Pawlenty says 'I'm running for president'... but does he really mean it?

When asked on CNN if he might one day accept Donald Trump's hypothetical offer to run for vice president, Tim Pawlenty laughed and said "I'm running for president." His aides scrambled to exp

(Image credit: Screen shot, CNN)

last updated 8 January 2015

The video: On Tuesday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, former Minnesota governor and presumed GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty said, "I'm running for president." (View video below.) Though CNN was quick to promote the sound-bite, the network neglected to mention that it came in response to Morgan asking Pawlenty if he'd consider being Donald Trump's running mate. A Pawlenty spokesperson told The Huffington Post that they were "very unhappy with how CNN framed the former governor's comments," and his campaign stressed that Pawlenty will make an official announcement about a presidential bid "in the coming weeks." Did CNN mishandle the moment?

The reaction: There's "not a lot of room for interpretation" here, says Glynnis MacNicol at Business Insider. It appears CNN ran the clip unedited, and this is simply an "embarassing" move for Pawlenty out of the "Jon Kyl school of 'despite my entirely serious tone, [what] I said actually wasn't intended to be taken as a fact-based statement' politicking." Yeah, it's an "unfortunate" "verbal miscue" for Pawlenty, says Holly Bailey at Yahoo!. His supposed mistreatment "was a case of him actually telling the truth," and if anything, it "focuses a spotlight on the sillier aspects of the behind-the-scenes plotting of a presidential bid." Watch the video: