At an event in New Hampshire Monday, Bill Clinton said that he regretted his marriage to Hillary Clinton because of the muzzle it put on him.
"The hotter this election gets, the more I wish I were just a former president, and just for a few months, not the spouse of the next one," Clinton said. "Because, you know, I have to be careful what I say."
When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, Bill, nicknamed "the attack dog," got the campaign into trouble after he made aggressive remarks against then-competitor Barack Obama. Since then, the Clinton campaign has been sure to tamp down Bill’s tone.
"Tonight my job is to introduce Hillary. Sometimes when I'm on a stage like this, I wish we weren't married, then I could say what I really think," Clinton said.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe panel was taken aback by Bill’s remarks.
"What was that?" host Joe Scarborough said, as co-host Mika Brzezinski struggled to form a sentence.
"He said he wished sometimes he weren't the spouse of the candidate so he could let it rip and say what he … thinks," said co-anchor Willie Geist.
MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt said Clinton "has a lot more to say," and Geist agreed.
"He has a lot more to say than he's actually able to say," Geist said, and observed that the Clinton campaign has controlled Bill’s desire to go on the attack against Sanders.
"I think the Hillary campaign would tell you when he says, you know, 'I probably shouldn't say this, I'll get in trouble.' They go, 'uh oh!'" Geist said.
Bill Clinton escalated his rhetoric Sunday when he accused the Sanders campaign and its supporters of making "profane" and "sexist" attacks against Hillary. He also mocked Sanders’s peace-loving, revolutionary image.