PORTAGE, Ind. – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said this afternoon that recent comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were “offensive,” “outrageous,” “off base,” and “far out,” and tweaked Senator Barack Obama for making clear his own condemnation of his former pastor’s words on Tuesday – “finally,” she said.

In an interview to air tonight on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” Mrs. Clinton at first resists host Bill O’Reilly’s bait to criticize Mr. Wright – but then engages fairly gleefully after Mr. O’Reilly asks what she thinks “as an American citizen” when “you hear a fellow American citizen say that stuff about America?”

“Well I take offense at it – I think it’s offensive and outrageous,” she said. “But it is part of an, you know, just an atmosphere we’re in today where all kinds of things are being said, and people have to decide what they believe. And I sure don’t believe the United States government was behind AIDS.”

Mr. O’Reilly said he was disturbed to “see people jumping up and applauding when he says that, among other things, we’re the moral equivalent of Al Qaeda.” Mrs. Clinton replied with the following:

“Well Bill, that is part of the mosaic and diversity of America. People are free to express their opinions, and the rest of us are free to agree or disagree. And obviously on opinions like that – ”

“It’s hateful!” Mr. O’Reilly interrupted.

“Well, you know, I happen to think that it is just totally off base. It is just so far out it is hard to even understand and take seriously. But what people are talking to me about is not that, I’ve gotta tell you. What I hear in all of these communities that I am in Indiana and North Carolina is what’s happening in their lives,” she said.

Mr. O’Reilly added a moment later that he felt “sorry for Barack Obama on this one,” asserting that “his whole campaign has been derailed by some loony guy.” Then he asked if Mrs. Clinton felt sorry for Mr. Obama.

“Well, I think he made his views clear, finally, that he disagreed. And I think that’s what he had to do,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton has never been on Mr. O’Reilly’s show, and is not frequent guest on Fox. Yet both she and Mr. Obama are competing aggressively in Indiana and North Carolina for support from conservative Democrats, independents, male voters, blue-collar workers, and residents of traditionally Republican enclaves – demographic groups that watch Fox in good numbers. The two states hold their primaries on Tuesday.

After taping the interview, Mrs. Clinton came to a union hall here for a rally, and shared a little of the interview with hundreds of cheering supporters. When she said she had done the interview with Mr. O’Reilly, people applauded and a woman in the crowd shouted “Go Hillary!” – prompting Mrs. Clinton to add, “Hey, I’m running for the toughest job in the world.”

She also shared this exchange from the interview:

“He said, ‘hey, you’re going to raise my taxes.’ And I said, ‘I sure am’” – noting that her tax plan would raise taxes on people who earn more than $200,000 a year, but lower taxes for many of the middle-income workers who were in the union hall at the moment. The crowd applauded boisterously then, too.