NY1 Release on Rangel's Comments

Rep. Charles Rangel may be one of Hillary Clinton's most powerful supporters in her presidential campaign but in an interview tonight on “Inside City Hall,” the Manhattan Congressman is critical of Clinton's debate performance Thursday, saying an attack Clinton used against Obama was “a lead balloon” that “didn't get off the ground.”

In her Thursday night debate with Obama at the University of Texas at Austin, Clinton accused Obama of plagiarizing Mass. Gov. Deval. Patrick in his stump speech.

“Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in. It's change you can Xerox,'' Clinton said to some groans from the audience.

In an interview with NY1 political anchor Dominic Carter, Rangel said of Clinton's attack: “You don't raise it unless you have a winner, and that line that she had about Xerox actually was a lead balloon. It didn't get off the ground….. One of the professionals is the Governor of Massachusetts feeding him lines that are great. Someone fed her a line that didn't work, that's all.”