Which statement here is weirder? Newsmax boss Christopher Ruddy now declaring that Bill Clinton was a "great president"? Or Clinton telling him he did a "good job" hounding him in the 1990s? Howard Kurtz unraveled this bizarre meeting of former adversaries in Monday’s Washington Post:
For those who remember Ruddy's name from the scandal wars of the 1990s, that is nothing short of remarkable. Ruddy wrote a book titled "The Strange Death of Vincent Foster," questioning whether the Clinton aide, who committed suicide, had been murdered. He also questioned whether Commerce secretary Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash, had been shot in the head. And yet here was Ruddy, now chief executive of Newsmax.com, telling Clinton that "I was one of your critics" during his administration, and Clinton responding with a laugh: "You did a good job."
Ruddy says in an interview that he was "overzealous" and "over the top" when publisher Richard Mellon Scaife was financing his Clinton investigations. (Scaife has also made peace with his onetime nemesis.) "I think he was a much better president than I thought," Ruddy says. "I think he was a great president."
If this deep bow is what it takes to gain access for an interview with the former president, the price is too high. It sounds a lot like Joe Scarborough apologizing all over Hillary Clinton a few years back.
