Former President Bill Clinton was the featured guest on Wednesday’s (December 11) edition of The View, and, naturally, a hot topic of discussion was the 2024 presidential election.
Clinton, who campaigned for Kamala Harris on the road and was a key speaker at the Democratic National Convention, was obviously disappointed that his candidate did not win, but he had a major contrast to draw between this election of Donald Trump and the first one.
“How are you sleeping now?” Joy Behar asked him.
“I’m sleeping better now because I did everything I could for the alternative,” he said. “But I also think it’s important for everybody to just take a deep breath and say, unlike in 2016, there was no outside influence, like the FBI director interfering at the last moment in violation of 70 years of policy.”
Behar then vocally noted that the person Clinton was referring to was James Comey, who notoriously announced a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the vote.
“It changed overnight. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen a poll change 5 percent overnight. So anybody that says that he didn’t give Trump the election needs [help]. But this time Donald Trump won the race fair and square, I think,” he said.
Clinton then went on to speculate as to why Trump won, saying, “I grew up in Trump country. And my native state, Arkansas, moved as far to the right from 2008 through 2016 than any state in the country, and they have these great little — the Trump people — these great little Facebook clubs that had answers to what all our friends were saying to them in the campaign. So these are hard-fought campaigns, and people on both sides care a lot about politics. And there’s a lot more of this going on in rural America than you may think where people are discussing these issues in a very sophisticated way.”
He then said that the action item for fellow Democrats ahead of the inauguration is, “I think what we have to do is to observe a peaceful transfer of power, stand up for what we believe in, and work together where we can. I do not think we should be jamming them even though they do.”
Former Pres. Bill Clinton on the Democrats’ loss in the 2024 election: “It’s important for everybody to just take a deep breath and say, unlike in 2016, there was no outside influence like the FBI director interfering at the last moment in violation of 70 years of policy.” pic.twitter.com/9FIK3YfbuQ
— The View (@TheView) December 11, 2024
The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC
