Pod Save America - Hillary Clinton

Episode Date: September 12, 2017

What Happened.

We are here with Secretary Hillary Clinton at her home in Chappaqua to talk about her book, What Happened. Thank you so much for being on Pod Save America. I am thrilled to be on Pod Save America and really happy that you all are here today. Lovett has been asking for this for so long. I mean, it's not like begging. I'm just glad it worked out. But I am so delighted that you're still asking. And now, I don't know what we'll do after we actually complete this podcast.

We may have to think of something. We have other shows. Yeah, we may have something else. We have a lot coming down the pike. Do you really? Yes. Yes. Okay.

I need to hear all about that, John. I do want to let our podcast listeners know that her guard is down. Hillary Clinton's guard is down. And I'm holding the Rottweiler with both hands. Perfect. So you write in the book about the challenges you faced running as a woman. One silver lining of 2016 is that a record number of women have now decided to run for office. What advice would you give them about how to grapple with the kind of sexism that you grappled with during the campaign?

I'm so glad you started with that, John, because I wrote this book to explain what I think happened, but also to raise issues that I think we have to deal with so that they won't have the same impact on the next election and the one after that. And I write a whole chapter called On Being a Woman in Politics because I was really quite taken aback at the attitude and the behavior of my general election opponent because he made no bones about it, literally. He was so sexist, and not just about me, but about his Republican woman opponent, his women and reporters on TV and elsewhere. So it was really a part of the atmosphere. And I want not just women, but men as well, to know this is endemic. Sexism and misogyny are still endemic. We've made progress, but we can't allow ourselves to go backward. And as I point out in the book, it never was just about me. I happen to have the big bullseye on my head, but it was about women. And in the months since,

on my head, but it was about women. And in the months since, we've seen reports out of Silicon Valley and other businesses, as well as politics, where distinguished women like Elizabeth Warren, or Kamala Harris, or Kirsten Gillibrand, or, you know, others in the media are being treated to a level of overt sexism that I thought we had at least diminished and maybe put a lid on, but it seems to have popped back up. So I'm hoping that everybody will read in my book that chapter because I want everyone to think about it and be serious about it. And then I think we have to stand up and speak out, men and women alike. So when Kamala Harris is basically told to stop talking or Elizabeth Warren is told to stand down, we need to say, hey, wait a minute. That is overtly sexist, and we're not going to put up with it.

And her colleagues and everybody else should say the same thing. So the excerpts of the book that have leaked out so far have set off another round of Bernie versus Hillary recriminations, everyone's favorite pastime. Now, I know that elsewhere in the book, you give Bernie a lot of credit. You say that the debate is overblown, that you actually agree on most issues. But it seems like there's still an important debate about what comes next for the party that we should talk about.

So from the spring, Washington Post poll found that 67% of voters think Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of the average person. That includes 44% of Democrats. To turn this around, do you think the Democratic Party needs to fundamentally change as an institution with regards to policy? Or do you think it's about sharpening our message, better technology in the party, and stuff like that? I've given this a lot of thought, as you might guess, because it is deeply distressing to me that we are painted like that. And I can only speak, again, from my own experience, which I try to relate in the book, I had such a different experience in 08, you know, as you all know, because you were part of the Obama campaign.

Once it was over, it was over. And I quickly endorsed President Obama. I worked really hard to get him elected. I was still arguing with my supporters at the Denver Convention, telling people, don't be ridiculous. You've got to vote for Senator Obama at the time. And I was thrilled when he got elected. I didn't get anything like that respect from Sanders and his supporters. And it hurt, you know, to have basically captured the nomination, ending up with more than 4 million votes than he had. But he dragged it out. And he was so reluctant. But why would we be surprised? He's not a Democrat. And that's not a slam on him. That is just a repetition of what he says about himself.

So what I'm focused on are people who are proud to be Democrats, people who want to defend the legacy of Democrats, of our last president and presidents before, who have done so much to help so many Americans economically, in terms of civil rights, human rights. And I think we are facing a couple of very difficult obstacles. First, the other side has dedicated propaganda channels. That's what I call Fox News. It has outlets like Breitbart and crazy info wars and things like that. In this particular election, it was aided and abetted by the Russians and the role that Facebook and other platforms played. We are late to that. We did not understand and how a reality TV campaign would so dominate the media environment. And I confess, I was trying to do everything I could to build on the success of President Obama's campaign.

I had a lot of people you guys know involved in the campaign. We were really proud of it, but boy, it was tough to break through. So I think the Democrats can do a lot, but they are still going to face a very difficult media environment. And we've got to figure out how we're going to break through. I mean, obviously, more podcasts, more other ways of communicating so voices can be heard and real positions can be understood is part of it, but we're still at a disadvantage. understood is part of it, but we're still at a disadvantage. Well, so what do you think of recently Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren have signed on to Bernie's single-payer health care plan? Do you think that's a good idea? Do you think that we need some of these bolder policies? Oh, look, I've been for universal health care for many decades, and there's a difference between single-payer and universal health care. Under President Obama, we got the Affordable Care Act, so we got to 90% coverage. And one of the differences we had in the primary campaign was my very strong defense of the

Affordable Care Act and my strong defense of what President Obama had achieved and my recognition that we had come so far that I was certainly not going to support ripping it up and trying to start all over again. But in terms of a political statement to say, we've got to get to universal health care, and maybe we should consider some kind of single payer besides Medicare, which is single payer, and Medicaid, which is largely single payer, we need to be looking hard at this. But I think that the more likely outcome, after we try to raise the attention of the electorate on what we could achieve, is the continuing struggle to expand health care. I said we need a public option. I was very clear about that. So I don't have any

criticism whatsoever in staking a big claim on where we need to end up. But I also say, look, let's be realistic about how we're going to get to where we need to be. So there was an internal debate within your campaign towards the end about whether to attack Trump as divisive and offensive, or whether to emphasize your economic message in order to win back some of these working class voters, and your husband reportedly advocated for that. It seems like Democrats are going to face this issue again and again. And we're going to face it with Trump, we may face it with others. What should they do? Obviously, you have to do both, but a campaign is about choosing resources, ads, messages. How do you face that? Well, we were trying to do both. We never stopped on the economic agenda.

Well, we were trying to do both. We never stopped on the economic agenda. And there's been lots of analysis since the election. I talked more about jobs than anybody else. We put forth a really detailed set of ideas about what would work. We did not get the kind of coverage that we needed. I went back and looked. I say this in the book, you know, in the 2008 general election campaign, there were 200 minutes devoted to policy. By 2012, it was down to about 114 minutes. By 2016, it was 32 minutes. And so all of the work and effort that I did in this campaign and that I saw others do, because when you run for president, you should tell people what you're going to do. That seems like a pretty straightforward idea. Just not competitive with the reality TV show going on on the other side.

And we tried so many different ways to break through that. And we did, of course, advertise what we saw as the threats that Trump posed to the country. Because frankly, we thought, and I still believe, he's a clear and present danger to America. And I would have been less than responsible if I didn't talk about that. But we tried to do both. We tried to make the case for both. And I'd be the first to tell you, it was difficult to break through. I want to turn to realism, which is something you talked about now and you talked about in the book. I feel like the book is a nuanced look at how these issues play out and basically what caused this loss as well as the realization that you should not be in the same room with James Comey

anytime soon, just for his sake, mostly. He's pretty tall, though. I think you'd take him. Honestly, I think you'd have the passion. But I want to talk about realism, because John brought up single payer. You said this, you said in the book, Bernie in the race meant you had less space and credibility to run a feisty progressive campaign that won in 2008 in Pennsylvania, in Ohio. And I didn't fully understand that, because I don't understand why Bernie's presence

prevents you from running that kind of a campaign. Well, what I mean by that is because we certainly were trying to run that kind of a campaign is that his claims, which he could not defend, really not even explain when pressed, filled up a lot of space. You know, when I was running against President Obama in 2008, we had differences, but they were, you know, this is my bias, they were honest differences that we presented and we defended. And, you know, whether it was an individual mandate or not in healthcare, each of us was ready to say, here's why or here's why not. that was not possible in this primary campaign. And, you know, I point out that every time we made a claim on what we were going to do, he would just say, okay, I'm going to do

more of it. And so the argument was never adequately joined. And I spent a lot of time, you know, basically defending President Obama in a Democratic primary. I couldn't believe it. Every speech started with, I don't think President Obama gets the credit he deserves for saving the economy, saving the auto industry, getting us on the road to universal health care. And I was running against somebody who publicly advocated President Obama being primaried, right? So it was difficult to have what I consider to be a fair-minded debate about, okay, we have had a successful two-term president, where do we go from here, with somebody who wasn't a Democrat, who criticized both President Obama and me, and it was much more challenging to have a kind of straightforward argument about, okay,

healthcare, what are we gonna do about healthcare? Because he would say, oh, we're gonna do, you know, single payer. And I say, well, how are you going to do it? And then, well, he wouldn't know. But the claim and the, you know, laying down of the gauntlet on that made it harder. But one of the points you make in the sort of lessons from all of this is that he has a point about the importance of universal programs, that arguing for a big universal college or health care or what have you makes a lot of sense to people. First of all, it's clear and easy for people to understand. And also it avoids the kind of stigma that you have on things that are more directed, right? The problem that happened with the expansion of Medicaid, for example, under Obamacare. So it seems like in a lot of ways, yes, in the moment in a campaign, some of these big promises are more about vision. But in practice,

you do see the merits of having done that, right? Because it seems like that's one of your recommendations for the party moving forward. Well, it's what I do recommend that we try to figure out. But if you're going to do it, you got to be able to answer all the questions that are going to be raised. And what was odd to me about this election, many things were odd about it, but one of the things that was odd about it is we came forward with very specific proposals about moving toward universality, right? And I believe that to this day about how we can get from where we are. But I always believed, it turned out wrongly, John, that there would be a moment of reckoning because I'd always seen it in a general election. I always saw that at some point,

whether it was in a tough interview or in a debate, somebody would say, okay, you've advocated for this. How are you going to pay for it? How are you actually going to structure it? That's what I was waiting for. It never came this time. It never came. So yes, maybe I was a little more inclined in the primary, since I won by 4 million votes, to say, okay, look, we're going to get there, but we're going Trump rhetoric was going to be, you know, finally punctured, and that I would be on a debate stage, and somebody said, well, you know, you talk about this wall. What are you talking about? Where is the money going to come from? It never happened. He was never held accountable. So a lot of my preparation for those moments, because I did think that in many ways, the election would come down to the debates, they often do. It didn't happen. So one of the other arguments you make for this kind of a policy shop, and I know these policy people, I work with them. Yes, Jake Sullivan is one of the

smartest human beings you can meet in your life. You talked about how these things had footnotes, and they were ready to they were sort of ready to hit the ground running. And you said one of the problems is, it wasn't just about the merits of these policies, but it's about the optics of it. But at the same time, you recognize the need for a more expansive vision for Democrats. I mean, one argument against this on the merits is in a campaign, you set a big goal. It may be unachievable, but you can compromise when you're governing. I mean, you make the comparison, say, to welfare in the 90s and how President Clinton in the 90s held off on signing on several versions of a bill until he felt as though it reached enough compromise. And that's a pragmatism of governing. But isn't there a distinction between the pragmatism of governing and the vision and sort of Overton window you open

during the campaign? I think that's a very fair assessment. But remember, I was following a two-term Democratic president. And I was really aware of how important it was to embrace that legacy and defend it, because on the merits, I thought it was really important. And I believed that if I had said, okay, we're going to have universal health care, single payer, first question would have been, well, why didn't President Obama do that? Well, because it was really hard. And what he got done was amazing. You know? Yeah. See, that's tough. Whereas Sanders, who's not even a Democrat, who criticized the president all the time,

he could say whatever he wanted to say. I was not only running on my own. I was running to build on the progress of the prior eight years. I was unapologetic about that. But I also knew the headwinds against somebody trying to run to succeed a two-term president of their own party were pretty intense. I mean, Americans get bored, they get tired, they want a change, they think somebody else can do something better, even though they liked Bill Clinton and they liked Barack Obama, but they wanted a change. So I was trying to be as honest as I could about,

yes, we're going to build on the Affordable Care Act. We're going to finish the last 10% of people who are not insured. We're going to be able to do it because here are the fixes that will make it work. And yeah, it put me in a bit of a straight jacket, but it was what I thought was called for, given the fact that I wasn't going to be spouting stuff that then would be immediately contradicted because, well, why wasn't it done before? Immigration is another example, right? I mean, DACA was a great accomplishment. I'm for immigration reform. Sanders voted against it in 2007. And so I'm trying to say, we're going to protect what we have, but we're going to try to go further. Now, that is not as

exciting as saying, you know, throw them all out or whatever the alternative is. It was constant calibration. And, you know, it was a tough line to walk. So one of the other debates, one of the other arguments you had during the campaign was over money and politics. And it's one of the things that Bernie levels against the Democratic Party writ large. And I think it's important for moving forward. You know, you say correctly, Bernie couldn't in that debate point to a single instance in which you changed your mind because of donations. But you also said that you wanted to end the stranglehold that the wealthy have on our government. And in the book, you talk about the danger of courting donors. Where is that danger? I mean, you don't have to

change your mind for this money to have some kind of an influence. I mean, what do you think the danger of courting donors is? Well, I'm for public financing, and I put forth a very comprehensive set of changes. I voted for, you know, McCain-Feingold. I mean, I think the Supreme Court has so perverted our electoral system, and Citizens United is a gateway to corruption, and I think we've seen that over and over again. So I don't have any problem with people donating to your campaign. And neither does Bernie Sanders, by the way, because, you know, he takes money from people as well. What I wanted to do was to say, look, we need a whole different system. And so I said I was going for a constitutional amendment from day one on

Citizens United, because there's no way to get to where I think we have to be unless we change the Constitution. But until then, we live with this system. And one of the consequences of this system is raising huge sums of money, and going to amongst the financial industry and other industries and raising money going to the Hamptons and raising money. And for people who aren't proud to be Democrats, who maybe could be Democrats, it looks terrible. And what they see is access and influence. And it's hard to argue that they're wrong. I mean, isn't there a price we pay for a system in which Democrats were supposed to advocate for working people, spend a great deal of their time with rich people who have a fundamentally vested interest in the status quo?

You know what's so interesting? I don't see it that way. I understand the argument. But anybody who donates to a Democratic candidate who is on the record, as I have been for decades, about what I wanted to do on everything from raising taxes on them to closing loopholes and speaking out when I was a senator from New York, they in effect are putting aside their own financial interests to a certain extent because they are donating to somebody, whether it was me or President Obama, who in 08 got more money from Wall Street than any Democrat had ever gotten and yet imposed the toughest regulations that had been imposed since the Great Depression. We're not going in on bait and switch. I mean, I say to donors the same way I say on a public stage, we need to tax the wealthy. And here's what I will do. I've been saying we need to close the carried interest loophole. And here's what I intend to do. So if they're still going to give me money, they must have some other concerns about maybe

the future of our country and our position in the world. So I think it's an argument which superficially sounds like, oh, yeah, OK. But on further examination, I don't think really holds up. We could solve all this if we get to public financing. And that's what I am still in favor of. So first of all, don't we pay too high a price for the optics of that? And then also, isn't there some effect on the access that this group of people has a larger access to Democratic politicians?

I can only talk for myself. I mean, you know, you were in my Senate office, we saw every kind of person under the sun, and we saw them on a regular basis filling up the day with people who wanted to see me on everything. And you know, the vast majority of them had never given money to politics, certainly not in any large amount. So optics is a problem. I'm the first to admit that because I had some optics problems, which I admit in this book. But here's what we're up against. And it's a devil's dilemma. We're up against a very strong Republican Party with allies who are taking advantage of every open door the Supreme Court has given them. When you have people like the Koch brothers, now on record saying they're going to spend $400 million in 2018.

The Mercers. They are funding media. They are funding super PACs. And they are doing stuff that we have no idea because there's no disclosure on what they do. So I'm in the camp which says, be transparent. Here's where I stand. Here's what I will do.

If you guys still want to give me money when I say I'm going to go after that loophole, you just know I'm going after that loophole. Because otherwise, the money advantage is so demonstrably on the other side. And aided by the media advantage. I mean, the new threat that's coming from Sinclair Broadcasting, 72% plus of the homes in America being given a steady diet of right-wing Republican politics. Fox doesn't even pretend anymore. They don't even cover stuff that is not going to promote the Trump agenda. So you've got billions and billions of dollars coming at you from the other direction. And literally, you're trying to keep your head above water. And it's not easy. And we raised

a lot of money, most of it from people giving me less than $100. But did I go to fundraisers? Yes, I did. And did I say the same thing as I always say? Yes, I did. And would I if I'd been, you know, able to, you know, withstand the perfect storm that hit me at the end, be in office trying to do that, fighting the Republicans every single day and trying to rein in the disproportionate influence they have because of Citizens United, because of media monopolization. all of that on. And I fear it's only going to get worse. And the money that is going to be coming from the right and the money we know that the Russians put in, which I think is just the very tip of that huge Russian iceberg, we are really at a disadvantage. So optics, maybe. Reality, something entirely different as I analyze it. Inside the Russian iceberg are smaller Russian icebergs. Yes. And an even smaller one. I'm done now. You mentioned this huge structural advantage of the right-wing press.

Right. There were also challenges in the mainstream media. Donald Trump's podium, empty podium, received coverage. Policy wasn't coverage. But it's not the first election where stupid things became the focus, right? We had Obama's flag pin. We had his birth certificate, for example. How do we adapt? What should candidates do with this onslaught of right-wing news outlets, but also this sort of inexorable path towards frivolity in the coverage of our politics and covering like a game. Tommy, thanks for asking that, because I'll tell you, I worry about this

all the time. And I'm hardly the person to ask. You guys are much more probably adept at understanding what we need to do. What we're doing right now is at least one way. We've got other outlets. We've got other ways of communicating with people. We have to make sure that the playing field is level. I mean, what we're finding out about Facebook, the largest site for news in the world, means we got to figure out how that won't work to our disadvantage. I think, look, in this election, there's always ups and downs. I mean, I know that very well. But this was kind of unique because it was, I was running what I hope to be an effective presidential campaign based on all the lessons

that, you know, we learned from President Obama, both in 08 and 2012. We knew there were headwinds. I mean, you know, in October of 2012, President Obama was in political trouble, right? Because of everything that was going on, which wasn't fair. It wasn't, you know, reflective of him as our president. So these are going to be close because of the hyper-partisanship that we've got in the country right now. You know, at the end of the day, I think Comey cost me the election, but I think also people with an R by their name said, OK, I want my tax cut. I want my Supreme Court

justice. So there was a calculation as well as an emotional reaction. So what are we going to do about it? Well, I don't understand why people who share our views aren't more willing to invest in media that can be competitive. Because what you've got is a right-wing advocacy propaganda, Because what you've got is a right-wing advocacy propaganda, and you've got a kind of mainstream media that engages in false equivalency. And it's tough if you are a Democrat trying to navigate through that to get the coverage that is really going to reflect the reality that you're facing out there on the campaign. And anything we can do to point that out. And I have sympathy for the press. In this past election, you're right. I mean, how many hours of empty podiums are you going to be looking at? Or for the first time, a presidential candidate calling in and being put on the air. I mean, things that had never happened before. It's an absurd advantage to do that. It's an absurd advantage. And I do think, It's an absurd advantage to do that.

It's an absurd advantage. And I do think, look, I think that part of what was going on is the entertainment value. And I really, you know, I've tried to have some, you know, conversations about this with some people in the media. I think they're doing some soul searching now. But at the time, they all thought I was going to win. They thought it was a free shot. They thought that, you know, just covering his latest outrage, you know, was good for ratings. You know, people were tuning in. Oh my gosh, like, what's he going to do next? So they've got to understand they carry this really solemn responsibility and we'll do our best and we need to do better to deal

with message and everything else. But if you can't break through, or if the show on the other side is so razzle dazzle, you know, say anything, do anything, and, you know, somebody is trying to be responsible on, you know, our side, that is a tough, tough campaign. Right. Another complicating factor, to say the least, was the Russian interference. You write about Putin's grudge against you and the fact that he blamed you for protests in Russia back in 2011. How much of the interference do you think was motivated by a personal grudge against you? Or is this the new playbook for Russia when it comes to cyber attacks in our elections, and we need to get ready. It is much more the new playbook. But I think part of the motivation for Putin was I was the candidate. You know, I was representing the United States. I mean, I wasn't standing up in Lithuania and saying, oh, I, Hillary Clinton, think that, you know, what's going on in the parliamentary elections in Russia is really troubling. You sound just like her.

Yeah. So, I mean, I was saying the United States thinks it's really troubling. You sound just like her. Yeah. So I mean, I was saying the United States thinks it's really troubling. That was our policy. And I was a very avid proponent of that policy. But this is much more about the playbook he has adopted now to destabilize Western democracies, to disrupt the Atlantic alliance. And he has been using what are called in the tradecraft active measures for years to destabilize, undermine, disgrace political leaders in countries that particularly in Europe or on his border or a little further beyond. So this is what he thinks. And there's know, there's a very telling piece that I reference in the book by a Russian general saying, look, we used to have conventional weapons and

nuclear weapons, but now we're going to have the world's best cyber weapons. And just recently, you know, Putin told a group of Russian school students, the future will belong to those who master artificial intelligence. So look, in the 19th century and before, we fought wars on land and sea. Then in the 20th, we added air. And now I have no doubt that the principal zone of conflict is cyber between large developed countries like, you know, the United States, Russia and others. What I want people to recognize is he got away with it this time, because it was hard to imagine. You know, when we knew that he, that Russians had hacked into the DNC, and then through their cutout to WikiLeaks, you know, was dumping this stuff.

We tried to tell people and they were kind of like, oh, yeah, maybe. Okay, what difference does it make? And they didn't really understand either the criminal or political significance. You fast forward and you've got in August of 2016, early August, late July, you've got Trump saying, oh, go hacker emails, which is an amazing thing for somebody running to be president of the United States to say. And then you've got Roger Stone saying, oh, it's going to be time for Podesta next. We knew there was stuff going on, but even we didn't understand the extent of it. And we saw it in real time. One of the kind of surprises to me in the analysis we went through

after the election was how effective the Russians through WikiLeaks were in weaponizing information against me and how they were getting really good political advice about placement, both geographic and platform from somebody. And we'll leave it at that. Yeah. But we didn't really see that. That was not clear to us at the time in the campaign. And in retrospect, we saw how, if you analyze Google searches, they were spiking in places that had been sort of swing, had ended up voting for President Obama, but were subject to being persuaded by the other side. WikiLeaks searches were off the charts. People were trying to understand and they were trying to make sense of some of the stuff they were hearing on their Facebook, you know, feeds or a friend telling them, which happened all the time. And, you know, I was talking to Susan Page, the, you know, the reporter

from USA Today, and she said she'd go to these Trump rallies and people would say the most amazing things to her. And she'd say, where did you hear that? Oh, I saw that on Facebook. That's where people got their news and the Russians aided and abetted in some ways by people in the Trump campaign or associated with them were very adept at targeting. Right. So Putin has been accused of killing journalists, imprisoning his opponents, killing his opponents. In the book, you say Trump doesn't just like Putin. He seems to want to be like Putin, put down dissenters, repress minorities. He dreams of Moscow on the Potomac. Should we take that literally? I mean, do we think that he is really someone who might crack down on

free speech the way Putin has or take further draconian steps? Yes. And I'm really happy to say that to the three of you because you have influence and you have reach. Look, I wrote this book to try to come to grips with what happened, but also to sound the alarm about what I think could still and may well happen. I think Trump, left to his own devices, unchecked, would become even more authoritarian than he has tried to be.

unchecked would become even more authoritarian than he has tried to be. Also remember the right wing aided and funded by Mercers, Koch brothers, et cetera, is very serious about calling a constitutional convention. They need 34 states. Last I checked, they were like at 28, 29. Part of their gerrymandering is to control state legislatures, elect Republican governors, and to call a constitutional convention. And if you really get deep into what they are advocating, limits on the First Amendment, no limits on the Second Amendment, limits on criminal justice. I mean, there is a very insidious right-wing agenda. I mean, there've elected people we could agree or disagree with, but even in the pit of the Great Depression, when Roosevelt went too far unpacking the court, you know, his hands were slapped, he was pulled back. But what you see Trump doing is appointing, nominating people for the court who are totally in sync with this right-wing agenda. U.S. attorneys absolutely ready to carry out his bidding. It's a very clear agenda that is hard for Americans to really

kind of wrap our heads around because we've never had to deal with anything like this before. But I am trying to, in this book and in interviews like this, to say, hey, guys, this is serious stuff. We got to pay attention to it. Because the one thing we can do to rein it in, besides fulminating online or speaking or writing books, is to do everything possible to take back the House in 2018 and hold the line in the Senate, there is no more important mission. And we are terrible at turning out in midterm elections. I mean, I saw it when Bill was president. I saw it when Barack was president. I mean, you get these young, dynamic Democrats. They do all this stuff, and then they get hammered the next time because our people go, oh, thank you very much, and don't

show up again. So in 2018, if we don't show up, and I won 24 congressional districts with a Republican Congress member, so we can start from there, and we can try to figure out, let's field the best candidates. That's why I've got this new group called Onward Together, because I want to support these grassroots groups. I want to fund them. I want to fund candidates. I'm going to do everything I can with the most

intense focus on 2018 that I possibly can bring to bear. So wrapping up, but you know, this is a striking book, and you make an argument, you really sort of try to understand as best you can, what happened, and you discover a lot of complex causes, places where you take responsibility, also places where not to make excuses, but you look for the causes outside of yourself. And fair enough. A portal opens. It's right before your announcement speech. You have a minute with Hillary to tell her something. What do you got?

Great question, John. I would say, okay, you're running a traditional but really well-constructed presidential campaign. You've got great people working for you, but you're walking into an unknown situation and you need to get a broader 360-degree understanding of what this campaign is going to look like. Because we've got to be ready for whatever they throw at us. And what they're going to throw is not what anybody else has ever had to confront. And I don't think you or your campaign have really given that much thought, because why should you? It's never happened before.

So I'm telling you, Hillary, you better get around a table and blue sky this and brainstorm this and red team this. And who knows? I was just reminded. I was reminded by somebody just today that I was doing an NPR interview about my last book, Hard Choices. And I was in the NPR studio here in New York. This was back in 2014, I think. And all the electricity went down for a period of time, unbelievably, in a radio studio. The engineer who was there running it, he said, my gosh, what is that, the Republicans? I said, well, it could be the Russians.

That was three plus years ago. I always believed the Russians were more of a threat under Putin. But I never imagined that they would be so brazen as to interfere in our election. And I should have just made a long list and gotten smart people, called you guys, say, okay, give me the weirdest things you think could happen. And let's be prepared for it. Would it be, go figure out some different policies, go figure out some different messages? No, I think it would be, go figure out how you're going to be able to run a campaign in an environment where you've got propaganda and you've got the media as confused as you are. And they're giving huge amounts of time to a guy who is really antithetical to everything I think is right about American politics. I mean, look, if I'd lost to a Republican, a normal Republican, of course, I'd be disappointed and I'd be really upset with myself. But this is beyond anything I had imagined. And so I think, John, in a way,

it was a lack of imagination about what could happen. And once we saw it happening, I mean, I watched the faces of the 16 Republicans he, you know, beat. They were as confused as I was. Because, you know, some of them were supported by the Mercers or the Koch brothers, and they had their own network and all. And all of a sudden- Well, Ben Carson didn't know he was running for president. He didn't. Well, he's a special case. So that was, he was just like, what am I doing? What is this convention? Juggling off stages.

Yeah, right. What is this convention? And what is HUD? But watching that, I think we should have understood that the media loved it. Because it was like his Apprentice show or some other reality TV shows. The more outrageous you are, the better the ratings are. And we did not compete at all in that arena. And so I should have thrown some more insults or advocated some more crazy stuff. Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for sitting

down with us. Thank you. I love seeing you all. And I'm so proud of everything I hear about how well you're doing. It's really exciting. It's great. We've got to get you to a live show. We're going to work on that next. He just keeps asking. Always be pitching. Oh, yeah. Why not? I know, but I've been a journalist for about six months, and it's very easy, and this is

what you do. Well, I'm glad to hear that, John. I want to know all the inside stories. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you. So we are still squatting.

We are still. Secretary Clinton's basement. Her guard is still down, but it's elsewhere. She's gone. We're looking for a route out to the woods. We have again our gorp. We have our trail mix. Our terror.

What do we think, guys? I think that she was very honest about the parts of that election that still frustrate her. The thing that most surprised me in the interview was her response to my question of her description as Trump being like Putin. Because I thought she might say, you know, don't take that too literally. Or she might have said it was a concern, but she just said yes. Yeah, I mean, she means it when she says he is a clear and present danger to our country and that is a pretty strong call to arms for winning back the house it was interesting i kept trying to get to all right there's all these outside challenges that she faced sexism russia propaganda which she talked

a lot about it's like we have to solve all these in the long term. In the short term, there's an election in 2018, 2020. Those things aren't going to be solved. What do Democrats do differently to get through those things? And I think she honestly just doesn't know. Look, we have been talking about this. It is unknowable to an extent. We are all posing these questions to ourselves over and over again.

And she doesn't have special access to the answer. She has special access to what it was like to go through this thing. And I think the book is worth reading for that alone, even though it's much more raw and open than it had any business being. But we're all trying to figure that out. Yeah. And she clearly does not believe it was a policy. No.

It was a policy issue. Well, and I think policy was a focus in the primary. Policy was absent from the general election that was 100 true the fact that that was interesting that her sort of whatever the responsibility gene on policy making during the primary built on the assumption that she'd be called to account in the general and the fact that that never happened was interesting yeah just another subtle way that the rules were completely rewritten in this election everyone usually tacks back to the middle and donald trump tacked as far right as he possibly It was interesting. Yeah. Just another subtle way that the rules were completely rewritten in this election.

Everyone usually tacks back to the middle and Donald Trump tacked as far as he possibly could get. We have talked about this on this podcast many times before, but all of us, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the three of us, many of our friends, we probably underestimated the level of anger in this country about people who didn't think that the economy was working for them and didn't think washington was working for them and they were really pissed and i think and this sort of cultural we all did that the cultural reaction to an obama presidency and the role that that played and the anger and vitriol connected to race as well i mean we've all talked about that a million

times but yeah i think you know it was interesting that I think she's struggling to understand what she'd do differently too. Yeah, that's right. Well, that was a very interesting interview. It was, and I'm glad she sat down with us.

I can only assume the ratings have been through the roof. And that's also great. Okay. Well, we are going to stay in this, in this basement in Chappaqua until we're forcibly removed. My wheelie bag. It's nice down here.

I could, I could make this work. This is good. It's nicer than my house. Very sporty in this room. I have my wheelie bag. It's nice down here. I could make this work. This is good. It's nicer than my house. It's very sporty in this room. Some golf themes. Nice books on the shelves. See Seabiscuit over there.

Bill Simmons' basketball book is here. We're going to tell Simmons. There's a lot of baseballs and boxing gloves. Excellent. Some golf memorabilia. We are now going to describe the basement for the next 10, 20 minutes. There's a photo of Secretariat.

The music is going. We are in the outro. Very loose outro. All the reporters listening to this who are going to tell us we didn't do a great job. Did you make it this far? I don't care. That was a great conversation.

We'll see you guys again. Bye.