Bill Clinton Encouraged Donald Trump To Run For President With A Phone Call – Former President’s Actions Motivated Trump?

Donald Trump reportedly had a phone conversation with Bill Clinton before the former kick-started his presidential campaign.

Trump had an unlikely encourager just before he threw his hat in the presidential race. It seems former president Bill Clinton might have implied it was a great idea for Trump to run for president. However, the two may not have discussed the actual presidential bid or even the fact that Clinton’s wife Hillary Rodham Clinton would be joining the race.

Citing multiple sources who independently confirmed the call did take place, The Washington Post reported that the call was initiated at Trump’s request. Incidentally, Donald Trump had tried to reach Mr. Clinton’s office on numerous occasions earlier, but failed. While an aide to Mr. Trump declined to comment on the phone call that might have been the spark, his counterpart to Mr. Clinton shared that it was “Mr. Trump [who] reached out to President Clinton a few times,” before the courtesy was returned by Mr. Clinton,

“President Clinton returned his call in late May. And, that while we don’t make it a practice to discuss the president’s private conversations, we can tell you that the presidential race was not discussed.”

It isn’t surprising that Clinton, who eventually returned the call, sounded quite supportive. He may have even mentioned that Trump’s bid might be “striking a chord with the Republican base.”

The former president is legendary for sounding courteous and solicitous to anyone he speaks to. Moreover, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have been on cordial terms for many years. While the Clintons attended Mr. Trump’s wedding to his third wife, Melania, Mr. Trump graciously donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. It’s also interesting to note,that Bill Clinton is a privileged member of one of Trump’s expansive golf courses, reported New York Times.

If that’s not all, Donald Trump had openly tried to downplay Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky in 2008 by comparing it with the much bigger issue of the embarrassingly missing WMDs in Iraq for which another former president George Bush invaded the country. Defending Clinton, Trump had said,

“Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.”

Donald Trump is certainly one of the most outspoken presidential candidates of recent times, one who has taken aggressive stands, while Hillary Clinton hasn’t forgone a single opportunity to point out his potentially damaging comments.

[Image Credit | Rick Odell, Maring Photography / Getty Images]