Former President Bill Clinton has a surprisingly flattering view of Kari Lake, who is running for U.S. Senate to represent Arizona.
A video of Clinton speaking in Arizona has floated around the media of Clinton calling Lake “physically attractive.” At the moment he is talking, he is distinguishing her from his view of her challenger, Congressman Ruben Gallego, whom he says “grew up under sometimes challenging circumstances and made something of his life.”
Lake took the comment in stride — but also returned a barb.
“As a middle-aged woman, I’m flattered,” the 55-year-old said at a rally with former President Donald Trump at Arizona State University. “I thought I was a little too old for him. Doesn’t he like interns?”
Lake’s joke was an overt reference to Clinton’s sexual dalliance with then-22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky during his time as president. Their affair, which lasted on and off from 1995 to 1997, was a major scandal for the time. It was discovered during another investigation and ultimately led to the impeachment of President Clinton (the Senate did not convict him).
This is not the first time the “boy from hope” has made headlines while stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris in recent weeks.
At a previous campaign event in George, Clinton said, “[Harris is] the only candidate who has actually endorsed a bill that would hold down immigration any given year to a certain point and then made sure we gave people a decent place to live, didn’t divide people from their children. And we did total vetting before people got in. Now, Trump killed the bill.”
His follow-up then created a political splash.
Clinton added, “You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you? They made an ad about it. A young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened.”
Clinton was referencing Laken Riley, a nursing student who was found dead on the University of Georgia’s campus. Her suspected killer is reportedly an illegal immigrant.
Her death prompted outrage from many political corners and led to the introduction of the Laken Riley Act by Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama and others.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala), who led the Senate introduction of the Laken Riley Act with Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), stated to Fox News Digital at the time of Clinton’s comments, saying, “What President Clinton refused to admit is that this is a conscious choice the Biden-Harris Administration has made.”
Britt continued. “No one is forcing them to parole hundreds of thousands of poorly vetted individuals into communities across our country, and they could end their dangerous, unprecedented abuse of immigration parole today if they wanted to.”
