Former Attorney General Eric Holder says Americans would be able to count on him to “unify the country” if he became the 46th U.S. commander in chief.
The man who once told New York Times’ Alex Burns that he wanted to “make redistricting sexy again” sat down with the reporter again this week to talk about a wide range of issues — including a possible presidential run.
Mr. Holder said during an hourlong interview that he was still open to the idea of a 2020 presidential campaign that could pit him against President Trump.
“If you were going to do it, why would you do it? If you didn’t do it, why would you not do it?” Mr. Burns asked during a livestreamed event Wednesday.
“If I were gonna do it, I would do it because I think I would have concluded that maybe I could unify the country — help unify the country because it’s bigger than any one person,” Mr. Holder replied. “That I could advance — actually, that I could repair then advance the nation in a variety of contexts.”
Mr. Holder said that he is concerned, however, about subjecting his family to political attacks.
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“For me, it was part of the job,” he said. “I read about ’Holder’s corrupt, Holder’s whatever.’ It’s all politics. I just dismiss it. But I saw the impact that it had on my family. My wife had a Google alert. I said, ’sweetheart, you can’t do that or you’re just going to drag into, you know, everything.’ She took [it] to heart. It bothered her in a way that it didn’t necessarily bother me.”
Mr. Holder told Yahoo News in June that Mr. Trump’s election served as a wake-up call that he needed to “get back on the field and be in effective opposition.”
“Now is the time to be more visible,” Mr. Holder said. “Now is the time to be heard. … I thought, frankly, along with everybody else, that after the election, with Hillary Clinton as president, I could walk off the field. So when she didn’t win, I thought, ’We’ll have to see how this plays out.’ But it became clear relatively soon — and certainly sooner than I expected — that I had to get back on the field and be in effective opposition.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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