Bill Clinton Breaks Down DNC Speech on ‘Daily Show’
Former President Bill Clinton stopped by The Daily Show last night to talk with Jon Stewart about his lengthy, but effective, speech at the Democratic National Convention, his upcoming Clinton Global Initiative and the great things that can happen when government, the private sector and non-profits start working together.
“I was just determined to get the facts right and to simplify the argument without being simplistic,” Clinton said of his approach to the convention speech. “I didn’t want to talk down to people. I wanted to explain what I thought was going on.”
Clinton also talked about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s inability to explain the specifics of his platform. “If I come to you and I say we have this terrible national debt, and here’s my opening gambit: ‘The first thing I’m going to do is raise it by another $5 trillion over a decade by doing another round of tax cuts that mostly benefit the people who benefitted over the past decade even though it didn’t produce jobs,'” Clinton said, from Romney’s perspective. “‘Now we’re in a really deep hole, now let me tell you how I’m gonna get out of it.’ Well what about the details? ‘See me after the election.'”
In the second part of their interview, Clinton talked about the upcoming eighth-annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, which will feature guests including President Obama, Romney, Condeleeaza Rice, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and more. He even cracked a few solid one-liners, like when Stewart asked him whether Wal-Mart executive Michael T. Duke – who will be speaking about making businesses more energy efficient – would be greeting people as they walked in. “No,” Clinton responded, not missing a beat, “he hires unemployed senior citizens like me to do that.”