Sean Hannity to Carly Fiorina: ‘All is forgiven’

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina went on Sean Hannity’s Fox television show Friday night to make amends for her off-the-cuff comments that were caught on a hot mike earlier this week — coyly telling him that she was really just complimenting his skills as a journalist.

In video that flew around the Twitter-sphere and back, Fiorina was recorded chatting with an aide about the hairstyle of her opponent, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and about Meg Whitman’s media strategy — calling the gubernatorial candidate’s decision to do an interview with Hannity on the first day of the general election “bizarre” and “a bad choice.”

“You’re a tough interview, Sean — that’s your job,” Fiorina said Friday after he asked her to explain what she meant. “You know, I was feeling protective of my friend Meg. By the way, she doesn’t need my protection; she’s perfectly able to take care of herself.”

“This wasn’t an insult to you at all; in fact it was a compliment,” Fiorina said, piling on the praise.

For all that talk about his skills, Hannity went pretty easy on the former Hewlett Packard chief executive, telling her “all is forgiven.” But he said the unvarnished glimpse of Fiorina had made some of his viewers wonder whether she was another candidate who would run as conservative in the primary, then avoid associations with ‘known conservatives’ while racing back to the middle for the general election.

“One of the things I’ve said to the people of California — because I’m not a politician — is I am who I am,” Fiorina said. “I believe what I believe. And it’s important, I think, that voters know that for me it’s not about changing what I think, or changing what I say — it’s about sticking to the issues.”

And then she was back to her talking points.

-- Maeve Reston in Los Angeles

twitter.com/LATimesreston