STROTHER: This is one of the -- this is a story that really conflicted me. Toward the end of my relationship with Clinton, Clinton was playing Hamlet. He couldn`t decide if he wanted to run for president or run for governor. And he knew if he ran for governor, he had to say that he wasn`t going to run for president. I mean, there was almost no question about that. So he was conflicted himself.
And we had a heated argument one night -- not argument, but a big discussion, about five of us in the room. It started about 10:00 o`clock at night and went to about 2:00 o`clock in the morning. And Clinton has a ferocious temper and finally was insulting to me. I felt insulted, anyway. Plus, I was tired. And I`m not good after about 11:00 o`clock at night anyway. I get up very early to write.
So I said, Governor, I`m too old to be spoken to like this. And I`m going to go to my hotel, and in the morning, we`ll meet again when we can civilly talk, and I`ll come back. And I got up and walked out, went to bed. I went to my hotel and went to bed.
And about, I don`t know, an hour later, the phone rings and it`s Dick Morris. He`s weeping -- Oh, my God. I said, What`s wrong, Dick? He said, Clinton beat me up. I said, Well, he beat me up, too, I said, but I got up and left. He said, I tried to do the same thing you did, but he beat me up. I said, What do you mean, Dick? He said, He knocked me to the floor and knocked me into a table, broke a lamp and was sitting on me, hitting me. And Hillary had to pull him off.
And he said, What should I do? I said, It`s simple, Dick. Get out of Little Rock immediately. He said, He owes me money. I said, Dick, I said, he owes me money, too, but I wouldn`t go back to the mansion. He`ll pay you the money. Clinton`s a very honorable man about money and all that. That`s -- there was never a question Clinton was going to pay his debt. He said, I don`t know. He said, I can`t do that.
So anyway, I knew at that point that Clinton was not going to sit and have a civil conversation with me the next morning, so I got up very early, went out and caught an airplane back to Washington. And Dick Morris went back to the mansion. He and Clinton sort of made up. But then when Clinton ran for president, he didn`t hire Dick Morris. In fact, he got rid of all of us. Everybody who had been around him before was removed. I don`t know if he did it or the first lady did it. I`m not sure, you know, who did it. But we were all removed.
And Morris needed Clinton. We all need a big name. Clinton becomes president without Morris, but Morris wants back in the White House. And I don`t blame him. You know, that`s the -- that`s the key to everything. You know, you get in the White House, and you become a superstar -- James Carville super, Lee Atwater superstar, Karl Rove superstar. So he wanted back in, but he had this problem that the press had written about him getting beaten up by Clinton.
Well, what he -- what he did was, he wrote a book about Clinton and blamed it on me, said that I`d leaked it to the press. Well, I hadn`t leaked it to the press. The press had called me about it to have me confirm it, and I wouldn`t confirm it.
In fact, I remember Tom Edsall (ph) called me one time, and he said, Will you confirm that you were with Dick Morris and that Dick Morris got beaten up? I said, No, I can`t confirm that. He said, You weren`t there? I said, No, I absolutely was not there. He said, But Dick Morris told you about. I said, I can`t confirm that. I said, If you write that I confirmed it, I will say you`re a liar, Tom. And he`s a friend of mine, you know. We play cards and everything together. And he didn`t -- he didn`t report my name in any way associated with Bill Clinton beating up Dick Morris.