The New Yorker Radio Hour - Hillary Clinton on How Donald Trump Lost the Iran War

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

The former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat down with David Remnick at the 92nd Street Y, in New York, on Monday evening, after the Trump Administration announced a memorandum of understanding to end its war in Iran. Remnick asked whether the United States lost this war. “Yes,” Clinton replied. “The United States has come out weaker. Iran has come out stronger.” According to Clinton, Israel repeatedly tried to pressure the Obama Administration into backing a similar action in Iran, but she didn’t take the bait. “They would say things like ‘Our planes are on the tarmac,’ ” Clinton recalled. “And I’d say, ‘Well, good luck. Great. Why are you doing this?’ ” They also discuss Joe Biden’s decision to run for a second term, and its fateful consequences. “He made a terrible mistake,” she said. Had Biden stayed with his plan of serving for one term, “I believe whoever emerged . . . would have beaten Donald Trump.”   Further reading and listening:  “Hillary Clinton on the Psychology of Autocrats,” an episode of The Political Scene  “Hillary Clinton Explains What Happened,” an episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour “The Broadway Life of Hillary Clinton,” by Michael Schulman “Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Rodham’ Offers the Catharsis of Uncomplicated Regret,” by Nora Caplan-Bricker   New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I last sat down with Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2017. Clinton was still working through everything that had gone so badly wrong the year before, how she'd lost the election and how Donald Trump had come to occupy the White House. Trump had campaigned with a chant of lock her up, a threat that electrified so many of his supporters. Clinton for them was not merely a political opponent, but somehow the embodiment of evil.

Now, it's been almost a decade, and Donald Trump has, for the most part, moved on to yet other enemies. But Clinton remains very much a power broker in the Democratic Party and a leader of its centrist wing. She's also a voice of authority on U.S. foreign policy. With the Clinton Foundation, she's advocated for bringing down the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide and getting phones out of classrooms. I sat down with Hillary Clinton again this past week to talk about the war in Iran, Joe Biden's doomed campaign for the presidency, and how America might perhaps begin to move beyond Trumpism. We met on stage at the 92nd Street Y, New York City. Secretary Clinton, in your book, Something Lost, Something Gained.

You write about your state of mind after the election of Donald Trump. You describe yourself as someone who remains an optimist that worries a lot. Now, we all worry, but I want to grasp the extent of your agony. And I want to begin with a big question. Does Donald Trump and Trumpism represent a real and sustained era of authoritarianism in this country? I really believe that he does represent the threat of authoritarianism. and the people who enable him, who support him, who follow him, have clearly decided that his kind of performance politics, his deliberate cruelty is exactly what they want to see for the country.

Now, the good news is his favorability is in, you know, the mid-30s, but he is doubling down. He's doubling down on his impulsiveness, and it's very worrisome to me. You know, I teach at Columbia University now, of course, with the dean there. It's called Inside the Situation Room. And we talk about the traits of leaders, their behavior, their psychology. And there is a view that is rooted in how people make decisions, all of us, not just leaders about what happens when someone finds themselves in what's called the domain of loss. It's a psychological concept.

And almost counterintuitively, when people feel they are losing, they very frequently take greater risks. They double down on their behavior. And that's what I'm now worried about, because he's lashing out, he's demanding that we accept his version of reality, which is unhinged from the actual world that we live in and the actual consequences of his actions. So I think we have to be extremely vigilant and just, you know, ready to push back every chance we get. How is your understanding of his support evolved? You were criticized a lot, probably rightly, for using the word deplorables for many of his followers.

but how do you view the evolution of his followers and what it is that they want most of all from him? Well, first of all, I said only about half were... So, to be fair... Well, are you doubling down on deplorable? I was... I gave a speech, for example, about something called the alt-right,

which, you know, the press had no idea what I was talking about. Certainly the public had no idea what I was talking about. But, you know, I was beginning to see... this really disturbing rhetoric, racist rhetoric, sexist rhetoric, you know, the kind of authoritarian demagogic claims about our politics. And it worried me. So, you know, I tried to kind of put that into the political debate, but I also did try to, you know, draw a line between those who were following him because of that. It wasn't a bug. It was the feature. And people didn't take it seriously. People were like, oh, that's just Donald.

He's just spouting off. Don't worry about it. I saw something darker, but, you know, I was in not the strongest position since I was running against him to make that case. So I was trying to say, look, I understand there are people who believe that kind of stuff, but most of the people, at least half, who are, you know, following him, they want change. They are not satisfied with where we are in the country. It was something that, you know, I was aware of, and I respected. because people were feeling that, you know, it's hard to succeed a two-term president of your own party.

I knew that going into it. And, you know, people liked and respected President Obama, but, you know, they wanted something that might be a little different. A little different. But they didn't know how different at the time. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I think it's fair to say that so far J.D. Vance has not covered himself in glory. And Marco Rubio probably doesn't appeal to the base.

with quite the same, you know, stick-toitiveness of Trump himself. And I wonder if you think it's possible, and I think maybe this has run through your head, that the Trump family has dynastic ambitions, whether it's Donald Jr. or someone in the family who might pretend to succeed him. Well, David, you and I think alike. I think, number one, if he could figure out a way to stay, he would. My husband likes to say, if he tries to stay, I'm running again. But if that's unlikely, which we have to hope it is,

I don't get the feeling he's all warm and fuzzy about J.D. Vance. I don't think he is warm and fuzzy about nearly anybody other than himself, and who is closest enough to him, and that is possibly a son or a daughter. A son or a daughter. And the daughter is thought to be cleverer than the son. Well, I'm not going to characterize them. It's the blood relationship that matters. So, look, I mean, we're speculating like, you know, we know something, which we don't.

I'm not hanging out Mar-a-Lago and sort of picking up the, you know, brick-crumbs of gossip. But I think that... I think you'd like it. Yeah, but given his psychology, given, you know, Trump's psychology, he definitely, if he can't do it himself, he wants somebody he can control. And preferably somebody related to him. And that would be, I think, his hope. You've watched Trump over a long period of time. You've debated him three times.

You've observed him very carefully, obviously. Is he disintegrating? I think he is certainly not what he was, you know, falls asleep and lots of public meetings. I mean, poor Joe Biden. I mean, shut his eyes, you know, once or twice. but Donald Trump is like falling asleep all the time these days. But part of that is he stays up all night posting on true social. So he's, you know, he's not getting enough sleep anyway, which is pretty disturbing because

I don't think people who are sleep deprived make good decisions on top of everything else. But I really think he has a number of traits that have gotten, you know, more, obvious. He doesn't even try to hide them. You know, his impulsivity, his immaturity, his lack of curiosity about anything going on around him that

when, you know, when, you know, he launched the war against Iran and then, you know, out of the White House, you hear that nobody told me about the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, nobody told me they could close the Strait of Hormuz. Where is the Strait of Hormuz? You know, you You can't make it up. It's like, it's like, you know, some movie that you walk out of because it's so

outlandish, right? Dr. Strange Love. Yeah, exactly. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The day we spoke, the administration announced an agreement or a memorandum of understanding to end the war with Iran. We'll pick up right there in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking. speaking with Hillary Rodham Clinton. While serving in the Senate, Clinton ran for the presidency in 2008. And shortly after Barack Obama won that historic election, he appointed Clinton's Secretary of State.

She was quoted around that time saying, we have a lot of damage to repair. And she was referring to alliances frayed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton oversaw the State Department through the Arab Spring in the beginning of negotiations with Iran, which eventually became the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. Trump abandoned that agreement in 2018 with fateful consequences. We're talking on a day where the United States and Iran seem to have signed an agreement to end, at least for now, this war. Did the United States lose this war? Yes, yes. The United States has come out weaker. Iran has come out stronger. It's not even

an agreement. It's a memorandum of understanding, which we haven't even seen the details of. Now, I started the negotiations that led to the JCPOA, the agreement that President Obama eventually signed. It was an intensive diplomatic effort. We started by getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions, global sanctions on Iran in June of 2010. We then, you know, worked to get secret negotiations started through Oman. And those began with several meetings and with a, you know, a plan about going forward, which I handed off to my successor, John Kerry. But these were serious negotiations with high-level people. So when we sat across a table from Iranians, we had our own nuclear physicists there, as did they. We had experienced diplomats, people who had negotiated on many

different fronts for many years. That's not the way this administration does its business. You know, the United States doesn't send bombers to Iran because anybody else commands it to, but it's very clear that Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, pushed and pushed Donald Trump to do this. It's my understanding that when you were Secretary of State, Bibi Netanyahu made the same case. Tell me about that. Well, you're absolutely right. When I was secretary, it was a constant theme by Netanyahu and his then government,

the then defense minister, Ehud Barak, the former prime minister. It was relentless. It was a constant push. You know, I remember... What would he say to you? What would he say to you? He would basically say, you need to support us in attacking Iran. And so there was a constant argument that we would have.

And, you know, I remember one day I was on the phone for hours with A-Hood, with Bibi, with others, you know. And they would say things like, you know, our planes are on the tarmac. And I'd say, well, good luck. I mean, great. Why are you doing this? You're saying you were, you were being played. All the time. All the time. By an ally that receives an enormous amount of aid. Well, of course. And look, Bibi's been obsessed as long as I've dealt with him, with two things, Iran, as you know, and his desire to normalize relations of Saudi Arabia.

The first formal meeting I had with him in 2009, probably March at the State Department, it was absolutely, you know, how can we get normalization with Saudi Arabia and how do we totally decapitate Iran? And he had this view that I think has become very clear in his, you know, dealings with Trump. number one, decapitate the regime, it will fall. Number two, you know, disable the military insofar as possible, the people will rise up. And that was just never our read about what was going to happen, in part because this is a ruthless, theocratic regime that at least at the top levels, the clobacco, the climate, that at least at the top levels, the level, has a kind of apocalyptic view of their own importance in the struggle against Israel, the United States, the West, their Sunni neighbors, you know, the whole map that they look at.

And they are also a regime that learned, sadly, a lesson from the overthrow of the Shah. there's a lot of analysis about why the shaw was finally deposed but one of the arguments is at the end he would not murder his people he would not order the mass murder of the demonstrators in the street this regime has no such compunction so if you have a regime that has already proven as it did last year, they were willing to kill 35, 40,000 Iranians over the protests that were going on. If you have this alliance between the clerics and the military, they have enough folks in their ranks to keep moving up and taking over. Our take on Iran was absent an effective armed opposition, which we've never seen, and absent some kind of

internal dissent, whether like a general who would say, I'm not going to tolerate, you know, this any longer. But this regime is not, you know, they're not going to be toppled by, you know, appeals to their humanity, to their, you know, better, the angels of their, you know, better nature. So if I hear what you're saying correctly is number one, BB Netanyahu bamboozled. Donald Trump. And number two, I don't imagine the intelligence changed radically about the state of play in Iran, that the president ignored not only the advice of his vice president and secretary of state, but the intelligence community telling him on the ground this would be a terrible idea. Well, I can't speak to that. I don't know what was presented to him.

You know, I also think coming off the attacks of last June, which I I supported the very specific surgical attacks on the known nuclear weapons sites. I believed that that was a clear mission with very achievable goals. I didn't know whether you could eliminate the program, but I thought you could certainly set it back. Let's stay in the same region for a moment. I know that you're for a two-state solution and see it as the only outcome that any kind of peace can exist for the but if i look at the israeli polity they don't want a two-state solution certainly not now and if you look at the Palestinian polity which is it is an even more

complicated set of geographies and and and population two-state solution is not anywhere near the offing there a two-state solution which was fought for so hard but began going out the window many years ago, seems impossible. Am I wrong? You might be, but you might not be. And here's why. I'm going to say something positive about Trump. So hold on.

Okay. I've got a grip on my chair right now. Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza is actually a pathway to security for Israel, reconstruction for Gaza, and the possibility of self-determination, however defined for the Palestinians. There are a lot of people who, you know, reject it because Trump did it, but it's the only game in town. There's nothing else. And I've engaged in some, you you know, kind of track to diplomacy with Israelis, not in the current government, former governments, military, intelligence, political officials, Palestinians, Arabs.

So it's a very, you know, it's a very painful discussion because, you know, these are experienced people with lots of scars to show for their efforts over many years, not just on peace, but on security, particularly for Israel. But I really believe if we took this 20-point plan, which starts with the disarmament of Hamas, a huge, important step yet to be accomplished, but took all of the 20 points so that it wasn't just disarm Hamas and maybe do some reconstruction and, you know, build some,

some resorts on the coast. But if you really took the whole approach that is embodied in that 20-point plan, and I know there are people who are working to try to move forward on that, there is a glimmer of a possible path forward. Now, having said that, you are dealing with two peoples

that are even more traumatized than perhaps that's happened in the past. You had Rachel Goldberg-Pollant on your podcast last week, and, you know, I met her during the time when I was trying to help and support families who were advocating to get the hostages back. And it's, you know, she writes this very moving, profoundly sad book about her son, Hirsch. And we've had Mohammed Maush and Mosabababu Toh who lost multiple members of their family. And I've met with them as well. And did the Biden administration fail to push hard against the Netanyahu government? Did it give too free a reign to the Israeli government during the...

You know, I think it's a very, very hard question to answer for this reason. As I said, October 7th, was a mass trauma event. Clearly, the people who were murdered, the families who lost loved ones, the hostages 250 plus who were taken into Gaza. It was a long, terrible trauma. A hundred percent, but Biden came to Israel. And the wisest thing, it seems to me, that he said, was, I feel your pain, I understand how horrible this is, we support you, but at the same time, do not repeat our mistakes and act out of prolonged vengeance. He was obviously referring to Afghanistan and even more so to Iraq, the misadventures there, to say the least, and the damage they did and the lives lost there. And I think a lot of people would say that is exactly what Israel went ahead and did

by such a prolonged war, and that the United States and the Biden administration, and later the Trump administration, did very little to put a pause to it. You know, I think that, and I, again, I wasn't there. I don't know what the internal discussions were, but every time there was a push against Israel to change tactics, to avoid certain targets, you know, the response would be, we know that there are tunnels. Could and should the Israelis have been more careful with civilian casualties? Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. But did they have a response to, you know, what they were trying to accomplish,

rescuing hostages, you know, getting access to Hamas leadership and fighters in these tunnels? they did. And trying to walk that line in the middle of a war is very hard. So I try to imagine myself. I'm sitting, you know, in CENTCOM and talking to the Israeli military. I'm sitting, you know, at the CIA and talking to Mossad. And they are coming back not with, you know, totally unbelievable claims. They're coming back with, here's what our intelligence tells us. Here's, you know, we think if we can get there, get there. Maybe we can, you know, get Sinwar. Maybe we can, you know, rescue hostages. And the fog of war was, like, totally overwhelming.

When you hear Ehud Olmer referred to war crimes, when you hear a scholar like, an Israeli scholar, like Omar Baratoff, referred to genocide, or even David Grossman, a novelist you know well, do you agree with them? Again, I am looking at facts. I'm trying to figure out, and I have not reached my own conclusions, because I don't have a, you know, oftentimes there's after-action reports. And the thing I am most critical of is there has been no after-action report about what happened leading up to October 7th, on October 7th, and post-October 7th.

So we don't have all the information I personally would like to see and know about these. The original sin is why did October 7th happen? What were the signals that were missed? What could have been done differently? What did Bibi Netanyahu think he was doing having Qatar pay Hamas millions and millions of dollars a month in order in his thinking to weaken the Palestinian authority? What did he think was going to happen? So I guess my point, David, is I want to know everything I can know.

I want to know everything I can about the intelligence failures, the military decisions, before I'm willing to say you could have done this or you should have done that or pass judgment. I received a text today from the best journalist I know in Israel, a very keen defense analyst. And he said, this memo of understanding is the end of BB. I think a lot of people have gone broke predicting the political end of Bibi Netanyahu. Are you willing to go broke? You know, he has certainly more than nine lives politically. But I think this is a real defeat for him.

He did push Trump into the war against Iran. We didn't gain anything of real importance, and we may have lost a lot. But that means Bibi also lost because to go into that kind of alliance and to push Trump to do something that Trump, I'm not sure even understood the implications of. And then for Trump wanting to get out of it, because what did he say a few weeks ago, I'm bored, this is boring, trying to make peace is boring. So BV's left out there by himself. And there are several really serious questions. You know, what he's doing in Lebanon now is, to me, counterproductive. He has never had, Israel has never had, as long as I can remember, a government that started

out more open to working with Israel to try to disarm his volat. And rather than trying to be, you know, in my view, kind of smart about how to, build up a Lebanese government for the purpose of disarming and neutering Hezbollah, which is definitely in Israel's interest, Israel has been engaged in this bombardment of Lebanon. And, you know, so they're fighting on that front. I think they're turning a blind eye to the settler violence in the West Bank is extremely dangerous. So I think, you know, Netanyahu believes that war is his friend because he wants to contain the opposition by creating conflict so that he tries to rally the country behind him. I think this Iran deal may be, you know,

the straw that finally breaks that and creates an opening for, you know, his departure in the upcoming elections, but I'm worried that if you don't see a government that understands the importance of tending to Israel's economy and future, you're going to see a big exit by particularly young Israelis, and there is some evidence of that. My conversation with Hillary Clinton continues in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Welcome back. I've been speaking today with Hillary Rodham Clinton. She's a former senator and secretary of state.

She's the author of a number of books, including the most recent, Something Lost, Something Gained. I'll conclude my conversation now with Hillary Clinton. A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee released an autopsy report on the 2024 election. It satisfied nobody. not one person did it satisfy except for maybe the Biden's because it didn't mention

Joe Biden's decision to run but when you look back on his decision to run did he make a terrible mistake he made a terrible mistake he made a terrible mistake for himself his legacy and for the country he had said that he would not run again

and you know counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky, but I believe if he had kept to that plan and said that he wasn't going to run, that he was going to pass, you know, the torch to the next generation, we would have had a real contest. And very sadly, I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else would have beaten Donald Trump. So I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden. But once he held on for as long as he did, we were in a terrible dilemma.

Why didn't anybody say so? You're a powerful figure still, a powerful voice and the Democratic Party. There are a lot of people that are powerful, not a lot. a select group of people of powerful voices, whether Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, et cetera, et cetera, nobody said this. Why was it so difficult to speak about this?

I think there were a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes. I certainly am aware of that, participated in a number of them. But there was no way to convince him by going public. And eventually what convinced him, was, you know,

a debate. Polling, polling information. But after a horrendous public disaster. Well. But were there private discussions? Were there people on your level of your eminence that went to Joe Biden and said, look, Joe, we love you? But it's time.

You're not the guy you were 15 years ago. Enough already. I know of a few people who tried that. And they were met with total denial. and not just from him, but from the people around him. Joe Biden in particular? Before the debate, before what happened at the debate, there was a belief, and it was strongly held inside the White House,

that he would win again. After the debate, I think they were in a state of sort of disbelief about what happened and kept trying to explain it rationally. it, justify it. And there were a lot of people who publicly and privately then said, you know, that's not recoverable. Initially, that was denied. But, you know, look, it happened. It's over. It's behind us. I don't think it's useful to keep beating that horse. I think we got a retrospective question. You got to beat one more horse. Okay. No. Different horse. It's a donkey. I know that joke.

It's a good joke. And you come to the why they all know the joke. Did Kamala Harris lose solely because she only had 100 days to run? I think that was definitely a factor. I think she also found herself really in a difficult position trying to run as the sitting vice president but separate herself from the sitting president.

there was no gap between her service, as there was with mine, and her campaign. So I think that was a real problem. And then there's the other thing. I can't tell you how many people, people on the left, people who consider themselves good feminists, enlightened about identity in all senses, will say to me, next time in 20, we cannot take the risk. We can't be a woman. It can't be African-American, et cetera, et cetera.

And I find this shocking. It is now, we're a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and we're still having this conversation. You've lifted the microphone, and you're ready to go. I don't need to continue. Well, first of all, there is a global pushback on women's rights. And part of that is being led by this administration. The first person that Trump fired was the woman commandant of the Coast Guard.

The second person was the black combat veteran Air Force General, who is the chair of the Joint Chiefs, and the third person was the first woman to be chief of naval operations. And we've seen what just happened last week with Hegsseth, you know, removing women and you know, black military officers from promotion. We've seen them taking down pictures of the first woman who flew with the

Thunderbird, you know, formation. The first the black general, Chaffee James, who was an incredibly effective fighter pilot. There is an unabashed campaign

to undermine both minority leadership and women's leadership in public spaces. There's no doubt about that. And not only is it happening in so-called IRL, real life, it's happening online to just an extraordinary extent where the threats against women, the attacks on women. So this is a moment where we are seeing the firing of women, not men. I mean, for heaven's sakes, I'm not going to make any brief for, you know, the women that he fired from his cabinet. I didn't agree with any of them, but Hegseth is still there. And so you think about the way that this man is treating women, the way he talks to women journalists, his whole behavior toward women is so disdainful.

So I think that's in the culture. It's not made up when people say, well, I don't know. I don't know if we could vote for a black candidate or a woman candidate. But my ultimate answer to that is it depends on the candidate. Well, let me ask you about one. The candidate that's polling now the highest among women, certainly, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How would you feel about her as a standard bearer for the Democratic Party nationally? Well, those are not the same polls that I've seen.

I think, look, she is a very talented politician, and she is, like, in the top five, but so is Kamala Harris, and depending upon the polls, sometimes Gavin Newsom. I mean, so it's a... I mean, among women. I'm talking, Gavin Newsom is not that. I'm talking about what I consider to be reliable polls of voter sentiment, which is both men and women, because you're not going to win with just... and I wish, that would be someday possible, but not.

So I don't know. It's way too soon, but here's what I really think. Number one, stay focused on the midterm elections. We have to win the House and hopefully the Senate, okay? And we have some, you know, really good chances of doing that in the House. And I think we have a 50-50 chance, you know, in the Senate. To win the Senate, one of the seats that the Democrats have to win is in Maine. How do you feel about him?

I feel about him the way I feel about any candidate. I want to see what kind of candidate he actually turns out to be the bumps on the road that he has experienced and some of the things he has said. Bumps on the road? Yeah, I mean, clearly bumps on the road in terms of some of his prior behavior, some of his prior statements. and I will tell you, I serve with Susan Collins, she is going to be very hard to beat.

And it's going to be a tough election. So I'm reserving. But if you were a mainer, would you pull the lever? But I'm not a mainer. I'm a New Yorker. No, but seriously. You're going to let that pitch go by? Yeah, but David, look,

I think this election has to be about affordability and accountability, and we need to start holding the people around Trump accountable. And we're going to see whether we can, you know, take the Senate. But I think the House has to be the primary objective. And then once that election is behind us, you're going to have 10 or 12 pretty good candidates, in my view, running in 2028. And, you know, I don't know who's going to emerge because I don't know who's going to catch the moment.

I don't know, you know, who's going to be able to convince the various things. factions of the Democratic Party to, you know, support him or her. But I wouldn't rule out any woman who wants to run or any African-American or any Latino or anybody else. If they want to get into the arena, get in the arena, show us what you can do and see whether people will vote for you. Do you think the Democratic Party has an elites problem? You know, I think some people believe it does. And that, I think, is somewhat amusing. because our elites are not stealing money from the Treasury to pay off the insurrectionists to attack the capital. And our elites are not going around the world, making business deals for their children, at least so far as I know.

And so when people say that, you know, they're really saying, well, you know, you guys, you're in blue cities and blue states, and you don't relate to us. And so I think that's the problem. I think it's more of a political identification problem. So you just have to take what people say about your candidates and, you know, be ready to fight back. That's a false equivalence a lot of time. I lived in Moscow for four years during the collapse of the Soviet Union and then thereafter. And I would often think to myself, what would it be like to actually live in a society like this where I loathed my government.

And would I be someone who, in order to keep my family together or to preserve my bank account, would I collaborate? And I have to say, I hope not with the minimum of righteousness, it has shocked me, shocked me to see the level of acquiescence in our society among elites who have turned on a dime, on a dime in order to preserve their immense fortunes and to make them greater. Well, I'm afraid you're right in terms of the acquiescence. So for some people, it's simply staying in power, being able to feel like they are important.

But the people who are in positions of great economic power, like the tech companies and other, you know, large businesses, have been so disappointing in the way that they have, you know, basically aligned themselves with Trump, Trump policies, and in large measure, I guess, because they think, quote, it's good for their business. But what they're not appreciating is that this kind of unchecked, unaccountable power can turn and bite them just as easily. You saw it. You saw it in, you know, in Russia. You saw the transition from the collapse of the Soviet Union. And you saw the oligarchs being formed, the privatization. But then when Putin came along, it was, I want 5%. No, I now want 25%. I want 50%. And that's why people say he's the richest man in the world, because he's basically...

I must say he loves you. I have never seen somebody speak so harshly of anyone as to watch Putin's speaking about Hillary Clinton. Well, I wear it as a badge of honor, but it did help, you know, contrary to what you hear from Donald Trump, he did help Donald Trump win, and partly because he knew what kind of leader I would be compared to, you know, Donald, whom he knew would not. I want to ask you two quick questions about the law. On a scale of one to ten, how worried are you about being locked up? Well, it's not for lack of trying that I'm not. that they, you know, they continue to, you know, not only go after me, but go after all kinds of, you know, people that Trump considers his, quote, enemies.

I'm not worried about it if the law matters, and if the facts matter. I have nothing to worry about. And what I've been slightly reassured about in the last couple of months is the way the courts are actually enforcing their orders. So the name is off the Kennedy Center. You know, $1.776 billion fund is enjoined. And so there is finally the pushback. Our big problem has been the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has enabled and approved so much of what he's done on the so-called shadow docket.

And that is what has given him the... permission to go forward with a lot of the things that he has pursued without there being yet any kind of final adjudication. So when I think about the law, personally, you know, I'm not that worried for myself, but I do see him continuing to unleash his private law firm, which used to be called the Justice Department, against people and forcing them to be, you know, investigated, spend money, everything to just put them, you know, at risk. So yeah, I do think that he is going to continue to do that, and we unfortunately are going to have to continue to fight back. Has John Roberts, in particular as Chief Justice, failed the law?

I voted against him as a senator. I met with him. I voted against Alito, and Alito was a much more obvious movement conservative, a results-oriented judge. And so I had no doubt about what he would do. And I gave a speech on the floor. John Roberts, though, as I looked into his past, when he clerked for Justice Rehnquist, he wrote a memo about reversing the Voting Rights Act back in the 1980s. So he has been a known commodity to some of us who paid attention for some time, but he comes across as more affable, you know, a kind of country club person that you would have a nice dinner with. But make no mistake about it, he led the charge against the Voting Rights Act. He led the charge against campaign finance reform. He has been on the side of the, you know, sort of federalist, you know, sort of federalist,

agenda since he was a young lawyer, a young law clerk. And this is his court. And I think they have concluded, led by him, you know, the majority certainly, that their job is to turn the clock back as much as possible on the 20th century. You know, they believe in, you know, almost the height of corporate power. They believe in, you know, the role that corporations should play in our politics and basically undisclosed, unlimited money, plus then things like the Voting Rights Act, which they view as, in the way they describe it, unnecessary in a, quote, colorblind society that's gotten beyond race. I don't know where they live. I don't know who they talk to.

I don't understand it, but that is their stated view. But it's really, you know, I went to law school with Clarence Thomas, and he just gave a speech about, for the 250th commemoration, I think at Texas or somewhere, he gave a speech basically saying that, you know, the progressive movement had destroyed America and it needed to be reigned in. Secretary Clinton, thank you so much. Thank you, David.

I spoke with Hillary Rodham Clinton this past week at the 92nd Street, Y, in Manhattan. I'm David Remnick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Now, for all the history buffs out there, we've got a treat in store next week. We'll be joined by the hosts of The Rest Is History, a really wonderful podcast from the UK. Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook will talk about the Declaration of Independence, but as seen by the Brits. And they suggest that the whole revolution business that we're We are going to celebrate wasn't really that big a deal, or not as big a deal as we think it was. Talk about chutzpah. I hope you'll join us. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer.

with guidance from Emily Boutin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.