“Moments before Huma Abedin stood amid a phalanx of television cameras last week and announced to a national audience that she was standing by her embattled husband, Anthony D. Weiner, she made a quick phone call to a trusted colleague,” the New York Times reports.

Philippe Reines “said his primary interest was in supporting his close friend Ms. Abedin” but his “behind-the-scenes presence illustrates the overlapping roles played by Clinton advisers as they seek to help Ms. Abedin navigate the circuslike atmosphere surrounding the campaign, and at the same time protect the Clinton brand from any spillover damage.”

“It underscores the extent to which top aides in the extended Clinton family, whatever titles they take on inside and outside government, remain steadfast in their desire to protect the interests of their benefactors, Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

Daily Beast: “B.C., or before Clinton, politicians caught with a prostitute, sharing crotch shots with anonymous strangers or disappearing to hike the trail — would be drummed out of office, never to return. But that was before the 42nd president wrote the modern playbook on how to come back from a sex scandal.”

ABC News has the back story behind New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) appearance today at the Clinton Global Initiative:

“Intimates of both men say the real story behind today’s event is the private friendship that has developed between the ex-president and a governor who would like to be president. The two have met, traded war stories, talked on the phone, all inside the four years since Clinton campaigned hard on behalf of then-Gov. Jon Corzine, the incumbent Christie beat in 2009.”

“Right now I’m grateful to live in a city, in a state and a country where I strongly support my mayor, and my governor, and my president, and my senators, and my representative. If at some point that weren’t true and I thought I could make a meaningful and measurably greater impact, you know, I’d have to ask and answer that question.”

— Chelsea Clinton, quoted by NBC News, on whether she would run for political office.

Politico: “The obsessive speculation about Hillary Clinton’s plans for 2016 promises to be the longest and most intense parlor game in the history of American politics. It is a consuming fixation already, not just among the operatives and reporters who always inhale this stuff but to an extraordinary degree among average Americans.”

Meanwhile, Michael Tomasky warns that Republicans will do more damage to themselves than to Clinton by digging up “old non-scandals no one even remembers.”

Robert Shrum says Bill Clinton advises John Kerry in 2004 that he should consider supporting a ban on same-sex marriage, something the former president now denies. However, Shrum stands by his story and wrote about it in his book No Excuses.

“I don’t even see the point of the denial. Attempting to rewrite the history–tortured rationalizations for Clinton’s signing of the Defense of Marriage Act in the first place, a reflex defensiveness about advice in 2004 that was wrong in principle and even politically–seems a futile effort to redeem a tarnished part of a presidential legacy. I applaud Bill Clinton’s change of position–and that change highlights where we are now and where our country should and will go.”

Kim Ghattas, author of The Secretary, tells Politico the secret to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s incredible stamina was hot chili peppers “that make you sweat.”

Said Ghattas: “It wakes you up. It flushes your system, maybe from whatever viruses are there.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton are house hunting in the Hamptons, the New York Post reports.

“The former president, 66, and wanna-be future president, 65, are looking for an oceanfront property where they can unwind and prepare for their next phase of life.”

Gennifer Flowers, who rocked Bill Clinton’s run for the White House 20 years ago by revealing a sexual affair, tells WGNO-TV that the former President called her up in 2005 “and tried to set up a rendezvous following her divorce,” the New York Daily News reports.

Said Flowers: “I picked up the phone and it was him. And he wanted to come by my house and talk to me… I was taken aback. That was the last thing I expected.”

“I said, ‘No you can’t come over here.’ He said, ‘I’ll put on a hoodie and I’ll jog up there.’ … And I said, ‘No, I want you to leave me alone.’ And that was that.”

“No one has ever doubted the influence of the Clinton marriage, but in his new book, Bill and Hillary, the historian William H. Chafe ups the ante, arguing that the entire Clinton presidency was powered by the psychodynamics of the Clinton union,” according to a New York Times review.

“In his telling, Bill was a brilliant mess, Hillary gave him discipline and from this sinner-rescuer complex, the drama unfolded… The Clinton marriage, he argues, played a large part in Bill Clinton’s loss of the Arkansas governorship in 1980, his decision to run for the presidency in 1992, the first-term scandals and even the partisanship that hardened over Washington. That’s before the author even gets to Monica Lewinsky.”

Bill Clinton told Piers Morgan that he could be president again, just not in the United States.

Said Clinton: “There are only two countries I’m eligible to run for the leadership position is if I move to Ireland and buy a house, I can — I can run for president of Ireland, because of my Irish heritage.”

“And because I was born in Arkansas, which is part of the Louisiana Purchase, any person anywhere in the world that was born in a place that ever was part of the French empire, if you move to — if you live in France for six months and speak French, you can run for president.”

“However, I once polled very well in a French presidential race. And I said, you know, this is great, but that’s the best I’d ever do because once they heard my broken French with a Southern accent, I would drop into single digits within a week and I’d be toast.”

A new Gallup poll finds 66% of Americans have a favorable opinion of former President Bill Clinton, tying his record-high favorability rating recorded at the time of his inauguration in January 1993.

Clinton nearly returned to this level of popularity at two points in his second term, but has generally seen lower ratings, averaging 56% since 1993.

After porn stars Brooklyn Lee and Tasha Reign were shooed away from Bill Clinton by a Secret Service agent, the former president called them back over for a photo, ABC News reports.

However, the two were uncertain, but hopeful, that Clinton knew who they were.

Said Lee: “I kind of feel like he knows. We hope he likes us and we hope he likes to watch our movies.”

Reign concurred: “I have a feeling that everyone watches adult entertainment.”

“Bill Clinton just out-Clinton’d himself — posing with two famous porn stars in Monaco moments ago,” TMZ reports.

ABC News: “It’s unclear whether he was aware of the women’s occupation.”

Steve Kornacki: “The high-profile help that he’s lending Barack Obama — starring in a campaign video about Osama bin Laden’s killing, headlining a fund-raiser in Virginia last night, plotting campaign strategy with top Obama lieutenants — speaks to Bill Clinton’s unique status among former presidents: Not since Theodore Roosevelt a century ago has one managed to remain such a political force after leaving office.”

“Clinton is more popular than ever right now, notching a 67-29 percent favorable in one recent poll,
which helps explain why Obama is eager to enlist him in what should be a
tight general election campaign. There really is no modern precedent
for a former president being so actively engaged in a national election
so long after leaving the White House.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “definitively said she wants out of politics,” ABC News reports.

“During a town hall meeting with State Department employees this morning Clinton said she is ready to step off ‘the high wire of American politics.’ She said she’s paying no attention to the battle for the Republican presidential nomination and hasn’t watched any of the debates.”

Bill Clinton told Newsmax about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s future career plans.

Said Clinton: “I think she wants — and she has said publicly — to continue a lot of the work that she’s done, she did as a private citizen, as first lady, as senator and as secretary of state. Around the world, she’s done an enormous amount of good in, you now, the so-called soft power areas, empowering women and girls, helping them, giving them access to capital, helping them make a living, promoting better healthcare practices.”

He added: “I think she will have a major role to play in the nongovernmental world. That’s what she plans to do, and I think she’ll do it well.”

Bill Clinton told Morning Joe that presidents should be allowed to serve a third term — “though he quickly added that such a change shouldn’t be applied to him,” USA Today reports.

He added that a third term shouldn’t be consecutive — presidents should be required to take time off after serving eight years.

Said Clinton: “I believe that should be the rule. And I think as a practical matter, you couldn’t apply to anyone who has already served. But if going forward, I personally believe that should be the rule.”

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