Bill Clinton: Purdum a "Sleazy" "Slimy" "Scumbag"
Click below to listen to audio of Bill Clinton on a ropeline discussing "The Comeback Id," Todd Purdum's controversial Vanity Fair article.
MILBANK, S.D. -- Former President Bill Clinton today unleashed a salty stream of epithets to describe former New York Times reporter and current Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum, calling him "sleazy," "dishonest," "slimy" and a "scumbag."
The former president made the comment at a local campaign event after I asked him if Purdum's much-commented upon Vanity Fair story was weighing on his mind.
Tightly gripping this reporter's hand and refusing to let go, Clinton heatedly denounced the writer, who is currently married to former Clinton White House Press Secretary, Dee Dee Myers.
"[He's] sleazy," he said referring to Purdum. "He's a really dishonest reporter. And one of our guys talked to him . . . And I haven't read [the article]. But he told me there's five or six just blatant lies in there. But he's a real slimy guy," the former president said.
When I reminded him that Purdum was married to his former press spokesperson Myers, Clinton was undeterred.
"That's all right-- he's still a scumbag," Clinton said. " Let me tell ya-- he's one of the guys -- he's one of the guys that propagated all those lies about Whitewater to Kenneth Starr. He's just a dishonest guy-- can't help it."
Purdum's piece, featured in this month's edition of Vanity Fair, included former advisers criticizing former President Clinton for bringing negative attention to Hillary Clinton's candidacy and for surrounding himself with friends who might discredit her campaign.
The former president's tirade continued:
"The editor of Esquire-- he sent us an email yesterday and said it was the single sleaziest piece of journalism he'd seen in decades. He said it made him want to go take a shower and he was embarrassed to be a journalist when he read it."
"You know he didn't use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It's just slimy. It's part of the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It's just the most biased press coverage in history. It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do-- he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-- maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it."
"But I'm telling ya, all it's doing is driving her supporters further and further away-- because they know exactly what it is-- this has been the most rigged press coverage in modern history-- and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame. It isn't the first dishonest piece he's written about me or her."
"Anytime you read a story that slimes a public figure with anonymous quotes, it oughta make the bells go off in your head. Because anytime somebody uses those things-- he wrote the story in his head in advance, and he just goes around and tries to find some coward to say whatever they want to say, hoping to get some benefit out of it. It didn't bother me. It shouldn't bother you."
"Thank you, Mr. President," I said attempting to end the conversation.
But Clinton continued. "He can't help it," he said. "He still hasn't apologized to me for Whitewater."
Update: President Clinton's spokesman Jay Carson issued a statement in response to this article: "President Clinton was understandably upset about an outrageously unfair article, but the language today was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it."
Update: Esquire spokesperson sent the following statement. "David Granger did not send an e-mail to Bill Clinton about the Vanity Fair article. One of the editors on staff sent a personal note about the piece to Doug Band, who was written about in the article. That was a private e-mail, and Band has since apologized to Esquire that it became public."
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Obama/McCaskill 2008!
I somehow doubt it.
This was not a hatchet job the Clintons know Mayhill just read her prior posts. This woman has been trailing Bill all across the country.
Bill wanted his nasty comments and smear of Obama to get out in a way that he could have cover.
PLEASE PEOPLE THIS IS A LESSON FROM THE CLINTON'S "PIMP THE NEWS MEDIA STRATEGY COURSE 101"
Please help us and protect us from these two sleeze balls. They can't win the top spot so now she is saying she will take VP. I hope Obama is too smart for the snow job she came out with this afternoon. They are trying to tie his hands to name someone else. I cannot vote for him if she's the VP choice. We need to let him know we will not support a Obama/Clinton ticket. P L E A S E !
Was Bill Clinton talking about the "reporter"
I am an Obama supporter.
So this same "reporter", fowler, secretly records Obama making a comments about "bitter" americans. The Clintons take it and make it part of their campaign speech, commercials, news show talking points etc, all in an attempt to slam Obama. Now she secretly records Bill Clinton's comments about the Vanity Fair article, and what he secretly thinks about Obama and his church, and they are upset over her "sleazy" tactics of secretly recording him. Seems like poetic justice to me. What goes around comes around. LOL
Very good bryan0218. I didn't think of it that way but you are right!
Who cares? It's over. Obama won. Focus on beating the "tar" out of John McSame.
Well I'll be damned. Mayhill Fowler ... you wrote a newsworthy article
Concise, informative, a little commentary and an enjoyable read.
Perhaps this comment will even get posted.
Nicely done.
Binx101
The Almost Daily Binx
http://bin
Bill Clinton has a nerve saying that Purdum does not cite names nor sources...
Bill and Hillary Clinton are both continually making grandiose statements about their achievements and successes without giving the facts behind those claims. They are also good at throwing mud at their opponents without stating their sources for that information or any kind of factual basis for the things they claim.
I saw one article that quoted Bill Clinton claiming he had saved over a million lives since leaving office! He really needs some therapy. He and his wife are either delusional or they think we are.
Bill Clinton is now a ticking time bomb do to whatever has caused this. It may be his mental condition do to an illness or just an aggressive desire to be back in the White House in some capacity.
i would say to vanity fair that i have not seen evidence but i have seen a movie called 'loose change' that practicaly prooves that (name withheld to avoid being censored) and (name withheld to avoid being censored) were behind the 911 attack. why don't they do an article on that? the crime of the century. let's take a closer look at it.
Clinton-haters are a sorry lot, aren't they? I can't believe this is all they've got, didn't Ken Starr teach them anything?
This piece raises questions I don't know enough about journalistic ethics to answer. First, Ms. Fowler doesn't identify herself as a reporter, and the article doesn't say whether her recorder was hidden or in full view. And those matter because she baits Mr. Clinton with her question about the "hatchet job" article in Vanity Fair (another fact she omits from the text version of her piece). Maybe that's all proper journalism -- I don't know -- but it certainly has a deceptive feel about it. I'm an Obama supporter, yet I defended Ms. Fowler on these threads when she secretly recorded and reported his "bitter" and "clinging" remarks. But now I can't help notice a pattern of seeming deception in how she gets the disclosures she turns into news stories. If that's all regarded as ethical journalism, then I suppose Obama and Clinton should both know better. And Ms. Fowler should probably be getting paid, having come up with two more scoops in a couple of months than some reporters manage in a career. But if any of this is less than clearly ethical, HuffPost should examine and report on that too.
Ya think?
You just now figured all this out?
What about his attacks on Sen. Obama? His claiming that Obama is sending people out to attack his wife? NOW she says she's open to the VP slot... PRAY that Obama has the strength and courage to say NO to BOTH of the Clintons.
The media is totally not reporting that part of the tape. Why? Bill Clinton needs to apologize to Obama today!
Does he ever stop wagging that finger??!
Only when he is telling the truth, which is, uh, not very often.
The girls in his Monica Club sure hope not.
Bill, you have shamed yourself over the past 14 months. Time for you to go home.
For people who still admire the Clintons and people still interested in the Clintons look at these links below and then tell me what you think of them. Are they accurate or inaccurate? In the last two links compare the pictures.
http://you
http://www
http://www
http://cbn
And have you read Hillary's thesis about politics?
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