The name Gennifer Flowers means nothing to half of the audience reading this I’ll bet.
Well, she’s former “model” who had an extramarital sexual encounter with Bill Clinton in the 80s and she’s reportedly accepted an invitation to sit in the front row during Hillary Clinton’s presidential debate with Donald Trump on Monday night.
She appeared to confirm this last night Saturday Tweeting,
“Hi Donald. You know I’m in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!”
Nine years earlier, however, Flowers said she would support Hillary Clinton in her first presidential campaign. Speaking in 2007, Flowers said:
“I can’t help but want to support my own gender. I don’t have any interest whatsoever in getting back out there and bashing Hillary Clinton.”
Guess she craves the limelight more than she does being a good citizen. Her invitation to watch Trump seems to have come about because of a feud between the GOP nominee and the billionaire, Mark Cuban. On Thursday, Cuban tweeted that he had,
“just got a front row seat to watch @HillaryClinton overwhelm @realDonaldTrump at the ‘Humbling at Hofstra’ on Monday. It Is On!”
On Saturday morning, Trump replied:
“If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside of him!”
BuzzFeed News reported that Judy Stell, an assistant to Flowers, said in an email that though Flowers had previously declined invitations to public events because she did not want to be a sideshow,
“Ms. Flowers has agreed to join Donald at the debate.“
But speaking to Fox News last Monday, Trump said that out of
“respect” for Clinton he would not be “looking” to pursue such attacks. “I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly. It depends on what level she hits you with, if she’s fair, if it’s unfair, but certainly I’m not looking to do that.”
Flowers came to national prominence in January 1992, when Bill Clinton first campaigned for the White House, with an allegation of a 12-year affair and tapes of conversations between the two.
Clinton initially denied the claim, but admitted in a 1998 deposition in a sexual harassment suit that he had had a single sexual encounter with Flowers. Beginning in 1999, Flowers pursued a defamation suit against Hillary Clinton and two Clinton aides, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. It was dismissed.
Trump had an affair with Marla Maples (who is almost indistinguishable from Flowers) in the 80s, which led to his divorce from Ivana Trump, so he can’t exactly take the moral high ground. Decades later, Bill & Hillary are still together.
UPDATE: It seems now, unfortunately for Flowers, VP candidate and Trump explainer Mike Pence rescinded that invitation during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. In fact, he amended, Trump’s tweet was not even a formal invitation –it was only a joke response to Clinton’s invitation to Cuban, who has been both a strong pro-Hillary advocate and a vocal anti-Trump surrogate.
“Hillary Clinton apparently thinks this is an episode of Shark Tank. Mark Cuban has been out there saying some pretty tough stuff about my running mate . . . [He] knows about as much about national security as I do about professional basketball.”
OK. Something makes me think this stunt back fired and they were forced to backpedal.
(via The Guardian)
