Politics

Van Jones: Hillary Clinton ‘has two husbands, Bill and Barack’

Brendan Bordelon Contributor
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Former Obama advisor Van Jones raised eyebrows on CNN Monday when he said Hillary Clinton “has two husbands: one’s name is Bill and the other’s name is Barack.”

Van Jones, who is also co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, spoke with The Lead guest host John Berman about whether Hillary Clinton would have to throw a flailing President Obama under the bus if she runs for office.

BERMAN: If Hillary runs, how complicated is her relationship with the president? Does she need to run with him in the primary but against him in the general election?

VAN JONES: Well, basically, you got to look at her as a very strange woman. She has two husbands: one’s name is Bill, the other’s name is Barack. She can’t divorce either one of them. She’s going to have to hug them, warts and all, and run with them. If she turns against this president at any point before she has this thing wrapped up, the base is not going to have it. This president has come back from the dead 57 times. He will be back. But she cannot get away from him any more than she can from Bill Clinton.

BERMAN: Complicated. I’m not going to follow up on the two-husband metaphor. That was Van Jones of CNN everyone, that’s all him.

Other panelists largely agreed with Van Jones, though their metaphors were less colorful. The Hill editor A.B. Stoddard explained that Hillary is likely to allow her husband to take on “the dirty work” of taking on the president’s failing policies. But at some point, Stoddard thinks she’ll need to make a choice.

“She’s going to have to go out there,” she said. “She’s going to either agree that the policies are not popular with her constituents and need revisiting, or she’s going to have to back up the president. And I think that’s going to be challenging for her. I think she’s more likely to stay quiet.”

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Brendan Bordelon