being elevated to the highest levels of power. That’s the response I got from the American people, from fathers of daughters saying now I know my daughter can go even further.”

Pelosi did not officially endorse Clinton, saying she would wait until she announced her intentions. (RELATED: Biden may make 3rd presidential run if he has the energy)

“I have a habit of supporting people when they decide to run, and I’ve said very positive things about [Hillary Clinton],” Pelosi said. “I’d be absolutely thrilled. But the thing about Hillary — I’d be thrilled because she would be the first woman president. But separate and apart from the fact she’s a woman, she would be a great president, and that’s really the standard that we have to hold everyone to.”

Pelosi seemed to favor Clinton over current Vice President Joe Biden on the grounds of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. But she said Biden, also ran for president in 1988 and 2008, would be “a great president” as well.

“Well, Hillary Clinton has run for president before,” Pelosi replied. “That makes a tremendous difference. I highly recommend it to women — if you want to be in politics in any way, run for president, because you will have a built-in public relations campaign for yourself. So no matter what else you do next, if you become speaker or something, people will know you. Otherwise, you come into a role and you are at the mercy of any negative thing that anybody can say without having been given the inoculation of ‘this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I do things.'”

“Joe Biden is a magnificent leader in our country,” she continued. “There is absolutely no question he would be a great president. He made that point when he ran for president himself. So — he’s vice president. He has tremendous experience, and some of the issues that we are work on now, whether it is gun safety, whether it is issues that relate to immigration, the growth of our economy, the creation of jobs — he’s been there and done that over and over again for decades, both in the Senate and now for a long time as vice president. So we are very blessed to have many excellent choices, and not just limited to those two.”

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