Hillary Clinton gets coy with Jon Stewart on ‘The Daily Show’

It took “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart less than a minute and a half to turn his interview with Hillary Clinton from the former Secretary of State’s new memoir to her potential run for president in 2016.

Stewart started the segment by teasing Clinton about the length of her 650-page book, “Hard Choices,” which chronicles her time in the State Department from 2009 to 2013.

“It’s an incredibly, I think, complex and well-reasoned, eyewitness view to the history of those four years,” Stewart said. “I think I speak for everybody when I say, no one cares. They just want to know if you’re running for president.”

That prompted cheers from the studio audience and a laugh from Clinton.

“Jon, I was going to make an announcement, but I saw, I mean, you kind of spoiled it for me,” she said. Stewart had opened the show saying Clinton would “publicly and definitively declare her candidacy for president of the United States. I think.”

“I’m just going to have to reconsider where I go do it,” Clinton said.

Stewart said he sensed “a little confusion,” and told her he would give her a career aptitude test to help “hone in on if you want to even do this job.”

Stewart: Do you like commuting to work, or do you like a home office?
Clinton: “You know, I’ve spent so many years commuting, I kind of prefer a home office. That’s where I wrote my book. It was on the third floor of our house.”

Stewart: Do you have a favorite shape for that home office? Would you like it to have corners?
Clinton: “I think that the world is so complicated, the fewer corners that you can have the better.”

Stewart: Do you prefer to sit in traffic or cause it?
Clinton: “I really hate to cause traffic, and sometimes I do. And I deeply regret it, I’m telling the world right now.”

Stewart: Do you enjoy constant, nonstop criticism?
Clinton: “‘Enjoy’ is probably the wrong word. Expect. Survive. Live through. It just sort of comes with the territory.”

The host then suggested if Clinton denied she would run for president, criticism of the Clinton family would come to a crashing halt. Clinton replied that many people would lose their jobs if the negative attention ended.

“I’ve been amazed at what a cottage industry it is,” she said.

Stewart brought up the media firestorm that followed after Clinton said her family was “dead broke” when it left the White House. Clinton said the statement was “an inartful use of words,” shifting the conversation to a point about opportunity and economic mobility.

“You know what was kind of awesome that says to me that you’re running for president? How easily you pivoted from that into income inequality in America,” Stewart said.

Brianna Gurciullo