Sinbad Downplays Hillary's Foreign Policy Experience

Amanda Carpenter | March 11, 2008 2:29 PM

Hillary Clinton plays up her travel as First Lady to boost her foreign policy credentials, but a comedian who accompanied her on one of those trips is calling her bluff.

Actor/jokester Sinbad told the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers, "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place" during his trip with Clinton and singer Sheryl Crow to Bosnia in 1996.

Hillary's version of the trip is a bit different. The Des Moines Register quoted her describing the trip on the campaign trail in Iowa last December a bit more dangerously.

"We used to say in the White House that if a place was too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the first lady," Clinton told voters in Dubuque, Iowa.

"We landed in one of those corkscrew landings and ran out because they said there might be sniper fire. I don't remember anyone offering me tea on the tarmac there," Clinton said of her 1996 trip with Sinbad, Crow and her daughter Chelsea.

Sinbad laughed at Clinton's revisionist history. "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you," he joked.

Sinbad is an Obama supporter.

This picture of a stop during the trip was sent out by the Obama campaign earlier this year of shows the Clintons, Crow and Sinbad singing together.

CORRECTION: It's been pointed out to me the photo I linked above does not have Sinbad in it. The man in the scarf is not Sinbad, it is former Secretary of the Army Togo West. Sinbad was still on the trip though.