Time-Immemorial
Hilary says she joined the Marines
Hillary Clinton once claimed that she tried to join the Marines in 1975, shortly before marrying her draft-dodging boyfriend, future president Bill Clinton. Or did Hillary Diane Rodham attempt to join the Army, as Clinton suggested in 2008? Or did she indeed try to sign up for the Marine Corps as part of an experiment to see how receptive the military was to female volunteers, as her friends have suggested?
Questions over whether presidential candidates have fudged their youthful interests in the military came to the forefront on Friday when Politico reported that Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson fabricated a story about being offered a scholarship to West Point. Carson’s campaign disputed the story, and Politico came under heavy scrutiny. (RELATED: Team Carson: Politico Story ‘Is An Outright Lie’)
But Clinton has a military story of her own that once came under question but has since taken a back seat to numerous other Clintonworld scandals. In June 1994, the then-first lady spoke at a luncheon for female military veterans where she told a story about her attempt to sign up for the Marines in 1975.
“You’re too old, you can’t see and you’re a woman,” Clinton recalled a young military recruiter telling her. “Maybe the dogs would take you,” he added, referring to the Army.
“It was not a very encouraging conversation,” Clinton added. “I decided maybe I’ll look for another way to serve my country.”
Clinton, a feminist who was 27 years old at the time of the attempted sign-up, said that her rejection was “not an isolated incident” and that it was common for women to be rejected by military recruiters.
But many were skeptical of the claim at the time. And in more recent years — in April 2008, to be exact — Bill Clinton said that his wife had attempted to sign up for the Army, not the Marines.
“I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said ‘Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'” Clinton said at a campaign event, according to Jake Tapper, then a reporter with ABC News.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called Clinton’s claims into question at the time. She asserted that Clinton’s story “did not seem to fit in with the First Lady’s own persona” and that her claimed fervor for the military did not match her political work for anti-war Democrats or her then-boyfriend Bill’s recent dodging of the Vietnam War draft.
“Rodham was an up-and-coming legal star involved with an up-and-coming political star,” wrote Dowd, a longtime critic of the Clintons. “She had made a celebrated appearance in Life magazine as an anti-establishment commencement speaker at Wellesley College, where, as president of the student government, she had organized teach-ins on her opposition to the Vietnam War.”
Clinton had also recently moved to Arkansas in order to be with her future husband, she told friends. The couple was married on Oct. 11, 1975.
“So, if she was talking to a Marine recruiter in 1975 before the marriage, was she briefly considering joining the few, the proud and the brave of the corps as an alternative to life with Mr. Clinton, who was already being widely touted as a sure thing for Arkansas Attorney General?” Dowd asked.
Hillary Clinton once claimed that she tried to join the Marines in 1975, shortly before marrying her draft-dodging boyfriend, future president Bill Clinton. Or did Hillary Diane Rodham attempt to join the Army, as Clinton suggested in 2008? Or did she indeed try to sign up for the Marine Corps as part of an experiment to see how receptive the military was to female volunteers, as her friends have suggested?
Questions over whether presidential candidates have fudged their youthful interests in the military came to the forefront on Friday when Politico reported that Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson fabricated a story about being offered a scholarship to West Point. Carson’s campaign disputed the story, and Politico came under heavy scrutiny. (RELATED: Team Carson: Politico Story ‘Is An Outright Lie’)
But Clinton has a military story of her own that once came under question but has since taken a back seat to numerous other Clintonworld scandals. In June 1994, the then-first lady spoke at a luncheon for female military veterans where she told a story about her attempt to sign up for the Marines in 1975.
“You’re too old, you can’t see and you’re a woman,” Clinton recalled a young military recruiter telling her. “Maybe the dogs would take you,” he added, referring to the Army.
“It was not a very encouraging conversation,” Clinton added. “I decided maybe I’ll look for another way to serve my country.”
Clinton, a feminist who was 27 years old at the time of the attempted sign-up, said that her rejection was “not an isolated incident” and that it was common for women to be rejected by military recruiters.
But many were skeptical of the claim at the time. And in more recent years — in April 2008, to be exact — Bill Clinton said that his wife had attempted to sign up for the Army, not the Marines.
“I remember when we were young, right out of law school, she went down and tried to join the Army and they said ‘Your eyes are so bad, nobody will take you,'” Clinton said at a campaign event, according to Jake Tapper, then a reporter with ABC News.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called Clinton’s claims into question at the time. She asserted that Clinton’s story “did not seem to fit in with the First Lady’s own persona” and that her claimed fervor for the military did not match her political work for anti-war Democrats or her then-boyfriend Bill’s recent dodging of the Vietnam War draft.
“Rodham was an up-and-coming legal star involved with an up-and-coming political star,” wrote Dowd, a longtime critic of the Clintons. “She had made a celebrated appearance in Life magazine as an anti-establishment commencement speaker at Wellesley College, where, as president of the student government, she had organized teach-ins on her opposition to the Vietnam War.”
Clinton had also recently moved to Arkansas in order to be with her future husband, she told friends. The couple was married on Oct. 11, 1975.
“So, if she was talking to a Marine recruiter in 1975 before the marriage, was she briefly considering joining the few, the proud and the brave of the corps as an alternative to life with Mr. Clinton, who was already being widely touted as a sure thing for Arkansas Attorney General?” Dowd asked.