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Edwards admits to affair he denied as candidate
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-09 18:55

Edwards dropped out midway through this year's primaries after it became apparent he could not keep up with front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. He recently endorsed Obama and had been mentioned as a possible running mate.

Speaking to reporters Friday in Honolulu, Obama praised Edwards as a "great champion of working people" during the campaign and said the couple probably would not attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month.

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"I think they need to work through that process of healing," Obama said.

Edwards was John Kerry's running mate in 2004 when Kerry lost to President Bush.

In his statement, Edwards said, "In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself."

In her statement Friday, Elizabeth Edwards said it wasn't easy to find out about the extramarital affair in 2006. She called the affair a "terrible mistake" but said the healing process was "oddly made somewhat easier" after her diagnosis of breast cancer in March 2007.

Mrs. Edwards said her family has been through a lot and pleaded for privacy.

The National Enquirer first reported on the affair in October 2007, in the run-up to the Democratic primaries, and Edwards denied it.

Last month, the Enquirer carried another story - the blaring headline referred to an Edwards "love child" - stating that its reporters had accosted Edwards in a Los Angeles hotel where he had met with Hunter after her child's birth. Edwards called it "tabloid trash."

In an interview which aired on ABC News' "Nightline" Friday night, Edwards described the affair as being "over for a long time." He declined to give specifics, saying his family was "entitled to every detail" but no one else.

Edwards acknowledged his wife was "mad, she was angry - furious would be a good way to describe it" when he told her about the affair but that he had asked her not to appear with him during Friday's interview even though she forgave him. That's because "she should not be involved in protecting me from whatever the consequences of this are," he said.