Hillary Clinton Says She Doesn't Want To Run Again, But 'I'd Like To Be President'

Hillary Clinton 2020? Comments from the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate on Friday have rekindled speculation that she will make another run. 

When asked during an interview with Recode's Kara Swisher if she wants to run again, Clinton quickly answered, "No." 

But she then conceded, "Well, I'd like to be president." 

Clinton said that "there's going to be so much work to be done" by the Democrat who hopefully" beats Trump in 2020 because "we have confused everybody in the world, including ourselves." 

"We have confused our friends and our enemies," she said. "They have no idea what the United States stands for or what we're likely to do." 

Clinton said the work awaiting a hypothetical Democratic president in 2021 "would be work I feel very well prepared for having been in the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department. And it's just going to be a lot of heavy lifting." 

"So, are you going to be doing any of that lifting," Swisher asked. 

"I’m not even going to even think about it until we get through this Nov. 6 election, about what’s going to happen after that, but I’m going to everything in my power to make sure we have a Democrat in the White House come January of 2021," she said. 

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill disputed reports that characterized Clinton's comments as leaving the door open to a 2020 run. He said Clinton's comment about waiting until after the midterm election was about deciding who to support, not whether or not to run. 

In September 2017, Clinton – a presidential candidate in 2008 and the 2016 Democratic nominee – said during a CBS interview that she was "done with being a candidate."

"But I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country's future is at stake," she said.

Clinton, who is about to begin a speaking tour with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, has made a number of headlines recently. 

She was one of the people targeted in last week's pipe bomb mailing.

Prior to that, she sparked controversy by saying her husband's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was not an abuse of power because Lewinsky "was an adult." And she outraged conservatives by saying that Democrats cannot be civil toward Republicans until they regain a majority in Congress.