A lot of times, when people said to me, 'You're being pilloried,' you could hear between the lines. You could hear, 'I do this, too,' or 'I have this problem, too.' But what difference does that make? I have to talk to voters in their own vocabulary about it. That's hard.
I will say this. I have no desire to walk into a bar and pick up a woman. I love my wife.
And maybe if the Internet didn't exist? Like, if I was running in 1955? I'd probably get elected mayor.
......
Maybe I don't have the greatest connection with the emotional sh** going on, but when it comes to looking at a problem in the city and how to fix it, that's where I'm at my best. That's where I'm good.
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I've heard that [self-sabotage accusation]. Thought about it quite a bit. No doubt the obstacles in my way were obstacles I created. But I don't think so. I just didn't think of it all as a capital offense. And I rationalized it. I thought, 'This person's my friend. Why would they turn on me?' But it isn't about harm I've done to the world—it's about harm I've done to my wife. So rationalizing it is asinine.
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I feel bad saying this but I was really fried that night [when I gave the finger to reporters]. It was such a taut moment, and the campaign was coming to an end, and I had tried not to lose my composure in what might be the last political speech of my life. My family was there. Huma's been kind of traumatized by this whole thing. So I was just completely frayed at the edges. But I knew immediately it was a mistake.
Here's another thing about it, I had just given the press seven minutes of content, where I said what I wanted to say. I'm not gonna answer if they want to talk about some broad who's standing on the street. It's weird: When you're in this, everyone is trying to be the viral moment. I was trying not to be.
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One thing I'm grateful for is that now I'm under no obligation to answer anything like this [about my wife Huma Abedin]. But we've had a very rough time. It causes me a great deal of pain in the way she gets reported and the way she gets discussed. Her treatment in the press has been rough. It pains me because I deserve it. She doesn't.
I duck it as best I can, but her reputation has become the Woman Who Married an Idiot and Stuck with Him. More of it rolls off my back, because that's the way I am constitutionally. She's more sensitive. I'm just an empty, soulless vessel, so it doesn't hurt me as much.
She'd stay with me if I broke twenty points! And actually if I made the runoff, she'd recommit the vows, in a Hawaii vacation. If I won she'd have a second child with me! I don't know what people think.
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You ask about the higher meaning of s**ting, but it was remarkably meaningless. It was almost like a video game you played. One that didn't have much connection to reality.
But this weird synapse in my mind fired in a different direction, and I realized, 'Wait a minute. It's not very significant to me. But it's significant to Huma. It doesn't really matter what I think about it. It kinda matters, the impact it's having on her.' And that switch going off made the game no longer interesting. It wasn't like playing Madden! It wasn't like playing an online role-playing game.
To reduce what I did ad absurdum, I was sitting at a computer terminal going like this. [Weiner mimes typing on a keyboard]
Clicky clicky clicky—send! Clicky clicky send. The intellectual part of my brain was saying, 'Why is this so bad?'
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If I could go back [would I run again]? If you tell me I'm gonna get 5 percent, you tell me how I'd answer that question. The process I went through to decide to run was the right one; the way I talked about s**ting was…not right.
But if you could go back and do those things differently, would it get you to a different place? I don't know. So I'm not making myself crazy over it.