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Hillary Clinton Dodges 2020 Question with Bizarre Joke About 'Running'

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to give a straight answer this week when asked about speculation she could make a third run for the presidency in 2020.

Clinton’s remarks came during the end of a discussion Wednesday at The New York Times DealBook conference in New York City with Times columnist Aaron Ross Sorkin.

“What would it take you to run?” Sorkin asked Clinton.

“I’m sorry, to run?” the former first lady, senator and secretary of state replied.

Rather than answer the question, Clinton tried to work in a joke about how she is a “slow runner.”

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“I’ve always been a very, very slow runner,” she said. “I am embarrassingly slow. I’ve tried to run races and I am so far behind that I start to walk acting like that was what the plan was the whole time. So, I don’t know that I’m going to take up competitive running right now.”

Finally, she acknowledged the question had nothing to do with physical running.

“But I think you’re asking about something else, aren’t you?” she said.

Sorkin admitted he was referring to speculation that Clinton could run for president again.

Do you think Hillary Clinton is gearing up to run again in 2020?

“I think I would have been a really good president,” Clinton replied. “I think I could have been a very effective leader.”

“I would have done everything I could to try to get us positioned for the future,” she said. “I think I could have done a really good job. I think the last election was deeply flawed and that there were so many unprecedented problems in that election.”

In posting the clip of her comments to Twitter, Clinton made the same joke about physical running.

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“You heard it here first,” she wrote. “Not taking up professional running anytime soon.”

Clinton, who lost in the Democratic primary in 2008 to Barack Obama and was defeated in the 2016 general election by now-President Donald Trump, appears to be reveling in the rumors that she could run again.

Last month, The Times reported that Clinton and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg “have both told people privately in recent weeks that if they thought they could win, they would consider entering the primary — but that they were skeptical there would be an opening, according to Democrats who have spoken with them.”

Longtime Clinton adviser Philippe Reines expressed similar sentiments during an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

“You know, she ran for president [in 2008 and 2016] because she thought she would be the best president,” Reines said. “If she still thought that now, if she thought she had the best odds of beating Donald Trump — I think she would think about it long and hard.”

“She hasn’t foreclosed the possibility, I guess that’s what I’m saying?” Carlson asked.

“No, she has not,” Reines clarified, agreeing with Carlson’s assertion that this would not “surprise anybody who’s followed the Clintons.”

Last week, former President Bill Clinton stoked even more speculation regarding his wife’s future plans.

“She may or may not ever run for anything,” he said of his wife at a Georgetown University Law School event, “but I can’t legally run for president again.”

Notably, Clinton on Wednesday neither confirmed nor denied that she is considering another run for the White House.

“I’m out here traveling around with my daughter,” Clinton said, referring to her daughter, Chelsea. “Life is pretty good.”

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Joe Setyon was a deputy managing editor for The Western Journal who had spent his entire professional career in editing and reporting. He previously worked in Washington, D.C., as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine.
Joe Setyon was deputy managing editor for The Western Journal with several years of copy editing and reporting experience. He graduated with a degree in communication studies from Grove City College, where he served as managing editor of the student-run newspaper. Joe previously worked as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication in Washington, D.C., where he covered politics and wrote about government waste and abuse.
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