Chelsea Clinton on Thursday morning offered a taste of her Thursday night speech for the Democratic National Convention, hitting upon the added significance of her mother’s candidacy for her now that she too is a mother.
She spoke with NBC’s Matt Lauer on “Today” about the moment Hillary Clinton will accept the Democratic nomination for president.
“I think my heart will burst,” she said.
She said that this election is defined by her own motherhood. “And as proud as I am of my mom, this election to me is fundamentally about my children, about Charlotte and Aidan, and I couldn’t imagine a better president for them.”
“I hope to convey a small sense of why I am so proud to be her daughter, why I’m grateful for the example she set for me as a mom,” she added.
Lauer asked whether it was difficult for her to listen to the insults and negativity toward her mom during last week’s Republican convention in Cleveland, including chants to “lock her up.”
“What we heard last week in Cleveland ― that’s not the person that I know, that’s not the person that I grew up with,” she said.
But even more hurtful, she added, were the jeers at women, minorities, Muslims and immigrants. “That’s not what I want my children to hear.”
On the subject of Donald Trump, Lauer brought up Chelsea Clinton’s relationship with Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Ivanka is a friend of hers, she said, at which point Lauer suggested she convene a summit between the two women to “discuss tone.”
“It isn’t something that had occurred to me but it is something I would consider,” she said. ”Clearly she and I have very different views of who should be president. I don’t expect her to always have to defend her father; it’s clear that Mr. Trump is running his campaign and saying what he thinks is important in this election. My mother is not engaging in divisive bigoted rhetoric.”
Clinton said she worked with one of her mother’s speechwriters to jointly complete her address. She even practiced while breastfeeding, she added.
And as for what her father, Bill Clinton, would like to be called if his wife is elected president, she joked he may want to harken back to his Irish roots.
“I think he would like to be called First Laddy,” she said.
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