Republican Carly Fiorina fired a looping right hook at Hillary Clinton on Thursday, telling
Newsmax TV that America needs a squeaky-clean "fighter" in the White House, not a questionable politician mired in scandal.
And in a second verbal haymaker, Fiorina vowed that if she enters the 2016 presidential race, the former secretary of state will no longer be able to raise the "woman card" when ranting against Republicans.
"This battle with Hillary Clinton needs to be about track record, accomplishment, leadership, capability, character," Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
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"And Benghazi goes to the heart of her character because she peddled a fiction for four weeks about what really happened there.
"And it goes to the heart of her capability as well, because she did nothing to protect that embassy when she was asked to do so and she did nothing to respond to the terrorist attack that occurred."
She was referring to Clinton's original explanation that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, was triggered by an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube.
It was later revealed that the bloodbath, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, was a planned terror attack.
Earlier this week, Fiorina said she was 90 percent sure she was going to declare her candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Asked about that percentage by Steve Malzberg, Fiorina said: "Let me just say the number hasn't gone down."
"We need a fighter because this is a fight about what we believe in this nation, what values and principles and policies work better to lift people up," Fiorina said.
"It's a fight about the direction we take in the world as well as the direction we take in this nation.
"It is going to be a fight and so we do need a fighter, and I'm not afraid to fight and anyone who looks at my life knows that."
Fiorina also tore into Clinton's use of a personal email account and private server to conduct government business when she led the State Department, as well as her deleting of thousands of emails.
"You don't do everything in an official government job as sensitive as secretary of state on a private email account in a private server in the basement of your home unless you explicitly want to make sure that you can protect your communication," Fiorina said.
Clinton's actions before and after the Benghazi attack are now being probed by a House select committee.
And Fiorina fears "this is all going to fade unless we have a nominee on our side who will put it back in front of the American people over and over again."
Fiorina, who will reveal whether she'll run by early in May, said that if she declares her candidacy, it force Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, to stop using the "woman card" in any issues involving the GOP.
"My gender is different from everyone else running on the Republican side and it is the same as Hillary Clinton's gender. That will not allow her to play the war on women card or to play the gender card, and she won't be able to say 'I'll be the first woman president,'" Fiorina said.
"But beyond my gender, everything about me is different. My experience is different, my resume is different, my perspective is different, my approach to problem-solving is different than hers, and certainly my voice is different.
"There are a lot of people in this country, as I travel the country, who are tired of politics as usual because it doesn't seem to be working well anymore."
If Fiorina declares, she still faces a rigorous uphill battle against such powerhouse GOP names as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Bush and Paul are still weighing a 2016 run; Cruz declared his candidacy last week.
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