Bill on Hillary: ‘I trust her with my life’

Former President Bill Clinton credits a large part of his political success to his marriage to Hillary Clinton.

“I trust her with my life and have on more than one occasion,” he told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” in excerpts of their interview released on Friday.

“Whenever I had trouble, she was a rock in our family,” he added during the pair’s talk in Denver.

Clinton said his wife, the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner, helped him navigate his formative years in politics when he was “plagued by self-doubt.”

{mosads}He said that he was consumed by insecurity upon losing the Arkansas governor’s office in 1980.

“I was the youngest former governor in American history in 1980 on election night,” he said of his loss to former Gov. Frank White (R).

“I got killed in the Reagan landslide,” he added. “People I had appointed to office would walk across the street, they were so afraid of the new regime in Arkansas, and would not shake hands with me. My career prospects were not particularly bright.”

“And she never blinked,” he added of Hillary Clinton. “She just said, ‘Hey, it’ll turn around. I believe in you. You’ve got this.’ ”

The former first couple has been married for nearly 40 years and had one daughter, Chelsea.

“We built a life together based on the things that we cared about, the things that we loved,” the former president said. “We were blessed with a daughter who turned out very well, I would say. We have been very blessed.”

The Clintons faced scrutiny over their relationship during President Clinton’s second term upon revelations that he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old White House intern.

Hillary Clinton has described the scandal and its related fallout as one of her biggest challenges thus far.

“The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York,” she wrote in Living History, her first memoir, published in 2003.

The former secretary of State has since struggled with how to best employ her popular husband on the campaign trail, trying to utilize his appeal with voters without distracting from her message.

The Clintons have taken heat over their paid speeches, as well as the funding for their foundation. Critics allege that the Clinton Foundation accepted contributions from foreign donors in exchange for political favors from Hillary Clinton.