Posted on April 3, 2014

Bill Clinton: "I Loved Being Called The First Black President"

JIMMY KIMMEL: Do you miss being the first African-American president? I feel like that was -- I feel like you were cheated out of that, that was taken from you.



BILL CLINTON: Yeah, well -- let me say this. I consider it -- I was incredibly fortunate that I was born in a little town in Arkansas and raised by my grandparents largely and my great-uncle and -aunt when my widowed mother went off to become a nurse. And my grandparents were poor white Southerners, who as a class were among the most racially prejudiced people in the South, and they weren't. My granddad ran a country store and the vast majority of his customers were African-American.



So, I was raised in a different way -- at home in the church, at home and the culture. And it was such a gift to me that I grew up free of that and I deserve no credit for it whatsoever, it was the way I was raised. And so, I love being called the first black president, but Barack Obama really is, he deserves it. And it's been thrilling for me for doing what I could since Hillary lost the primary, we've done everything we could to support him and I was delighted we had over 7 million people sign up for the health exchange.