Rudolph W. Giuliani, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton play golf at at Trump National Golf Club in 2008. | Getty Donald Trump was for the Clintons before he was against them

Hillary Clinton took a seat in the front pew at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida, one of 450 guests on the balmy Saturday night in January 2005 when Donald Trump tied the knot with Melania Knauss, his third (and current) wife. At the reception that followed, Bill Clinton joined his wife, the former first lady who was then serving Trump's home state of New York in the Senate.

Trump now says Clinton had "no choice" but to attend his wedding because he donated money to her campaign. And he's viciously attacking his potential rival for the White House as a liar and a criminal, while dredging up old stories about her husband's zipper problem. But his record of praising both Clintons is voluminous, and seems to go far beyond an attempt to further his business interests.


For instance, the Donald Trump of 2015 says that Bill Clinton has "demonstrated a penchant for sexism" and has a "terrible record of women abuse." Over the years, however, he repeatedly downplayed the importance of the former president's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In August 1998, the same month Clinton testified that he had had an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky, Trump pondered how issues with women might befall him as president.

"Can you imagine how controversial I'd be? You think about him with the women — how about me with the women? Can you imagine?" he wondered aloud in a CNBC interview. "I really like this guy, but you really have to say, 'Where does it stop?" Trump asked, remarking that Clinton "had such bad advice" in handling the scandal.

There was the September 1999 interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in which Trump remarked that Clinton would have gone down in history "as a great president" if not for the Lewinsky scandal, which admittedly had been handled "disgracefully."

Clinton, Trump averred, would have found a "more forgiving" public "if he'd had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication." "Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were on a different level. Now Clinton can't get into golf clubs in Westchester. A former president begging to get in a golf club. It's unthinkable," he remarked.

In a January 2000 appearance with then-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, Trump even attacked Linda Tripp, the Pentagon employee who taped her private conversations with Lewinsky in which they discussed her sexual encounters with Clinton, as "the personification of evil."

In an October 2008 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Trump tore into President George W. Bush for getting the U.S. into war "with lies," remarking that by comparison, his predecessor "got into with something that was totally unimportant." He added: "And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense."

Trump has been equally generous, if not altogether fawning, in his praise of Hillary Clinton.

In a CNN interview in 2007, he said that Clinton, then running for president for the first time, was a "terrific" person who "would do a good job" cutting a nuclear deal with Iran because she "always surrounded herself with very good people."

On Tuesday, BuzzFeed reported on an archived web page of a blog post on TrumpUniversity.com in March 2008 in which Trump wrote that Clinton would "make a great president or vice-president." “Hillary Clinton said she’d consider naming Barack Obama as her vice-president when she gets the nomination, but she’s nowhere near a shoo-in,” he wrote on March 13, at a time when Sen. Obama held a slim lead over Clinton in terms of estimated pledged delegates. "For his part, Obama said he’s just focused on winning the nomination, although at least one member of his team said Clinton would make a good vice-president. (I know Hillary and I think she’d make a great president or vice-president.)"

After declining to enter the presidential race in 2012, Trump told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that Clinton had done a great job as secretary of state.

"Hillary Clinton I think is a terrific woman," he said. "I am biased because I have known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. I really like her and her husband both a lot. I think she really works hard. And I think, again, she's given an agenda, it is not all of her, but I think she really works hard and I think she does a good job. I like her."

Asked whether he would support her in the case of a presidential run, Trump said that he did not "want to get into this because I will get myself into trouble."

"I just like her," Trump remarked, adding the same of the former president. "I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday and was very well received. He is — he is a really good guy, and she's a really good person and woman."

Trump sounded a similar note in an October 2013 interview with Larry King, who asked Trump if he thought the former secretary of state would run for the White House a second time, pointing out that she is a "fellow New Yorker."

“Yeah, and I know her very well. They’re members of my club, and I like both of them very much, and he was with you one time and he said he likes me," Trump said, adding, "and I do like him."

While mentioning that there was still "a long time to go" until the election, Trump commented that Clinton's health could be a concern with a potential bid, but that a subsequent run the nomination would be more of a leisurely stroll.

“You have a big health question. Will she be healthy? I hope she’s healthy now. I think she is. But you know that’s a long time. You have to wait till the ’14 [election] is over, and then you have to go out and really do it," Trump said. “You always have to think about health. I think that subject to that or some crazy thing happening — and lots of crazy things can happen —she has the nomination practically wrapped up, it would seem to me.”

As 2015 drew to a close, Trump appeared less concerned with Clinton's physical health and more with her campaign's strategy to, as he said, play "the women's card" against him. Asked to respond specifically to his tweet citing the former president's "abuse" of women, Trump offered to send a list to the office of NBC's "Today."

"Of course, we could name many of them. I can get you a list, and I’ll have it sent to your office in two seconds but there was certainly a lot of abuse of women," Trump told show co-host Savannah Guthrie on Tuesday morning. "You look at whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them, and that certainly will be fair game. Certainly if they play the woman’s card with respect to me, that will be fair game."

Asked to account for his change in tone, Trump explained that it was his "obligation" to get along with everyone when he was on the other side of political transactions.

"I got along with everybody. I got along with the Clintons, I got along with the Republicans, the Democrats, the liberals, the conservatives. That was my obligation. As a businessman, I had to get along with everybody, and I’ll get along and do that as president," he continued, remarking, "when I needed approvals, when I needed something from Washington, I always got what I wanted, and that’s because I was able to get along with everybody."