Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina pitched herself as an anti-establishment candidate who understands “how the world works and who’s in it” Sunday.
She refused to go very far in criticizing front-runner Donald Trump, and defended comments from 2008 where she called Hillary Clinton “incredibly intelligent, focused, tough, and determined.”
“Now you mostly call her a liar,” Fox News’ Howard Kurtz noted.
“Well, I think both those statements are true,” Fiorina responded. “She is very hard-working. She’s intelligent … She has dedicated her life to public service. All that is true.”
“And she’s lied,” Fiorina continued. “She’s lied about Benghazi. She’s lied about her emails. She lied about her server. And I do not think we can permit her to become president of the United States.”
In a separate interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Fiorina — formerly a Hewlett-Packard CEO — elaborated on Hillary’s unique email arrangement.
“It takes a lot of work to install a private server system in your basement. It takes a lot of work to make sure that you are having the right connections to conduct both personal and professional business over that system,” Fiorina said. “I don’t think it’s plausible to say ‘Oh, I wasn’t paying any attention.’ She clearly was paying attention.”
Fiorina also briefly criticized competitor Donald Trump, but refused to do so at length. Commenting on a Hugh Hewitt interview where Trump confused Iran’s Quds Force with the Kurdish people, Fiorina said, “I think it is very difficult to lead if you don’t have the requisite knowledge.”
“I think it’s perfectly acceptable that you don’t know the name of every terrorist leader,” said Fiorina, who was asked the same questions during her interview with Hewitt. Fiorina knew most of the names that Trump failed to recognize.
“I do think it’s important to know who our enemies are,” she said. “I think it’s important to know the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, and to know as well that both of them for example are proxies of Iran.”
“I do think we’ve come to a place though where people realize that running for political office all your life isn’t necessarily the most qualifying set of experiences either,” said Fiorina. The former Hewlett Packard executive has never held political office.
“We have a professional political class — 80 percent of the American people now think we have a professional political class — that is either unwilling or unable to challenge the status quo of Washington, and get anything done,” Fiorina said. “And we have festering problems in Washington, not to mention a lack of leadership around the world.”
Making her pitch, Fiorina said that her business experience and areas of expertise qualified her for the presidency. “I understand how the economy works,” she said. “I understand how the world works and who’s in it, who are our friends, and who are our enemies; I understand how big bureaucracies work — which is what Washington has become; I understand technology; and I understand leadership.”
“And I think those are the necessary experiences and qualifications to become president of the United States,” she said.
