It’s no surprise that Donald Trump used to be far more complimentary about Hillary and Bill Clinton in the past, but a newly unearthed 2008 interview shows just how much Trump not only praised them, but defended them.

NY1 aired part of the old 2008 interview on the air today after some digging by CNN’s KFILE that found Trump praising his Democratic opponent 8 years ago by saying, “I think she is going to go down at a minimum as a great senator. I think she is a great wife to a president.”

And he actually said this about the man whose past his campaign is going to town on now:

“You know you look at the country then. The economy was doing great. Look at what happened during the Clinton years. I mean, we had no war, the economy was doing great, everybody was happy. A lot of people hated him because they were jealous as hell. You know people get jealous and they hate you.”

He also said Hillary is “a little bit misunderstood” and got a bit too “unnecessarily roughed up” by the media during the ’08 primaries.

Watch above, via NY1.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac