Tonight's guest on PoliticKING has been elected as a Republican, an Independent, and now tells Larry King "I'm going to run" and seek the Democratic presidential nomination.
Former U.S. Senator, former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee explains why he's qualified for the Oval Office and weighs in on Hillary Clinton's recent decision to run for president.
Here's a sneak preview of the interview:
KING: You’ve said that you believe that Hillary’s also a little too close to Wall Street. Meaning what, and why is that bad?
CHAFEE: Well anytime you’re raising the enormous amounts of money that she has, you have to wonder what kind of compromises are being made in decision making as you reap this giant bank roll, and so I know we’re going to agree on a lot of domestic issues, and especially the environment. But I’ve always been a fiscal conservative, I voted against the Bush tax cuts, because I thought they were going to widen the disparity of wealth, even though as a republican I have a strong record of fiscal responsibility. And being careful, Wall Street is certainly glass-steagall in some of these depression era laws that seem to work for many years that got repealed, opened up the floodgates of abuse of power, I believe.
KING: Would you agree, governor, that it’s a long shot?
CHAFEE: Oh yes. Senator Clinton has a lot of support, a lot of money. But I think I have a good issue, and it’s not only the Iraq war vote, but also just the muscularity, the top down approach, too close to that Neocon unilateralism approach to our foreign policy. So it goes beyond just the Iraq war vote. For instance, Larry, in her book she called Chavez, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, a dictator. She called him a dictator. That is patently false, he was elected by the Venezuelan people in free elections, monitored by outside groups, and that’s indicative of kind of a tone deaf approach to our neighbors. And I’m going to run on those issues also.
KING: You would say she was hawkish Secretary of State?
CHAFEE: Absolutely, yes. And too much top down. And too much this is the American way, this is the way it’s got to be done, instead of going and listening to the people around the world, the governments, their leaders. And another example is the Russia--the whole restart, right at the beginning of her tenure as Secretary of State, they had a restart ceremony with the Russians, and they had the wrong-- they spelled in Russian, ‘restart’ wrong and they insulted the Russians right from the first minute. That’s just a kind of thing that I’m going to run on, just that new ideas, fresh ideas for our foreign policy.
KING: You’ve started an exploratory committee. Is there a pretty good bet that you’re going to run?
CHAFEE: Yes, a very good bet. If you went to the windows, it’s good money.
VIDEO PREVIEW: Lincoln Chafee: Hillary's Iraq War Vote Should Disqualify Her in 2016
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