SCARY DUDE:

Donahue: Clinton Encounter Left Me Rattled (Newsmax, Jan. 7, 2003)

MSNBC TV talker Phil Donahue bristled Tuesday at charges that he went soft on a 1999 rape allegation against Bill Clinton, explaining that an interview with the ex-president seven years earlier had left him so rattled he worried about his family.

"You know, you're talking to a guy who's got the finger from Bill Clinton for raising Gennifer Flowers on my television show. I did not give Clinton a pass," Donahue told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity, who pressed him on Sexgate allegations by Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick.

"And I was booed by my own audience," Donahue insisted. "And I continued to question him about Gennifer Flowers - an issue at the time that he was denying."

But the one-time king of daytime TV talk complained that Clinton tried to intimidate him during the 1992 broadcast, telling Hannity, "He looked at me and he gave me that pointed finger. You remember when he said, 'I did not have sex ...' He looked at me and he said, 'You're the reason for the cynicism in this country, Phil.'"

Donahue said he was worried about the impact the Clinton altercation might have on his family.

"My mother was watching from her apartment in Cleveland," he explained. "I've got a family and two dogs. I mean, that's a tough drill to take.

"So, don't say that I am just blindly surrendering," he told Hannity.

So is Donahue saying he was worried about what Clinton would do to his family, and his dogs? They did, after all, whack Kathleen Willey's cat. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 7, 2003 11:37 PM