Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, appearing on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," called the recent comments on race by Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., "offensive and outrageous" and said she was glad Obama had "finally" distanced himself from Wright. "Well, I take offense" at Wright's comments, she told the show's conservative host, Bill O'Reilly, who flew to South Bend, Ind., for the interview. "I think it's offensive and outrageous," she added. "And, you know, I'm going to express my opinion -- others can express theirs. . . . And people have to, you know, decide what they believe. And I sure don't believe the United States government was behind AIDS."
Of Obama, she said: "I think that he made his views clear, finally, that he disagreed. And I think that's what he had to do."
It was the second interview in four days by one of the Democratic presidential candidates on a television network that many liberals say is biased against them; Obama appeared on "Fox News Sunday." O'Reilly is a frequent critic of Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton, but his audience includes some of the working-class voters Clinton is trying to woo in Indiana and North Carolina.
Clinton also defended her husband's record on the economy.
"In the '90s, we had one of the strongest, fairest economies we've ever had," she said. "Yes, did people like you and me pay a little bit more? We sure did. But so did everybody else benefit, because middle-class taxes stayed pretty even."
She added: "People are net losers under the Bush economy. They were net winners under the Clinton economy. We're going to bring back a good, positive economy for the vast majority of Americans."
-- Perry Bacon Jr.