He may have once called President Barack Obama the racist puppet of a vast global conspiracy, but conservative talk show host Glenn Beck seems to be more sanguine about his potential replacement, Hillary Clinton.
Beck, who left Fox News in 2011 to start his own media empire, predicted this week that the former secretary of state will be the next president, and not through any kind of trickery or skullduggery.
“Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States,” he said on his radio show Monday, citing a conversation he said a friend of his had with some “Hillary people” who outlined her alleged 2016 campaign plans. Beck said that as he heard the strategy laid out, he thought, “Oh my gosh, she’s going to win the presidency.”
While the right will be “fighting on Benghazi and everything else,” Beck said, “Hillary is going to [say], ‘Do you remember when America was good? Do you remember when we had jobs and we were building towards a brighter future, and things were really happening? The Clinton administration, we had it under control.”
He continued: “Things were good, and … we’re going to do better.” Beck said he understood the strength of the strategy because he understood the appeal of the first Clinton administration. “I would so gladly take Bill Clinton right now,” he said he’s often thought.
Always a heterodox, Beck’s take is a different one from the standard conservative line, which is that Clinton is old news. Instead, the pundit said that the potential candidate has a “vision for the future” while the GOP is “all about the past,” with a focus on issues like the Benghazi incident and the IRS scandal.
Beck’s sourcing is, of course, dubious, and Clinton doesn’t have any kind of full-scale political strategy team around her yet. Still, many expect the former first lady, who has said she will decide on a potential 2016 presidential run by the end of this year, to draw on the popularity of her husband’s administration.
Alex Seitz-Wald