Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hillary Clinton What Happened 20171028

Thank you. You are watching the tv on cspan2 with top Nonfiction Book and authors every weekend. Book tv, television for serious readers. Secretary clinton, lets talk about the book what happened. You write the first warning sign was North Carolina. Walk us through that evening. Yes, well it was a poor that in North Carolina coming in pretty quick succession. We always knew North Carolina would be hard for many reasons but we thought we had them, a good lead going into election day because it was early voting in florida so when those numbers started coming in that was quite surprising and disappointing. It wasnt the end, by any means, there were a number of ways we thought that we would get to 270 electoral votes but it was a very long night and around midnight when michigan and wisconsin and sabina came in we knew that we were going to be successful. What was going through your mind . At first i was worried but not alarmed with the early returns because again, as i said, our numbers looked very good in pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, as did everyone else been consulted. As the evening went on and we were getting not only the broadcast numbers but reaching out to people working with us in those states, it had some surprising outcomes that we were following closely and concerned about. What went through my mind was there was nothing i can do right now and i went and laid down, shut my eyes for a little while because i wanted to collect myself and i had not prepared a concession speech. I thought i was going to win and then when the news came in around midnight i had to do some very hard, painful thinking. Obviously, there were questions we had and i raised some of those questions in the book about what was really going on but as of this moment i had to call donald trump, who seemed to be pretty surprised about the outcome, and there has been reporting since saying that he was. I called president obama and decided working on a concession speech. You pick up the phone and the donald, its hillary. Then what happened . Well, basically i said congratulations. It looks like you will be our next president and i wish you well and if there is any way i can help you, call on me. It was short and very much thank you and thanks for calling and then he went out to address his crowd. In your concession speech the next days of the following you said we owe him an open mind and a chance to lead. Yes, and i really believe that. Nine and half months into his presidency, how is he doing . Not very well. Its sad to me. I take no pleasure in any of this. I knew the kind of campaign he iran which i found very deeply disturbing. I said many times that i didnt think he had the experience or the temperament that would qualify him to be president but people say and do things in things all the time. You cover this from start to finish and so, i was hoping that we would see donald trump emerge who understood the gravity of the position he was about to assume. I think it has not worked out the way i would have wanted for our country. Instead, i believe we are still seeing starting on inauguration day, a lot of the same irresponsible, impulsive behavior that is ascending a lot of wrong signals here at home and around the world. In your book and you talk about the state dining room and the white house and the letter that john adams wrote to his wife and in part he said they found but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof. Yes, i did. Would you put trump under this category . No, and the reason i put that in his because i went down sometimes at night and walk the first floor of the white house and i think about the history that happened there and ending up before the fireplace with that engraved at the top of it and i had lost to one of the number of republicans were seeking the nomination and i would have been disappointed. I would not have agreed with them on many of the policies they were going to pursue. But i do not think i wouldve had the doubts and worries i have and in fact, im sure of it, with respect to president tremendous behavior. I just came back from a trip to england and wales and korea and there is a great uncertainty out there. What does he mean when he tweets and what are his real objectives and what is he trying to achieve on behalf of america and the world. He has created so much confusion in the minds of so many. Have you talked to the president sense hes taken office . No, i have not. Other than after the inauguration and a right in the first chapter bill and i went as a former president and first lady and we thought it was our duty to do that and it was hard because his speech was not at all what i had hoped for. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for him to reach out and embrace all americans, those who supported him, those who do not and is what i intended to do if i had been in that position. Then of course we heard him talking about carnage and it was dark in devices rhetoric that we got in that moment. After words i went to the lunch and i shook his hand, said hello to him, wished him well but that is less than 15 them. If you could sit down with him and give him advice, what would you tell him . I would tell him to take a deep breath, slow down, be willing to listen to people who may not necessarily already agree with you. Have an open mind about some of the tough decisions and be more open to facts and evidence the consequences of your policies. I would certainly is a former secretary of state talk to him about korea and iran and i would talk to him about the threat russia poses to europe and to our internal wellbeing because of the continuing attacks that we know who is undertaking against our own unity at home. I would do my best to lay out the case and i would say, mr. President , you have the opportunity to change course. Look, i know we are all fully formed adults and we get into this office but that doesnt mean we stop learning. It is like you love to play golf and most former president s like barack obama and do and youre not averse to having some pro give you some tips about how to be an even better golfer. This job is so demanding and you have to have a more regular schedule and you have to have an open mind so you can take in information and listen to people and please, get more people who know things into your government. The state department is missing so many of the top decisions and these are people who speak the language and know the culture and you are dealing with north korea, iran, and they have expanded can help you. I would try and i know others have tried and i talk to people who been in the oval office, trying to help them, trying to provide support and it might last 24 or 40 hours and then he feels compelled to return to the attack mode and the insult mode and he has to dominate and overcome people especially those who disagree with him and hes in his fight with senator corker and hes in a fight with congresswoman wilson is in fight with all of these people all the time and it takes energy and you need to be focused on solving problems, not settling scores. Is in a fight with the secretary of state . I think he is undercutting the secretary of state. One of the saddest tweets that i am aware of and there have been a bunch of them was when tillerson was doing his job to try to get us on a diplomatic track which is what we must do bringing the chinese into the forefront, as well as japan and korea and others so tillerson was doing his job and basically the president tweets forget about it, there is only one way to go. If you are the secretary of state you have got to be perceived as speaking for the president and for the nation and that is what tillerson thought he was doing and his president in front of the world basically humiliated him. How do you solve the north korea problem . I was just in korea and i was asked to speak about that and other matters. There is no easy solution. I am well aware of that and i have followed this closely for 25 years. Both in the white house when my husband was there as well as a senator and secretary of state. Here is what i know. The chinese have to be persuaded and i think that they are closer to being persuaded than they have been in the past. The behavior of kim jongun and is dangerous to them and dangerous to piece and prosperity in the region. The chinese have always taken the view that they can balance off north and south korea and by doing so keep the United States on a back foot. Now, with the behavior of kim jongun and and frankly, the very rude attitude he has taken toward much of the chinese leadership and his pursuant Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with a Nuclear Warhead the chinese now have a huge stake in helping to rein him in and enforcing the sanctions that have been tightened at the un. And getting korea, by working through the pla, Peoples Liberation army and the military in north korea and to get them to negotiate the table and there is no substitute for just sitting there day after day. I started the negotiation with iran and i was the one who sent out the feelers and sent out the first people to meet with the iranians to see if something was possible and it took years. I know what happened in the irish Peace Process and it years. You have got to have strategic patience and some people dismiss that but in fact, in a world where unless you want to cause a nuclear warfare, which i hope no one wants, you will have to but at the same time that you are working patiently to get everyone to the table and convince china to play a more active role, you do need to say there will be consequences if you send a missile over our allies that we are sworn to protect, japan and south korea, or our territory like ron, or you begin testing missiles that could reach hawaii or the west coast of our country, there will be severe consequences. Make no mistake. But you do not say that in a tweets. You do not say that in an insult calling him rocket man and all of that because that plays into his hands. You do it in a calm. Clear way that delivers the message. Of course, we have to continue to defend our allies which, if i put Missile Defense in south korea, the chinese do not like that. In fact i was asked about that in school because they are for cutting certain korean businesses and the answer is dont boycott people trying to protect themselves from what could happen to them but help us contain and deter the north doing anything. s when senator corker made reference to world war iii, what was your reaction . I have worked with bob corker and hes very conservative and sober but a very good person to work with. Ive worked with him particularly as secretary of state on the new start treaty to Lower Nuclear weapons in both russia and the United States. He does his homework. He studies things. He comes to a thoughtful conclusion. What he said is we could have a war fight total miscalculation. When you are using twitter to communicate and when youre insulting instead of doing the hard slow work of actually putting together some kind of diplomatic response, someone can miscalculate and that somebody is certainly could be kim jongun. Hes already flown to missiles over japan that we know of and has already threatened guam. He threatened the United States and if he believes that there is no appetite in this administration, at least by the president , to deal with some of these bigger issues who knows what he might do he might not even intend the consequences but unfortunately they work slow. At what point did you say i would write about this campaign is to mark it was interesting. I had no intention of doing it after the election. I was suspended and devastated and somewhat in a state of shock because i couldnt be out what had happened. You come back to the concession speech and walk us through that afternoon. Well, i gave the concession speech and there were a lot of friends and supporters there obviously a lot of hugs and tears and finally bill and i leave and we get in the backseat of our car and i felt like every ounce of adrenaline was draining out. I was so exhausted. We basically sat there. We got home and on came the sweats and the police and just trying to catch up on sleep and play with our dog and we started the next day to go for walks in the woods which we like to do but i was in a state of total confusion. I didnt know and i related in the book about what it felt like and the walks in the woods and yoga and cleaning my closet and my chardonnay and all of that. We began to see analyses or commentary about the election and i thought people were missing a lot of what i thought was critical to the outcome. We were just understanding what the russians had done and after the election the Obama Administration actually came out with even more information about what the russians had been up to and began to sanction certain russian individuals and institutions for their inter parents in the election but it took weeks and months and we are still learning about the russians were up to and how effective they were. They are masters of propaganda and this wasnt their first rodeo. They knew how to influence voters in the used social media and they used box and trolls and socalled content farms and fake news and they were rolling it all out. Of course the question that is being investigated is where they coordinating with the Trump Campaign and we will find the answer to that. I thought it was important that people began to Pay Attention of what the russians did because it was an ongoing threat. It is not going away. We finally learned that they had intruded into election systems and maybe as many as 30 or more states. What does that mean and how do we protect ourselves from a foreign adversary . There was that piece of it and that was not getting the coverage i thought. Then as we remember there was a big debate that started after the election was it economic anxiety or cultural anxiety and i thought that was an important question. Forster was economic anxiety but it was also a clear theme in terms campaign, appealing to anti immigrants, to race, to anti islamic attitudes, to sexism, on and on. Then, slowly information started coming out and independent respected third parties looking at independent data and in exit polls for people who said the economy was the number one issue i won those people and maybe despite the best efforts to prevent my message from getting across people heard me talking about jobs and income inequality and the like which i talked about endlessly. That was an important question for us to explore and then Voter Suppression. Every day that goes by we are going more information particularly out of wisconsin where there was so much evidence of Voter Suppression and there has been excellent studies that i think are compelling. As this went on and as i said to myself what happened was a bit . And i wanted to know what went on and i could only figure out how to do that was to immerse myself in all the information as it was becoming available, to sort it out, to try to get through the evidence as best i could and as i thought about that i thought maybe there is a book there and i felt like i owed an explanation to my supporters, all 65. 8 million of them and to myself into history so i wanted it to be personal, political and historical. Lets come back to the book but sean hannity has been critical of the uranium one deal that the president is saying was regarded and thats a real story in all of this. What would you say to those critics . Is the same baloney theyve been peddling for years. Theres been no credible evidence by anyone. It has been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked. Here is what they are doing. I have to give them credit. Trump and his allies including fox news are really experts at distractions and diversion. The closer the investigation about real russian ties between Trump Associates and real russians as we heard Jeff Sessions finally admit to in his testimony the other day and the more they want to provide on the wall and im their favorite target and president obama and we are the ones they like to put into the crosshairs. Yes, i am not surprised but i think the real story is how nervous they are about these continuing investigations. I blame myself in the worst fears about my worst fears as a candidate came true. I try to take the reader through the thought process that led to my finally deciding to run and number one i was worried that its a hard historical trend to try to succeed the president of your own party. My husband and the chapter i write about this process i went through, he says you can lose because its a hard historical burden to carry. I worried that i would not be as effective in taking my brand of leadership is every time im in Office People give me high marks for but translating it into a campaign. I write about this and there seem to be a kind of mismatch between what i consider the seriousness of the responsibility of laying out for the American People what you would do as president and the performance aspects of running for president. I say look, donald trump was our first reality tv candidate. I, for better or for worse, was a candidate of reality and i tried to match that the best i could but i wasnt going to go after immigrants and i wasnt going to revert to racism and homophobia and anti muslim talk. I wasnt going to do that. I saw in the primary campaign how effective trump was in insulting, attacking and dismissing 16 or 17 people he was running against many of whom had one tough elections and have experience in had policies they wanted to put forth. That is when i realized this was a Different Campaign and its a campaign right out of reality tv which is what he had been involved in four years. How do i match that and how do i try to deal with that. Then there was the whole other question of sexism and misogyny and the double standard. I knew it was alive and well and i thought that i could get through it and demonstrate that i was not only up for the job at best qualified for the job. Running against an unapologetic Sexual Assault or who was after women going on to people in the media and going on to me and it made it hard because on the one hand as i write about the second debate with him leering and lurking and trying to assert his dominance over me on the stage, if you turn the sound off he looks like the big alpha male and he is there and im ready to take on all comers and what hes saying is making no sense. No factual basis to it. It betrays and impulsivity that is not a good quality in a president but it is entertaining and i thought that was a big challenge and although i think i was on the way to winning until the comey letter of october 28 i knew that we had to try to blunt the appeal of that kind of entertainment. You pays your Campaign Staff but do you think your staff let hillary be hillary in 2016 . Look, i think thats what heres what i believe. My staff, who were a tremendous combination of people who had helped elect barack obama in zero eight and helped and who came from other experiences put together a phenomenal Campaign Apparatus but i believe we were playing on the field of what president ial elections had been like and when you think about what we were trying to do we were trying to be obama 3. 0 district learned the lessons of his first races and data in election and to target voters. We were operating in the arena that we thought was the right arena but unfortunately the Trump Campaign and the press, to a great extent, were operating this new reality tv arena. The past could not get enough of his entertainment and i have never imagined you would have National Coverage of an empty podium. They were all waiting to see what would happen and they admit. It was great for profits and people today and because a Reality Tv Show you do not know what is going to happen next. The guy was quite an expert at that. I do not think the press held him accountable particularly the way he should have been held accountable and i think they dismissed and i point out in the book overall in 2016 we got 32 minutes of coverage the whole year for policies compared to over 200 in zero eight and 174 in 2012. I dont blame voters for knowing. The only thing they knew about me is that i had been around and that i had an email controversy which, as i spent a whole chapter explaining, was never the big deal that it was made out to be and i took responsibility for it from the very beginning. You say in the book the media needs to do its own soulsearching district. I do, steve. Look, one of the things about cspan and im not just splattering you but you guys cover everything. Let people draw their own conclusions. When you understand the pressures the press is under of both print and broadcast certainly online and in broadcast they have got to add dollars or theyve got to add eyeballs or clicks or whatever theyre looking for. I get that. Do you know our president ial election is a big deal and now we see what happens when someone is not getting it and we talked about the hollywood excess income was continuing coverage you get for more than 12 women who were followed up with very personal stories, not much. It was always onto something new and she is changing the subject all the time and they had a dark, divisive convention with all kinds of claims like only i can fix it and lock her up and all that stuff that they did and we had, i thought, a positive upbeat and positive convention and it has been my experience being in and around president ial politics that optimism usually one and that is what americans were looking for. The messages then that we were trying to convey coming out of our convention with tim kaine as my running mate and as i write in the book that we went on a bus tour and we went to hardhit industrial places in living in ohio and we talked about what we would do and i thought we had a realistic chance of getting these things done even in a divided congress and trump continues to attack the family over the loss of captain con. The press covered that. They didnt cover what tim and i were telling steelworkers or iron workers or other people who were visiting and i really have to give them credit for understanding how to capture and hold television and the attention that one gets. If you then combine that with the help they were getting from the russians which had two objectives to lift up him and to tear me down in order to tear me down they had to lie about meat which they did persistently. They had to convince people who otherwise would have voted for me not to because they came up with wild exaggerated fables about me. That was all going underground in a very effective way. By default, we did not understood, as well as we should, and now i hope candidates in the future will the combined impact of the effect of John Podestas emails and the release of them by wikileaks, which you remember happen within an hour of the hollywood excess tape being released. You cannot have a better example of some kind of communication, if not coordination. Drop him now, now that was when we need him so wikileaks became a dominant theme and stuff is totally made up, steve, outrageous stuff accusing me and podesta of running a child trafficking ring in a pizzeria in washington. Totally nonsensical life but they delivered it and it went from russian tv or sputnik tv to fox or breitbart or the info wars and went into facebook pages and went on to twitter and we now know that. We did not know it at the time. From your standpoint, the direction of this came from who . We know from the intelligence that has been gathered that directed. He said we are going after her and i dont want her to be president. If she makes it anyway, i want her to be damaged because i stood up to him when i was secretary of state. That was my job as the representative of this great country of ours. The behavior the russians were engaged in in syria in ukraine and the phony elections that they were running in russia, i spoke out about that. That goes with the territory. Vladimir putin took it personally and he also is a pretty clear exhibit of sexism in motion. And it was executed through most likely their Intelligence Services and proxies like wikileaks which has basically become a proxy of russian government interests. In your previous book, hard choices, you write about Vladimir Putin, how best to understand him yes. His family yes. His mother. Right. What was the story . I was stunned to hear this story from putin himself. And this was in Early September of 2012. I was attending an International Conference because president obama was in the midst of reelection, so i was representing the United States. We were in russia, the far, far east of russia closest to alaska, and he wouldnt meet with me at first because he knew what i was going to say about syria, that, you know, they had to work with us as id been saying repeatedly for many months to try to end the massacres, to try to prevent the consolidation of position by terrorist groups and Everything Else we were concerned about. So he wouldnt meet with me. And then right before the dinner we had a short 15minute sitdown in which he was his usual dismissive self, you know, not interested, not responsive. Id seen that before, i was used to it, and i always used to come to any ebb counter encounter with him to a question to ask that might get him interested. But i knew i was going to sit next to him during the dinner because protocol required that the representative of the United States be on one side of him because we had hosted the prior conference, the apec conference, so im sitting with him. So i say, you know, mr. President , i finally had a chance to go to the war memorial in st. Petersburg, and it is astonishing in its power and its incredible stories of those who held the line against the nazis all those months in what was then stalingrad. So then he says, well, i have a story to tell you, and he tells me this remarkable story about how his father was on the front lines during the siege, and he got some time off to go home for just a few hours, maybe spend the night. Hes walking down the street where their Apartment Building is, and he sees as was common in stalingrad at that time he sees a pile of bodies. He looks at the body, and he looks at the bottom of the pile, and he sees a shoe and a foot, and he recognizes his wife. The body collectors are loading the bodies into carts to take them away to try to prevent plague and disease. So putins father runs up and says to the body collector, thats my wife, thats my wife, you cant take my wife, and gets into a big confrontation. Finally, the body collector says, fine, you want your dead wife . Take your dead wife. So he pulls the dead body out of the pile, and when he has her, he realizes shes alive. And he takes her up to the apartment, nurses her back to health. The war ends, a few years later, Vladimir Putin is born. I had studied a lot about putins life as best you can, because theres not very much information. I had never heard that story. I thought it told us a lot about his mindset and his feelings about what russia must be in order to protect itself, defend its interests. I got back to the room i was staying in, i called our ambassador and other experts in russia, i tell them this story. I said, have you ever heard this . None of them had ever heard it. I put it in the book, and the russians never contradicted it. So to this day, theyve never confirmed it, nor have they contradicted it, so i assume its i true. I thought it was an important insight into how this man thinks and, of course, now we know he is determined to return russian greatness and along with that his own, and hes also termed to make an enormous amount of money, hundreds and hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion or two out of his connections with oligarchic interests so that he has a piece of all the action, that he is determined to disrupt the european union, disrupt nato and disrupt us. And now we know that a lot of what he was doing was not just aimed at me, it was to sow discourse, and a discord in america. Fascinating person, not to be underestimated, but not to be pandered to either. As i say in what happened, he is fond of a quote, a russian quote, you take a steel bayonet and you push, and if you reach mush, keep pushing. If you reach bone, pull out. Youve got to show some bone here, got to show some back bone. And i think what trump is doing is trying to have it both ways. For example, Congress Passed more sanctions on russia in part because of what were learning about how much russia interfered in our election. So trump was forced to sign them. Hes not implementing them. They have not yet been rolled out. No one else has been sanctioned. So hes trying to give in to the congress whom he needs for his other crazy ideas like this horrible tax cut hes pushing and to kind of winkwink at putin. I may not have given you everything, but im trying to hold the line on stuff thats important to you. I mean, hes acting like putins puppet. And the fact that theyre not rolling out the sanctions is more evidence of that. Where do you think this investigation is going to end . How will it conclude . I dont know. I think finish i really have been somewhat pleasantly surprised that the congress, particularly in the senate, particularly in the Senate Intelligence committee, is really digging deep into russian interference on social media. Theyre calling in facebook and twitter and google and others and demanding answers. And they should. We all need to know and, frankly, the Tech Companies need to do a much better job in protecting our country Going Forward. And they also need to be really transparent. Tell us everything that happened. Show us every ad. We need to know what were up against, because the American People have to develop some defenses to this kind of foreign interference. So that, i think, is, as i say, promising to get to the bottom of a lot of what has gone on particularly with the russians. I think the Mueller Investigation is obviously looking at whatever communication, coordination, connection there was between People Associated with trump and his campaign and with the russians and what the reasons fur for it might have been or what they had done. And im not going to hazard any kind of potential conclusion. They have to go where the evidence leads them. Youve written how many books . Well, ive written, ive written now four big ones. I wrote it takes a village, i wrote living history, my autobuying my, i wrote hard choices and then two other books that have been published, letters to our cat and our dog when we were in the white house, dear socks and buddy, and an entertaining book about the white house. Do you have another book in you down the road . I probably do. This book was particularly important and very cathartic. I didnt magicked get it done magicked get it imagine i could get it done, and i really have been very gratifieded by the response. People have said i didnt know if i wanted to read it, or i wasnt sure what to expect, and they find it, as i say, both personal and political. For people interested in the personal, how much time do you have to spend getting your hair and makeup done as a woman running for office or the political, what are we going to do about Voter Suppression and figure this out, i think there is something for nearly every reader. And its been exciting going around talking about it and having a chance to answer questions. There are a couple stories i want to ask you about. Matt lauer. Yes. And the commander in chief war. Right. You wrote, quote, i was almost physically sick. I watched matt lauer soft pedal the donald trump interview. Explain. Oh, my gosh, i was sick. Matt knows that. Ive been on today show already. Hes well aware of how i feel about it. Look, being commander in chief is the most awesome responsibility. Sending young men and women to war, potentially using the most lethal of weapons. So if we were going to have a forum on being commander in chief, i expected to get tough questions about iran or north korea or russia, about, you know, Nuclear Proliferation and terrorism, whatever. Instead more than half of my 30 minutes was about emails, something that matt had already asked me about in a prior interview back in april after the comey investigation closed. And in the like, with other parts of the book i try to take the reader behind the scenes and what its like to be sitting there with so much to say about how to protect and defend our country which is part of the oath and not to get a chance to do that because im being asked things that have no real longterm effect and was not going to be what the next president would face. I said, look, you know, i started the iran negotiation i was thinking to myself, i started the iran negotiations, i was in the situation room on osama bin laden, i negotiated a ceasefire between hamas and israel. Some of the things i had done personally. Donald trump hadnt done anything. He lied and said he was against the iraq war when we had him on tape, there was so much to question. I was disappointed because it just wasnt up to matts or nbcs standards. And when trump came on, it was a bunch of softballs. And so any, you know, viewer who wants to know whats the difference between these two people when it comes to war and peace, they wouldnt have gotten anything out of it. You also write about the debates. What was your tactic in preparing for those debates . Well, i prepared, number one. I knew how my husband, how president obama, how other democratic nominees had prepared, and i thought it was the right thing to be as prepared as possible. Because heres what i believe, steve. I thought, okay, theres going to be a moment of reckoning in campaign. Hes been the reality tv candidate, but as we get into the debates and the public and the press have to make this awesome decision about who to vote for, theres going to be a moment of reckoning. Id seen it in other debates in the past. Didnt come. So, yeah, i was prepared. In the very first debate, trump actually made fun of me for being prepared. And, you know, i said, yeah, ill tell you Something Else i prepared for, i prepared to be president. And then he gets into the job and whats he say . Its a lot harder than i thought. Yeah, its a really hard job, and preparation matters. So i was judged to have won those three debates, but i dont now, i think you can criticize him for that, which i do very strongly as you know, but i think you can still say he was fired because he was going to conduct an investigation about russia. So you have to keep those two thoughts in mind. You also write in the book, page 379, you had binders full of memos relating to the transition, staffing and cabinet picks. [laughter] i did. You laugh. I laugh because, again, preparation. I had a really ambitious agenda. A big National Infrastructure program to put people to work, for example, right off the bat, daring the republicans not to support it when it had been an issue on both sides of the campaign and so much else. So, yes, i had really smart ex, experienced people putting in long hours doing the numbers. Okay, how do we pay for that, whats that going to require us to do, what laws need to be changed, what can you do about executive order, etc. So, yes, i was ready to be president , and i was very excited about that because i think the United States is at a point in history where, yes, we have to make some big changes. Weve got to get the middle class growing again, weve got to deal with income inequality, we should be taxing the wealthy, not giving them the biggest tax cut in the history of the universe which is what trump wants to do. So, yeah, i thought there were so many really big, important challenges. But i was going into this fundamentally confident and optimistic about americas future. I think our diversity is a big plus in the world in which we find ourselves, and i think there was a lot we could have done to lift that up and move us forward. So now im just hoping that not too much damage is done to our institutions, to the rule of law and to peoples futures. President bush thursday called, talked about the cruelty in american politics. He didnt mention the president by name. Right. Your reaction to what he said. I thought it was an important speech, and i really appreciated president bush delivering it. And he covered a lot of ground. He talked about how White Supremacy is an absolute blasphemy to the american creed. He talk about the importance of, you know, listening to each other and working with each other. I did not always agree with president bush, as i think any democrat sitting across from you would say, but i never doubted his patriotism, and i never doubted that, you know, he worked really hard all day, he went to bed worried, woke up, you know, concerned about what he would do. I was in the oval office with him two days after 9 11 as a senator from new york. I looked into his eyes. I understood a lot of what he was having to face. And so i appreciate him coming out and making a thoughtful critique of where american politics is right now, because we are on the wrong path. You know, this ideological purity that forces people to be on opposite sides of Critical Issues never to talk compromise, to engage in an ongoing assault on facts, reason and evidence like these ridiculous claims the republicans are making about this tax cut . They say its going to help middle class incomes. Its not, weve been down this road before. So i think we should get back to evidencebased policy making where we can have very robust debates and where we are looking for Common Ground the way that Lamar Alexander and patty murray tried to find it in order to keep the Affordable Care act going with subsidies for, you know, working people who need the help. Theres good things we can do. But whats happened, and its in both parties but its much, much more in the republican party, its been captured by ideological and religious and financial interests to an extent i never thought possible but happened because of Citizens United and the determination of a small group of rightwing billionaires to basically destroy our government and to use it only to make themselves richer and richer. It is wrong, it is bad for america. So, yes, its our politics, but its also the policies that they are pursuing. Are there people in the bush white in the Trump White House that are doing it right . People who can say, yes, he or she is doing a good job . I dont, i dont really know because i only see whats in public, and i have no access to what the fights are that theyre waging day by day. From the book, dave weigel, some of the critics, he says this bitter memoir is resembling of the shrunken, beaten Richard Nixon and john cass saying you take responsibility for your mistakes and proceed to blame everybody else. And you also quote a New York Post columnist and i wont repeat what he said. [laughter] there are many more positive reviews by a long shot, and the reason is because this is a balanced book. I take responsibility, i blame myself. My name was on the ball o. If thats all there was to it, i would not be out talking about the continuing challenges we face from sexism and misogyny, from Voter Suppression which every day seems to suggest it was one of the reasons i lost wisconsin, lets just put it on the table. Because its going to hurt democrats Going Forward unless we figure out how to stop the republicans from, you know, basically shrinking the electorate. From the russians, from the unprecedented intervention of the director of the fbi, never happened before. So i think there are some lessons people should learn. Now, some of my critics dont like what i say about the press, and i understand that, but i think they failed in this campaign. I think they followed the shiny object of emails day after day after day as all of the research shows, and they gave a big pass to trump and his reality tv tactics. And, you know, they now because some of them have talked to me. They now say, oh, we should have done a better job and, oh, my gosh, i had no idea. Fine, do a better job next time, but dont blame the messenger. Im coming with a firsthand personal, political, historical view about what happened in 2016. And wed better learn those lessons, or were going to have even more problems in our politics and country Going Forward. Two final points. First of all, your advice to the 2020 democratic nominee, whoever that person is. Well, im not giving advice on 2020. Im begging people to vote in 2017 in new jersey and virginia, and i am going to do everything i can through this new group ive started, onward together, to support candidates and causes in the 2018 election. If you are unhappy with the trump presidency, dont just complain, dont just show up at a march or a protest. Be sure you turn out and vote in 2018. And were going to have to do more to protect the sanctity of the vote and prevent it from being manipulated or prevented by the suppression techniques that republicans have adopted. Youre done with politics . Im not done with politics. Im done with being a candidate. Im not going to be a candidate, but im not done with politics. I care deeply about the country. I never would have put myself through this if i didnt believe i would have been a really good president and i had something to contribute. But more than that, i dont want to see us go backwards. These attacks on the rule of law, on courts, on the free press, all of it, i may have my objections about how the press covered this campaign, but you would never catch me saying yank licenses, and its only fake news. This is what were up against. Is im going to stay in politics. I want to be right in the middle of the debate about our future. We are in chappaqua, so just finally, walk us through the process of writing this book. Well, when i thought maybe there was a book in it, i talked with my publisher, and they were reluctant about giving a goahead on a book about the campaign, and they suggested other things that i might write about. And my response was, you know, look, this is what i think about every day, this is what i gave my heart to for many months, this is what i want to write about. They said, okay, well, get at it and see what you come up with. So i had some great young people whod worked with me on the campaign who did research and drafting and worked with me literally in such an intensive, you know, sprint. I turned in the first draft of the manuscript, rough but put together after, like, four months in may. And the publisher came back and said its really good stuff, and if you can get it done by the end of june, we can get it out in Early September. I said, oh, my gosh, you guys are killing me. I dove into it, literally allnighters. I felt like i was back in college. Got it done by the end of june, did corrections into early july, i did it all at my house, and this little guesthouse that i have behind our house where lots of, you know, lots of long nights took place. And then i recorded it too. The audio, i did the whole audio myself. And everything was done by the end of july, Simon Schuster got it out by september 12th, which was pretty remarkable. Last question. Whats on your reading list . You know, im doing a lot of reading, im doing a lot of catchup reading. I just finished the latest john la car ray mystery which was a retrospective and a lookback at what happened. Im about to dive into George Sanders bordeaux because i know he just got the penn award, and people have been recommending it. But i now have about four feet of books on my bedside table, things that people have been giving me that they hope that i will read and enjoy, and i intend to. Hillary clinton here in chappaqua, new york. Is in your home for good now . It is. Its absolutely our home. We love it here. We thank you for being with us. Thank you, steve. Youre watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup. Tonight at 7 p. M. Eastern, university of michigan professor taya miles becomes the role that slavery examines the role that slavery played. And then a microsoft ceo talks about the reinvention of moth. At 9 p. M. Eastern, founder and ceo of Success Academy Charter Schools Eva Moskowitz discusses her work in education. On booktvs after words, bob schieffer, former host of cbs face the nation, examines the impact of technology on journalism. And we wrap up at 11 with the publishing of regnerys 70th anniversary party. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. Television for serious readers. Now, as we all know, the difficult part in iraq and afghanistan was not taking the regime down, but figuring out what happened afterwards. And in the immediate aftermath of iraq, we saw chaos, and theres this rise of an insurgency that is fueled by saddam husseins baath party. And special operations are called in to do man hunts and specifically to find saddam and his sons. They do eventually track down both of them. Heres saddam after he is captured by special operators, and its hoped initially that the sort of decapitation strike is going to put a lid on the insurgency, that its going to sort of fall apart now that saddam is gone. But unfortunately, there are others who are ready and willing to take up the charge. And so we then find ourselves in a prolonged insurgency campaign, and around this time we have general Stanley Mcchrystal coming in as the jsoc commander and task force 714 is the task force he sets up in iraq. And at the time, it was not particularly active, and there are still a lot of people who thought the elite forces should not be doing sort of daily operations, they should focus on only the the big targets. Mcchrystal decides we cant do that, saddam has shown its not going to work, so he looks for ways to ramp up their operations and does so very effectively. You can see from here there was only ten operations per month when he comes in in 2004, that goes up to 300 in 2006. And this is made possible by advances in Communications Technology and also by the fact the iraqis are using cell phones and computers without a lot of thought as to the fact that theyre getting intercepted. So quite impressive. And, you know, a lot of people think at this scale we can, in fact, destroy the insurgency. We also have on the white soft side this is another term that people sometimes get confused about but its basically the operators who are not part of jsoc. So its mainly special forces and navy seals at this time. But they also decide that they want to do this surge call strike precision Surgical Strike precision raid, go out and haul down bad guys in the middle of the night. And this is a move away from their more traditional role of working with local forces, local populations and will come under fire from a number within the community for taking them away from that. And so the, what we think of counterinsurgency typically of working with local forces to secure the population is mainly done by conventional forces. And well see over time there is better collaboration between special operations and general Purpose Forces or gpf as we call them. Because, you know, initially a lot of the sof were running around doing things by themselves and thinking that this was going to run the war, and they pissed off a lot of the conventional commanders who were the ones who had to go in the next morning and explain to the population what happened and clean up the mess. But over time they learned to actually Work Together and that what they did could be mutually reinforcing. And theres a myth in counterinsurgency that you dont need to actually capture and kill the enemy, and i think thats false, but you had a sort of division of labor where the special operators would go in and do the capturing, killing of leadership targets while the conventional forces would do more population security, theyd go in and stir up hornets nests and reveal targets. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. We are in our 22nd year of the texas book festival. It was founded in 1995 by thenfirst Lady Laura Bush and a Pretty Amazing group of dedicated volunteers who decided that we just needed to have a book festival in austin, texas, to celebrate Texas Authors and literacy. And to support our texas libraries. And since those early years, the book festival has just exploded and very quickly became a national, premier destination for the biggest books of the year. Join booktv for the texas book festival live from austin saturday and sunday november 4th and 5th on crushes span 2. On cspan2. Hi, guys. Hows everybody doing today . Good. Welcome to kramerbooks. My name is rachel, just a reminder, please silence your cell phones. Youre welcome to follow us on social media to stay up on our events. Today were here to talk about economics. N