Campaign season is such a cruel test of human will.
Watch: Stephen Colbert tries to get Hillary Clinton to admit Bill is a smug vegan
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
It’s essentially a contest for people to prove they are human by acting as robotic as possible, just to win votes. Those strange people will eat local delicacies (sometimes on sticks) and pretend to like it. They will struggle and take mass transit to show they can deal with the crush of humanity and the smells of a city.
And they will talk to journalists in interviews and try their best not to alienate anyone who might vote for them: women, LGBTQ people, minorities, baby boomers, millennials, single moms, single dads, families, and anyone eligible to vote. Even vegans. (Democrats and Republicans are working with different gauges here, of course.)
On Monday Night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Colbert interviewed Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton and gave her a chance to complain about her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and his newfound veganism.
Vegans are generally thought to be (perhaps unfairly) one of the most obnoxious tribes of humanity (save for gluten-free humans who don’t have an actual allergy to gluten) — so annoying that vegans themselves find veganism annoying. Just imagine trying to survive on a diet of substandard meat mimicry and not having fun at dinner parties.
Under any normal circumstances, it would be completely normal for a wife to air complaints about her vegan husband.
But this is campaign season.
And like any politician who wants to win this election, Clinton would not throw vegans under the bus. “He’s an open-minded vegan,” Clinton tells Colbert.
Colbert tries his best, even tossing out a stellar Bill Clinton impression. But Clinton won’t bite on this question, nor will she definitively answer questions about whether she’ll let her grandkids eat ice cream for breakfast or which food on the campaign trail she hated most.
Colbert even asks her what she and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump have in common — a perfectly great chance to say, “Nothing.”
“I’m just not sure yet,” she tells him. “I’m just not sure what I have in common with him.”
New York’s Democratic primary is today.
