Hillary Clinton gave a clear sign she is pivoting to the GE when she sat down today for an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper — parts of which aired this afternoon the day after the Indiana Primary. The full interview airs tonight.
She reprised the expression that Trump is a “loose cannon and loose cannons tend to misfire”.
Clinton also vowed to stay on message and maintain discipline in her campaign and not fall victim to Trump’s attacks — like those that knocked his republican competition out of the primary race.
"He could choose to run whatever campaign he wants to run. I'm going to keep staying on the campaign I'm running. I have more than 3 million votes over Sen. (Bernie) Sanders and I have 2 million votes over Trump. I'm going to keep telling people what I will do as president and I'm going to keep being specific,"
Cooper reminded Clinton about the earlier attack on President Bill Clinton when he called him "one of the great women abusers of all time."
"If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the footsteps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I'm more than happy to have him do that," Clinton said, laughing. "This, to me, is a classic case of a blustering, bullying guy who has knocked out of the way all the Republicans because they were just dumbfounded.”
When asked about the failure of Republican challengers of Trump and what might be different:
"I can only tell you the campaign I'm going to run, and the campaign I'm going to run is about what we will do in the future," she said. "And I invite a lot of Republicans and independents who I've been seeing on the campaign trail, who've been reaching out to me, I invite them to join with Democrats. Let's get on the American team."
About Sanders’ decision to press on and the parallels to 2008:
"I'm not calling myself that (the presumptive nominee)," Clinton said. "I know there are some contests ahead and I respect Sen. Sanders and whatever choices he's making. And I have a lot of empathy about this, Anderson. You know, I ran to the very end in 2008. And I won nine out of the last 12 contests, people forget that. I won Indiana. I won West Virginia. I won a lot of states, but I couldn't close the gap in pledged delegates. And the gap between me and Sen. Sanders is far wider than it was between me and Sen. Obama."