Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on Sunday once again defended her tenure — and firing — as the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, saying that “it is a leader’s job to challenge the status quo, and when you do, you make enemies.”
Fiorina during an interview on “Meet the Press” pointed to the rocky recession that led to layoffs at the technology company.
When pressed by host Chuck Todd, who flat out asked “So, why were you fired?” Fiorina responded as she has before, even using identical phrasing.
“Well, they did fire me. I’ve been very open about that. I was fired in a boardroom brawl,” Fiorina said. “We had board members who were leaking information out of the boardroom.”
On why the stock at HP, on the day she was fired, went up nearly 7%, Fiorina fired back, “the stock has gone down during my tenure, as did every other single technology company.”
Related: Fiorina on CarlyFiorina.org: ‘You can’t buy every domain name’
After Fiorina officially declared her candidacy for president in 2016 last Monday, the URL carlyfiorina.org illustrated via endless sad-faced emojis the number of people laid off at HP. “Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain. So I’m using it to tell you how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard. It was this many,” the site read, followed by 30,000 unhappy faces.
“What people fail to comment on is the fact that we doubled the size of the company,” Fiorina hit back on Sunday.
For the past six days, Fiorina has been all over the media largely attempting to set her record straight at HP, gain much-needed face recognition, and criticize Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In her announcement video, Fiorina showed a clip of Clinton before even showing herself. It was a move that let her essential role in the election be known as the anti-Hillary.
Earlier this weekend, Fiorina spoke at the South Carolina Freedom Summit — alongside other Republican presidential hopefuls — to again pit herself against Clinton.
“Like Hillary Clinton, I too am running for president of the United States. But unlike Hillary Clinton, I’m not afraid to answer questions about my track record or my accomplishments or my principles,” Fiorina said, adding that Clinton doesn’t have a “record of accomplishment.”
On Sunday, Florina reiterated this sentiment. “I understand the executive decision making, which is making a tough call in a tough time, for which you are prepared to be held accountable,” she told Chuck Todd. “Something that at least Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a track record of.”
Anna Brand