Portions of Cate Edwards' exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie aired this morning on the "Today" show. More from the interview will be featured tonight on "Rock Center with Brian Williams" at 10 on NBC.
Watch the "Today" segment below.
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Cate Edwards, the oldest daughter of John and Elizabeth Edwards, has given a "candid" interview to Savannah Guthrie of the "Today" show. The interview will air on Friday, March 29, on "Today" (7 a.m.) and on "Rock Center with Brian Williams" (10 p.m.). Both of those shows air locally on WNCN, NBC-17.
According to an NBC news release, Cate Edwards talks to Guthrie about losing her mother to breast cancer, about her father's affair with Rielle Hunter, and about the baby her father had with Hunter -- Cate's half-sister Quinn.
Below is an excerpt from the interview, as provided by NBC.
John Kerry might have won Ohio eight years ago if he had gotten a handful more votes per precinct. That would have made him president, and North Carolina's John Edwards vice president. If Kerry won re-election in 2008, which is entirely plausible, Edwards would have probably been the front-runner for this year's Democratic presidential nomination. as a two-term vice president.. (Assuming, as vice president, that he would have had capable enough subordinates to keep him on the straight and narrow, which is moderately plausible, and we would not have heard of a woman named Rielle.)
So tonight, John Edwards could be sitting in a fancy hotel suite somewhere, waiting for the returns to come in. He could be preparing to deliver his first speech as the president-elect, completing an amazing rise from a relatively obscure but successful Raleigh lawyer to the Oval Office.
That's what a few votes per precinct in Ohio would have done. Maybe Hillary Clinton would be Edwards' vice president-elect, or that charismatic Illinois senator, Barack Obama.
I was talking about this with a fellow editor, and we came up with this question for you, faithful reader: Which would you have preferred, George W. Bush re-elected in 2004 for a second term, or President-elect John Edwards tonight?
Such are the thoughts you have as you wait for the polls to close.
--Dan Barkin, senior editor
Onstage, Triangle expatriate Alina Simone has been known to break out the occasional Britney Spears cover. From there, one supposes, it's a short step to performing in the guise of Rielle Hunter -- notorious paramour of North Carolina's former senator/presidential candidate, John Edwards.
Improbably, Simone will don a blonde wig to do just that on Thursday at Brookyn's PowerHouse Arena, playing Hunter in "Edwards! The Musical." A satirical treatment of a pretty tragic series of events, "Edwards!" has been tapped as entertainment at the launch party for "The McSweeney's Book of Politics and Musicals." You can check out the script for "Edwards!" here.
Here are 12 gross things about tonight's Rielle Hunter interview about her relationship with John Edwards (apart from the fact that it happened). Hunter was interviewed for ABC's "20/20" by Chris Cuomo. Some of it's new, some of it's not. All of it is gross.
-The sex tape was made on a "poverty trip" to Uganda.
-The way Hunter would take swipes at Elizabeth Edwards and follow with "And I'm not saying that to bash Elizabeth" or "I'm not trying to be mean about Elizabeth."
-That Hunter excused all of Edwards' bad behavior by blaming his actions on Elizabeth.
-That Hunter called his campaign after Elizabeth's second diagnosis, "The Cancer Has Returned Campaign Tour."
Deadliest Catch (8pm, Discovery) - Polar ice challenges the fleet, and the Northwestern and Wizard try to escape St. Paul Harbor.
20/20: Rielle Hunter (9pm, ABC) - John Edwards' former mistress, Rielle Hunter, who had a child with the former presidential candidate, speaks candidly to Chris Cuomo about her relationship with Edwards and tells Cuomo what she would have said if she had been called as a witness in Edwards' recent campaign-finance trial. Hunter also talks about her new book, "What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me," which will be published June 26.
Whale Wars (9pm, Animal Planet) - An order to evacuate is given by the captain of the battered Brigitte Bardot with a Japanese security vessel in sight. Meanwhile, the Bob Barker's crew set out to disable a harpoon ship in Antarctica.
The Ricky Gervais Show (9pm, HBO) - Topics include the laws of society and what Karl would do if he were in a position of authority. Also, Stephen asks Karl how he would have reacted had he been on the bus with Rosa Parks in Alabama in 1955.
Common Law (10pm, USA) - The guys' work suffers when they feel pressured to reach an important milestone during the hunt for a pair of criminals emulating Bonnie and Clyde.
You will not see any video or live streaming of testimony from the John Edwards trial because it is in federal court, and federal courts don't allow cameras in for criminal cases. In some districts, video of civil cases can be recorded on video, but for the most part, no TV cameras are allowed in federal courts.
State courts have let cameras in for a number of years, without causing problems for the most part - Judge Ito in the O.J. case notwithstanding.
I think that cameras should be allowed in federal court. I also think the U.S. Supreme Court should allow oral arguments to be televised, although I think that it is more important to televise federal trials than the Supreme Court because a lot of what goes there is just 30 seconds of lawyers' making arguments interrupted by 3 minutes of justices' questions and posturing, and then 30 more seconds of arguments, and then 3 more minutes of justices shooting the breeze again. Them justices do like to hear the sound of their voices.
I think it is good for citizens to be able to watch real trials on TV, because they are typically unlike the fictional Perry Mason/Matlock/Law & Order versions that we have grown up watching. Real trials often involve hours of fairly mundane testimony and the introduction of exhibits from police and experts establishing the basic facts of the prosecution's case. It can get dull. Typically no dramatic confessions from the witness stand.
I would say, however, that Rielle Hunter's testimony would be pretty interesting to watch on TV.
In Ohio, one TV station dealt with the ban on cameras in federal courts by using puppets to recreate testimony. I am not making this up.
I have been thinking about what we are going to need to do for the Jan. 4th paper, when we will run the results of the Iowa caucuses. So I went back to look at the paper from Jan. 4, 2008, to look at what we did then. (This is a lot of how we get started in our thinking; looking at what we did last time. The trap, of couse, is that this isn't the best way to innovate. But anyway.)
I was reminded that four years ago, if Barack Obama wasn't in the race, John Edwards would have probably won the Democratic Iowa caucuses, and with that momentum, he might have gone on to win the nomination over Hilary Clinton. Obama got 38 percent in Iowa, Edwards 30 percent and Clinton 29 percent.
In the Rob Christensen/Jim Morrill story about Edwards' 2nd place finish, we quoted an ECU political science prof as saying "Edwards is in big trouble."
Little did we know.
On the Republican side four years ago, Mike Huckabee won Iowa with 34 percent, followed by Mitt Romney, with 25 percent. The eventual GOP nominee, John McCain, got 13 percent.
On our Jan. 4, 2008 front page, we ran mugs of the top vote-getters across the top of 1A. McCain's showing was so feeble that he didn't get a picture. He was listed as an also-ran with Fred Thompson, who also got 13 percent. You know, Fred Thompson of Law and Order fame.
This year, the focus will just be on the Republicans, and it is worth remembering that the Iowa caucuses can be predictive except when they're not. Jimmy Carter put them on the map and Ron Paul may take them off.
And at the end of next month, four years to the day after Edwards quit the presidential race, jury selection is scheduled to start in his trial in federal court in Greensboro.
No matter the negative things that have been said about Elizabeth Edwards, what can't be denied is that she's a beautifully articulate woman who has shown grace and class during a very ugly period of her life.
That continued during her interview this morning on NBC's "Today" show. Matt Lauer talked to Edwards about the afterward she's added to the newly released paperback edition of her book "Resilience." It focuses on the demise of her 32-year marriage.
Lauer, I think did a solid interview, starting first by asking about her health. Edwards said she was on a new chemo regime and was in a peak, healthwise, rather than a valley.
The "Today Show" has snagged the first interview with Elizabeth Edwards since her separation from husband John earlier this year. Who's surprised it didn't go to ABC? Not me!
The interview with Matt Lauer will air Wednesday morning and she'll appear on CNN's "Larry King Live" later that same night.
John and Elizabeth's oldest daughter Cate wrote an essay for People magazine about her mother ....
