Washington (CNN) - Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer was coy when teased about his intentions for 2016 on a Sunday talk show.
ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Schweitzer if his comments in Iowa last month criticizing Democrats who voted to go to war in Iraq was a “not so subtle shot across the bow for Hillary Clinton.”
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“Are you thinking of challenging her?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Schweitzer joked, “Well, I’m looking around, but gosh I like Iowa.”
Fellow panelist and CNN political contributor Ana Navarro quipped, “You’re from Montana; put your stake in the ground.”
“The ground is frozen in Montana, I can’t get a stake in it,” Schweitzer responded.
At a December event in Iowa, Schweitzer was critical of Senate Democrats who voted to go to war in Iraq in 2002, which was seen at the time as a swipe at Hillary Clinton.
“George Bush got a bunch of Democrats to go to that war. I was just shaking my head in Montana. And the reason I’m in Iowa, in part, is ‘cause I’m asking you to pick the leaders that are going to say ‘we’re not going to make those mistakes,” Schweitzer said in December.
Schweitzer, who worked in the Middle East during the 1980s, told Stephanopoulos, “Those people in Washington, D.C., most of them did not live in the Middle East. I lived in Libya. I lived in Saudi Arabia. I watched Iraq fight that war with Iran. I knew that we were supporting Iraq during that war.”