"Amateur."
That's what an explosive new book from Edward Klein says Bill Clinton called Obama last summer. In fact, Clinton allegedly believed it so much that he urged his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to quit her job and challenge Obama for president in 2012.
In the book, similarly titled "The Amateur," Klein quotes conversations Clinton apparently had with his wife.
“Barack Obama,” Bill said, according to book excerpts obtained by the New York Post, “is an amateur.”
“The economy’s a mess, it’s dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating ... . You know better than Obama does,” Bill told Hillary in another excerpt.
"The country needs you!”
The Post has more:
Bill Clinton insisted he had “no relationship” with Obama and had been consulted more frequently by his presidential successor, George W. Bush.Obama, Bill Clinton said, “doesn’t know how to be president” and is “incompetent.”
But Hillary resisted the entreaties, according to two of the guests interviewed for the book.
“Why risk everything now?” a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.
“Because,” Bill replied, his voice rising, “the country needs you!”
“The country needs us!” added Bill.
“I’m the highest-ranking member in Obama’s Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?” she responded.“Loyalty is a joke,’’ Bill shot back. “Loyalty doesn’t exist in politics.”
Bill’s verbal battle with Hillary over the presidency, if anything, intensified when daughter Chelsea showed up with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky.
“You deserve to be president,” Chelsea said.
The trio's spokespeople have all denied the allegations and the conversation, calling Klein -- the former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine and foreign editor for Newsweek -- a liar.
“Nobody in their right mind would believe the nonsense in this one, especially since both Secretary Clinton and President Clinton have been loyal and supportive of the president at every turn,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told the Post.
Read the full story and more excerpts from the New York Post.
