Carly Fiorina keeps a (mostly) straight face on ‘The Tonight Show’ with Jimmy Fallon
Carly Fiorina talks Trump, religion and her dogs with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” (Photo: Doug Gorenstein/NBC)
Carly Fiorina was all business on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” Monday.
Still riding the wave of her highly praised performance at last week’s GOP debate, the former Hewlett Packard CEO was welcomed to 30 Rockefeller Center with a kudos from the generally genial Fallon.
“It was interesting to see you win that debate when you weren’t part of the first debate really,” the host said during the interview, which aired on NBC at 11:30 ET Monday night.
Fiorina went from one of the bottom six Republican presidential contenders at the first debate in August to the top 10 after the rules for qualification were amended in response to complaints from her camp.
“I earned my way onto the big stage,” Fiorina said. “When I started this race, nobody knew who I was.”
According to a CNN/ORC poll released Monday, support for Fiorina among Republican voters surged from 3 percent earlier this month to 15 percent in the days following the debate, putting her in second place among the GOP field behind Donald Trump, who dropped 8 points, from 32 to 24 percent.
“When people get to know me they tend to support me, and that’s what you see in the polls,” she said.
For those watching at home who still might not be sure, Fallon asked, what would Fiorina like them to know?
“It’s only in this country that you can go from being a secretary to the chief executive of the largest company in the world, to running for president,” Fiorina said. “I want to make sure that every American, regardless of what they look like, how they start or their circumstances, has the opportunity to find their God-given gifts. That isn’t true in America today.”
Fallon stuck to his stereotypically soft line of questioning, steering clear of the controversy that has sprung up in the wake of the debate surrounding Fiorina’s graphic description of a scene from the secretly recorded — and heavily edited — Planned Parenthood video that, according to several news outlets and fact checkers, doesn’t actually exist.
Instead, Fallon gave the presidential hopeful a chance to defend her heavily criticized record at Hewlett Packard and take a few jabs at GOP adversary Trump.
The host also prompted Fiorina to talk about religion, asking for a response to fellow Republican candidate Ben Carson’s recent statement that a Muslim shouldn’t be able to be president of the U.S., and for her thoughts on the pope who, Fallon joked, would be staying at his apartment during his upcoming visit to New York City.
“I think that’s wrong,” Fiorina said in response to Carson’s comments. “It says in our Constitution that religion cannot be a test for office.”
“I believe that anyone of any faith make better leaders,” she added, noting that “my faith has sustained me” through difficult times like her battle with breast cancer and the death of her stepdaughter.
“So you would be fine with [a Muslim president]?” Fallon asked.
“Yes, I would be fine with that,” she replied.
As for Pope Francis, Fiorina said, “One of the things I appreciate very much about the pope is he reminds us of the richness of spiritual life. He reminds us that spirituality is a source of strength. I don’t agree him on all of his politics for sure, but I admire that he’s trying to break down the bureaucracy of the church and go back to serving the poor.”
The pope’s trip to the Big Apple is slated to overlap with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has expressed interest in meeting while he’s in town for the 2015 United Nations Summit.
“The two of them have a lot in common,” said Fiorina, who often touts a previous meeting with Putin as evidence of her foreign policy experience. “He was kind of busting out of his shirt; he’s a barrel chested guy and proud of it.”
“I would describe him as a formidable adversary,” she said of Putin. “He can be quite funny and charming, but he’s a KGB guy and we should never forget it. He’s very bad actor.”
“By the way,” she added, “I wouldn’t talk to him at all. I think Donald Trump was wrong, we’ve talked way too much to Vladimir Putin.”
Late-night television has long been a popular forum for presidential candidates to showcase their sense of humor and appeal to potential new voters. Fallon alone has already interviewed Republican candidates Chris Christie, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, and last week Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton made her late-night debut on his show.
Though Fiorina stayed straight-faced for most of the appearance, she did oblige Fallon’s request to do “something silly” toward the end of their interview, serenading the crowd with an original song she wrote for her dog, Snickers, to the tune of “Rock Around the Clock.”
