AI-generated q&a format analysis of the interview
Hillary Clinton shares insights from her MasterClass, discussing resilience, overcoming setbacks, dealing with criticism, and the challenges women face in public life. She reflects on political events and offers perspectives on navigating a complex media landscape.
Published December 12, 2021
This q&a format was automatically generated by AI from the interview. The analysis provides structured insights extracted from the conversation.
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Interviewer: So we started to talk about this masterclass that you sat down and do. It’s no light lift. I watched 16 episodes of you talking to camera and really spilling it and opening it. What was appealing to you about this idea?
Interviewee: You know, when I was approached about doing it, I had watched a few masterclasses. And I was really taken with those classes that were telling you how to do something or what the process, like, you know, how to write or how to cook, something along those lines. And so when they asked me, I said, well, you know, what do you want me to talk about? And they said, basically, we want you to talk about why you have done what you’ve done throughout your life and how you overcame setbacks and disappointments. And really became so resilient. I said, well, I have a lot of experience of that because, you know, my life has been covered, as you well know, in, you know, sound bites and images. And this was a chance to really get behind all of that, to talk about the why. I mean, why would somebody, would anybody, and in particular, why would I go into public life, go into public service, go into politics? And, you know, I’ve always believed that a life well lived includes service to others. And this class, which gave me a chance to answer questions that they posed to me and to talk about, you know, my growing up and some of the challenges that I faced, you know, seemed like a way of breaking through and talking to people directly that I love. And it was an amazing experience, Willie.
Interviewer: You really get into, I mean, you started from your childhood and you get into present day. Was there anything as you sat down that you said, I don’t think I want to talk about that? Or did you say, here it is?
Interviewee: I said, here it is, because as I understand how Masterclass is consumed by viewers, people are turning in for, yes, advice about something specific, but also to hear from people who’ve been in the public eye, in whatever walk of life, to kind of pick up either hints or ideas. Here’s what to do, here’s what not to do, and I couldn’t have done a Masterclass that was filmed over, what, three and a half days and was such a professional operation from start to finish without being completely open and saying, I’m here, you can ask me whatever you want, and I may have some additional things to say, too.
Interviewer: All right. Was there catharsis to it for you? Because as you say, you’ve been perceived a certain way, and this was your chance to sort of maybe correct the record on some of that. Did it feel, given 2016 and some other things before that, did it feel good to talk about these out loud?
Interviewee: It did. I didn’t expect that, but at the end, it was cathartic, and it was an intensely personal experience, because oftentimes people will say to me, well, you’re not what I thought you were, or you’re not what I expected. And I realized that for many people who will never meet me personally, will never be part of any project or opportunity that I’m trying to pursue, the only way they’ll ever know me is through the media, through both the mediated media, the made-up media, and the direct-to-camera media. And so this was a chance to, you know, just be myself and let people, you know, behind the curtain, sort of learn more about really who I am and why I do what I do.
Interviewer: You talk about criticism that you’ve received over the course of your life and your professional career. One of the challenges I would think of this is making your story, which is so extraordinary and so public, relatable to other people. Just the average person who’s watching it and wants to feel resilient in their lives. So how did you get at that part, where someone can’t relate to running for president and having chants yelled at her and that kind of criticism to, I got some bad news at work, or somebody said they don’t like my dress? How did you square those?
Interviewee: Well, I really wanted to ground what I was talking about in terms of what people might know from the headlines or from, you know, the highlights of my career, both the ups and the downs. Into like the nitty gritty. So, for example, not everybody will make a speech in front of millions of people, but nearly everybody at some point is going to have to get over the fear of public speaking. And it’s going to have to figure out what is it I want to say and how do I say it and how do I learn how to do that? Or the setbacks that happen in life when maybe you’re treated, in your opinion, unfairly. How do you respond to that? How do you pick yourself up? So, it was really part of my goal in doing the Masterclass to be rooted in the kinds of experiences that maybe I’ve had on the international stage, but which are part of, you know, most people’s professional or public life if they’re in any kind of public setting. And I actually liked that because the Masterclass team, which is predominantly a lot younger than I am, would, you know, respond to something that I would say. And they’d say, oh, my gosh, I never thought of it that way or I had this experience. So, I felt like even with the people that are in the production of the Masterclass that I was part of, that I was able to connect my experience with either their experience or their aspiration.
Interviewer: So, how did you read and then deal with the criticism that you’ve received, which has been very harsh at times? How do you deal with criticism that includes people calling for you to be locked up during a presidential campaign? How do you remain stoic and do your job in the face of that?
Interviewee: Well, this was something that I learned over many years and sadly have a lot of experience with. And it’s what I tried to convey to the Masterclass viewers. Everybody’s going to get criticized. You cannot live for very long without having somebody criticize something about you or what you are doing. So, learning to deal with criticism is part of the human experience. It shouldn’t be in any way thought of as only for people in the public eye. And what I learned was to take criticism seriously but not personally. And by that I mean, you know, sometimes your critics can give you good insight. You may not want to hear it. You may wish it hadn’t been said. But you have to at least listen and evaluate it. But a lot of the time, if you allow it to impact you personally as opposed to trying to look at it as another piece of information. But if you feel like it’s a personal attack, then it tears you down. It doesn’t give you tools to become a better you. So, taking it seriously means, number one, really appreciating what the source of it is. So, a lot of the most outrageous attacks, insults that have been sent my way, I don’t take seriously or personally. I mean, they are motivated by people who do want to tear me down, want to create a false impression of who I am. And they can be dismissed. And, you know, you mentioned lock her up. I mean, what an absurd and in many ways dangerous attack. Because, you know, we’re supposed to live in a society governed by the rule of law. And the people chanting that and yelling it at me, first of all, had no idea what they were talking about. And secondly, were being instigated to do that. So, I don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff. But if, you know, somebody says, well, you know, she could have done a better job explaining what she was doing. Or I didn’t really get her point about, you know, why she wanted a health care plan that did this instead of that. I mean, I will take that, as they say, on board. And I’ll say, okay, I need to do better on that. I need to express myself better. I need to explain it more clearly. And I think that if people don’t shrink from criticism but understand where it’s coming from, evaluate it accordingly, take it seriously where it’s meant to be understood that way, and not take it personally, you can go through life and withstand a lot of incoming attacks because you have to.
Interviewer: It’s one of the great concerns we have as parents of a 14-year-old girl. You know, you go on Instagram and she doesn’t have Instagram and she doesn’t like us for that, but she doesn’t have it. I say, show me the upside, and she hasn’t yet made that case. But the reason we know it’s damaging is because we’ve seen internal documents from Facebook and Instagram that show us it affects young girls. So we live in a different world than when you and I grew up, and these are scary things to know that there could be a pile-on that affects someone you care about and love so much in a way that could be devastating to her or to the family. So what do we do about that?
Interviewee: Well, I think one thing we do is admit there’s a big problem, and because of the information that we’re finally getting access to, thanks to whistleblowers and the media doing their investigative work, we’re seeing that Facebook in particular, and of course Facebook owns Instagram, so Facebook and Instagram have known for a long time that their algorithms, which drive people down rabbit holes toward conspiracy and toward crazy disinformation posts that they, unfortunately, people are so drawn to, can have an impact. We see it in every way in our individual lives, our political lives. But now the information that they know that this kind of social media involvement for young kids, teenagers, is bad for them, and they persist in it, and they seem almost defiant about it. Because, you know, they would like to have an Instagram for children. We’re talking like five to 11-year-old children. I mean, and I’ve said, you know, I’m chaining myself to the, you know, to the door. We’re not letting that happen. We are conducting a massive experiment on our children because technology, which brings so much incredibly great things to all of us, has downsides. And we’d better be really honest and understanding of those downsides. And in addition to the algorithms meant to addict us, the impact on kids whose brains are not even fully formed until they’re 25, and it affects literally messaging in your brain. And if you are caught in a negative loop where people online are saying bad things about you, they’re making fun of you, it’s really hard when you’re 14, 15 years old or younger to say, okay, I’m going to deal with this. So part of what we have to do, in addition to regulating better, and I hope that the administration and Congress, which seem to be looking at this, will decide to do that, we need to better equip our kids. And, you know, there’s been a movement going back some years for what they call media literacy. I mean, how do you know what’s true? Who do you listen to? We’ve got to really double down on that in schools, in our families, to help our kids get better equipped. So if somebody is saying something bad about you in person, you know, stop and say to yourself, why is that person doing that? Because very often it’s more about that person than it is about you. Maybe that person is jealous or envious of you. Maybe that person is, you know, wanting to break you apart from your friends and get, you know, those friends for that person, him or herself. You’ve got to understand what the motivation is. And then you’ve got to equip your kids to say, get a life, you know, leave me alone. Don’t come at me like that. Online, when it’s anonymous or it is repetitive, that’s much harder to do. But that’s part of the message behind my master class about getting resilience and building resilience. And not only in yourself, but in people you care about and particularly young people, because I worry that we are kind of out of control. I mean, this impact of technology on young people, on their brains, is really something that we’ve got to say as parents, as policymakers, wait a minute. No, you can’t do this. We’ve got to fix this. And then, of course, the impact on everything from, you know, the crazy conspiracy theories about vaccines to elections and public officials, all of which have huge audiences. Because the way it’s all designed is to attract those eyeballs. And I am, you know, very worried that we’re not paying enough attention to the impact that all of this is having.
Interviewer: You talk a lot about setbacks in the master class and being resilient in the face of setbacks. And you talk about some of the setbacks you’ve had in your professional life. 1993, heading up the task force for health care reform and not getting there. What did you learn from that experience and how were you resilient in the face of it?
Interviewee: Well, that was an incredible learning experience. As well as a devastating setback. I learned a lot. I learned, number one, that what seemed like a good idea at the time, because, you know, I’d practiced law. I headed up all kinds of programs to, you know, help my husband when he was governor of Arkansas, to reform education, to improve health care and the like. That when Bill asked me if I would head this up, what I did not understand is how much of a lightning rod that would make me as, quote, the first lady taking on such an enormous undertaking. I could have been supportive, I could have been an advocate for changes, but putting me in charge, which I felt, you know, very positive about doing because I cared so much about it, was a big red flag. And it made it really difficult for a lot of people to get beyond that. Then I think, secondly, what I learned in the specifics, because when we were working in this group of experts and practitioners and in concert with the Congress, is that we thought we could change the way people got insurance. They could, of course, continue to get it through their employer, but they could also buy into the insurance market and get, you know, a subsidy to do so, which later we saw with the Affordable Care Act. But that we had to reform the insurance industry and also get more of a handle on drug prices from the pharmaceutical industry. And one of the most curious things that I experienced is we would run the numbers. I mean, we had, you know, the Treasury Department, we had all these, you know, really great statisticians and economists. They would run the numbers and we could show how the reform would save businesses money, save families money, save the government money over time. And we would lay these out. And I remember meeting with CEOs, you know, big name CEOs who would look at our numbers. They’d bring their people together and, wow, they’d say, this sounds really good. And, you know, this might be something we’d support. And it wouldn’t be, you know, 72 hours before they’d start backing off because people were scared of change, even if the change looked like and was, you know, carefully explained could improve their condition. And they just didn’t want to risk it, and particularly if they were already working for companies that provided, you know, pretty good health insurance, even though the costs kept going up. And it was just a really hard sell to change something, although we weren’t going for, you know, single payer. We knew that that would never see the light of day politically and, frankly, culturally, publicly. We were going to try to get to universal health care coverage by getting everybody into the system. And, you know, they ran these famous ads like, oh, I don’t know. This doesn’t look good. What do you think? You know, I think they were called Harry and Louise or something like that. And, you know, they had a couple sitting there talking, oh, this seems too risky. I mean, they really understood those who were not wanting any change and any accountability, frankly, how to, you know, position that. So we weren’t successful. But what I talk about in the master class is, okay, that didn’t work. We couldn’t get to universal health care coverage despite our best efforts. What can we do? And for me, having been involved with the Children’s Defense Fund and being a child advocate, how do we at least get children whose parents are not working for companies that provide health care coverage or who are not in families poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid? There’s like 10, 12 million of these kids and families. What do we do for them? And that’s when I started working on a bipartisan piece of legislation that became the Children’s Health Insurance Program. So I felt like out of that setback and disappointment, we kind of picked ourselves up and at least provided health care for, you know, about 10 million kids a year.
Interviewer: So it was the lesson that you kind of, the swing was a little too big out of the gate and you have to take it piece by piece.
Interviewee: And so that is how I see political change in America right now, if it’s at all possible. There is so much pent up support and opposition to any kind of change. And, you know, we, I ran a whole primary campaign in 2016 about single payer versus let’s get everybody, you know, finally covered, finishing universal health care. I ran that in 2008. I mean, it was one of the areas, ironically, that then Senator Obama and I disagreed with because I said, you’re going to have to have some kind of mandate, get everybody in the system. He said, no, he ended up having one, Supreme Court threw it out. I mean, you know, this is, this is the kind of back and forth that is often required to expand any kind of benefit or service to people. And it’s, you know, why I think what, you know, President Biden is trying to do is, is consequential, incremental and consequential. Because, you know, with the infrastructure bill, we’ve been talking about infrastructure for, what, 25 years. And finally, we’ve got a bill. We are woefully behind in repairing, maintaining and building all kinds of physical infrastructure, plus building out broadband and other things that are important to our economy. And then with the so-called Build Back Better, we know that if you want to have an economy, especially post-pandemic, that really grows and has opportunities, particularly for mothers with children, you’re going to have to do something about child care. And you’re going to have to do something about paid family leave. These are not just nice things. These are really economic necessities going forward in the world we find ourselves.
Interviewer: To the point about your experience, is the lesson that they shouldn’t take this $2 trillion package and shove it through at once? Should they take child care? Should they take the tax credit? Should they take those pieces and pass them on their own?
Interviewee: No. I think given where we are right now and given how much has been cut out of that bill, because remember, I think it started at $3.5 trillion or whatever it was. I think the pieces that are left that came through the House based on negotiation, because remember, there were people in the so-called Progressive Caucus, people in the so-called more moderate caucus, who were in great disagreement about what should be in the bill and how it should be paid for. They came to an agreement in the House, and I think that’s a pretty good indicator that what’s in the bill right now can be both explained and defended. Now, I have no idea what’s going to happen in the Senate, having served there for eight years. It’s always a near-death experience. I hope something comes out of the Senate before Christmas, because I think there is a lot of important needs in families and in climate change that are in that bill that will make us stronger and more prosperous going forward. So I think there was a give and take. I mean, part of the challenge is when you negotiate in public, it’s like, what do they say, don’t watch legislation or sausage being made, people get their hopes up, they get their hopes dashed, they get disgusted by the process, they get turned off. All of that happens. And I’ve been in a lot of closed-door meetings, you know, arguing about what should be in a bill, what shouldn’t be in a bill. And I understand that for people who are just tuning in and out, it might look crazy, because here we are, you know, arguing about this, that, and the other. But that is the way a democracy works. That is the way legislation gets passed. And I think I would argue that if you look at the challenge posed by climate change, what’s in these two bills, the one that’s already passed, the one that I hope will pass, is critically important, not just for dealing with the threat of rising temperature in a way of trying to lower emissions, but mitigating against it. You know, we have parts of our country already, up in Alaska, along the coastline, that have been devastated. We have noonday flooding in Miami Beach. We have a lot that’s already happening that we’re going to have to mitigate against. So all of that is in these bills, and I hope it comes to pass.
Interviewer: There’s always consternation and hand-wringing about the Democratic Party, is it too progressive? Should the centrists win the day? If you look at the way, I don’t have to tell you this, presidential campaigns are one, whether it’s your husband or Joe Biden, they tend to understand where the middle is while keeping progressives close. So where do you think the Democratic Party is right now? Because there are people who say the lesson of, say, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia was that he grabbed some of those independents and those centrists, and that maybe the campaign Terry McAuliffe ran was too far left. So what do you see as the state of the Democratic Party right now?
Interviewee: I think that it is a time for some careful thinking about what wins elections, and not just in deep blue districts where a Democrat and a liberal Democrat or so-called progressive Democrat is going to win. First of all, we don’t know what the state of the map is going to be after all of the redistricting. It appears as though the Republicans in a number of states are doing their best to eliminate as many seats that Democrats can be competitive in. And so we’ve got to be very clear-eyed about what it’s going to take to hold the House and the Senate in 2022 and to win the Electoral College, because also Republicans are doing everything they can to create an environment in which winning the Electoral College, even narrowly the way Joe Biden did, will be out of reach for a Democrat. So I understand why people want to argue for their priorities, that’s what they believe they were elected to do, but at the end of the day, nothing is going to get done if you don’t have a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. And our majority comes from people who win in much more difficult districts, and our majority in the Senate comes from people who can win in not just blue states and hold those wins, as we saw didn’t happen in Virginia, but can win in more purplish states. So, look, I’m all about having vigorous debate. I think it’s good, and it gives people a chance to be part of the process, but at the end of the day, it means nothing if we don’t have a Congress that will get things done, and we don’t have a White House that we can count on to be sane and sober and stable and productive. So this is going to be a very intense period, not just for the Democratic Party, but for the country. You know, if you look at Virginia, and you look at what was a relatively much closer race in New Jersey than I think people had expected, and of course, I was strongly supporting both Phil and Terry. I think there are a lot of lessons, I mean, one of the lessons is, even though turnout in Virginia went up, the vote that Terry got was 600,000 more than what he got when he won, and 200,000 more than what Northam got when he won, the vote on the other side went up even more. And so what are the different kinds of motivations that voters who would be more willing to vote for Democrats are going to need to show up? And we have an unfortunate pattern. You know, when Bill became president and pushed through a lot, including the Brady Bill, the assault weapons ban, deficit reduction, raise taxes on the wealthy, people forget that, he lost the Congress two years later. When Barack Obama came in, after the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, you know, not since the Great Depression, pushed through the Affordable Care Act, pushed through big stimulus programs. You can argue was it big enough or not big enough, but he pushed it through, and we began a slow, steady recovery. You know, the 2010 midterm was not good for us. The shellacking, as he called it. The shellacking, and so this is a phenomenon that is as much psychological and cultural as it is political. Democrats get elected, and they eventually serve two terms, as both Bill and Barack did, to fix things. I mean, people want these leaders, and both of them obviously were charismatic and very bigger-than-life, you know, kinds of leaders, but they want them to fix things. And fixing things is hard, and fixing things often creates dissonance, like, oh, my gosh, okay, all right, I voted for an assault weapons ban. Oh, my gosh, can I defend it? Or if the other side is more intensely feeling about it, you know, what do I have to do to try to combat that? It becomes complicated, and the same with the Affordable Care Act and other things that, you know, President Obama got passed. So here we are with President Biden, who I agree with you, was in many ways, I think now looking back, the candidate running who was most likely to defeat Trump, in part because he was, you know, really focused on what he needed to say and do to make people feel that he had a pair of safe hands that they could trust. And they did, and his popular vote margin was enormous, biggest in American history. His electoral vote margin was not much bigger than my loss was. So the numbers that you have to look at when you’re trying to put together a winning campaign, whether it’s for the House, the Senate, or the White House, are really hard. And if you’re living in an ecosystem like we are now, where lies are the currency for the other side, and whether it’s Fox News or Breitbart or social media, the lies never end. And they are well designed to make people uneasy, to make people frustrated. Like one of the things that I think happened in Virginia, after having schools closed for so long, people were really focused on schools and education. And I don’t think that the Democrats and Terry understood how disoriented, particularly moms, were about the experience that they had gone through. The critical race theory argument was a kind of stalking horse for all of the anxiety and the fear of Zoom education, of kids being depressed because they weren’t with their friends, of moms having to leave the workforce to take care of their kids. There were some real issues that needed to be addressed in a careful, thoughtful way, but the other side knew, okay, there’s an issue, let’s really rev it up. Let’s get people upset and angry, and let’s do it by talking about critical race theory and the books in the library and all of that. When the real concern, which should have been recognized, was, you know what, this has been a hard, hard year. Here’s what I’m going to do to make it easier. And, you know, but, you know, that’s all in retrospect.
Interviewer: You mentioned 2016. I think the moment that is going to stick out to most people in this master class is an extraordinary one where you sit down and you read what you call the would-be victory speech. It was supposed to be delivered at the Javits Center November 8, 2016. What compelled you to sit down and revisit that speech?
Interviewee: Well, Masterclass asked me to. Again, I wanted to be as helpful as I could to the viewers and to the process of being in a Masterclass. And I admit I was somewhat doubtful. I didn’t, as you know, write a concession speech because even though we had a lot of bumps those last 10 days, I still thought, you know, we could pull it out. And our polling and analytics suggested we could. And so I worked on a speech that really was about my journey and had a real emphasis on my mother’s life and journey because I had talked a lot about that during the campaign as a way of making it clear that, yes, I would be the first woman president. But I, like everybody, stood on the shoulders and lived the lives and experiences of those who came before us. So when they asked me to do it, I really had a hard time getting through it. I mean, it partly was so emotional because it brought back what to me was a great loss, not just for me, but for our country with somebody like Trump getting elected despite everything. And I think his four years in office sort of proved my fears about that, but it was also intensely personal, particularly at the end where I talk about the little girl my mother was when she was put on a train in Chicago at the age of eight in charge of her, you know, younger sister by themselves to go live with her paternal grandparents because her mother and father didn’t want them anymore. And, you know, my whole emphasis, starting when I was in law school going forward on working for kids, you know, neglected and abused kids, sick kids, poor kids, kids with disabilities, all of that was in many ways motivated by the life my mother lived. And how her abandonment and her resilience to keep going and to end up, you know, being an incredible mother for me and my brothers was what I wanted for every child. No matter what happened to that child, no matter what setback that child might experience, what could we do? What could a family do? What could a community, what could a country do to try to make that a little easier, make it a little more stable so that kids would have the foundation that they needed? And, you know, it was part of what informed all of my campaigns, including in 2016.
Interviewer: Yeah, it’s I had to go back and reread. I watched it once, the master class, and I went back and reread all the details of your mother’s story of the childhood. And then I watched it again, because to think of an eight-year-old girl, and she’s the big girl with her little sister being sent across the country on a train to live with grandparents who didn’t treat her great either. When it’s the last two minutes of that speech, what catches you as you read that?
Interviewee: Well, what catches me is I envision her being on that train, and I envision myself kind of going back in time, being, you know, being an adult who has just been elected president and in part elected to protect and nurture and support families to support kids. That’s, that’s really how I think about it. And so I envision myself being on that train and, you know, going down the aisle and finding this little girl and sitting down and talking with her and telling her it was going to be okay. It really, it was an image that so captured sort of what I care about and, and what I’ve tried to do in my professional and public career. Uh, and it was a way of having her with me, you know, that, uh, on that journey, um, that I hoped would end up at the Javits Center that night. Uh, so it was incredibly emotional and, uh, yeah, I, um, I, I appreciate them asking me to do it, um, because it’s so reflective of what I care about and who I am.
Interviewer: Did it feel good? We were talking about catharsis at the beginning. I know people who’ve known you for a long time and say they’ve never seen that level of public emotion from you.
Interviewee: Well, that’s probably true. And, you know, part of it, Willie, is when you’re, uh, a woman in public life and you are especially somebody who is trying to break that glass ceiling, trying to knock down barriers, you’re kind of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I mean, if you show emotion that may connect with some people, but for a lot of people, it’s like, ha, told you, you know, a woman shouldn’t have these jobs, you know, they’re too emotional. Although, you know, Ronald Reagan could cry or, you know, other presidents could get teary eyed. That’s okay. It’s like an added attribute that you can attach to a man, but it’s a disqualification attached to a woman. And as someone who was trying to be the first woman president, and I looked to women in, you know, recent history, um, you know, one of the things that you never saw is very much emotion. I mean, think about Margaret Thatcher. Think about Angela Merkel. Think about Indira Gandhi. I mean, you, you think about the women who rose to the head of state or head of government in places where they’ve already done that, which we haven’t. And yeah, I’ve talked with some of them, you know, Angela Merkel’s a friend of mine. It’s really hard because you want to convey the emotion you feel because it does connect you with many people, but it can be so mercilessly received by the press and the public. And I write about this in the book I wrote after the 2016 election, what happened, you know, because I remember that second debate and Trump stalking me. And so in addition to answering people’s questions, I’m thinking like, wait a minute, you know, this is outrageous. He’s like looming over me and he’s trying to show that, you know, this is the alpha man and that’s who should be president. I get the whole psychological gamesmanship, but what do I do? Do I pivot around and say, you know, back up, you creep. You’re not going to intimidate me. Do I try to make a joke about it, but that acknowledges that he got to me? How would that be received? Because no woman’s ever been in that Oval Office. And we still have, sadly, you know, a minority, but nevertheless, a minority votes of people who just don’t see a woman ever in that office. And we saw that with, you know, the terrific women who ran in, you know, 2020 and not one of them won a caucus. They didn’t win a state. I mean, it’s hard. And when you’re the first out there and you’re trying to figure out all of the cultural, psychological, political currents. So I said, no, I’m not, you know, I’m going to ignore the guy. And I don’t want somebody saying if she can’t handle Donald Trump, how is she going to handle Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? I’m not, you know, no, I’m going to stick to my business. I’m going to make my case. You know, was that the right decision, the wrong decision? Who knows? Because it never was a decision that a woman had to make before. And so part of what I hope, you know, viewers get out of the Masterclass is, yeah, I’ve had some unique experiences, but my unique experiences are rooted in everyday people’s experiences, particularly women. You know, the women who get looked up and down when they walk into a meeting, the women who, when they show up, you know, for the meeting are told to get the coffee, the women who put an idea out there and nobody pays attention to them. And then, you know, two minutes later, a man says the same thing and everybody says, that’s a great idea. These are common experiences. And if I can, through my, you know, rather public life, help somebody say, okay, wait a minute, let me at least think through what I would do and let me be prepared. And, you know, sometimes humor works, sometimes, you know, pushing somebody back works. You know, these are all the nuances of what it’s like to be a woman, you know, in the workforce. And I remember Lily Ledbetter, you remember Lily Ledbetter, that fabulous woman from Alabama who’d worked on a factory floor for decades and rose through the ranks to become a foreman, you know, one of the managers on the floor. And it was so proud of herself and then learned that she wasn’t getting paid the same for doing the very same job. So she raised a fuss about it. And it turned out she never got the pay that she was entitled to, but she paved the way for millions and millions of other women to finally have, you know, the right to claim what they are due. So sometimes when you’re the first through the door, the first on the, you know, issue that is upsetting you, you may not get what you are hoping for yourself, but you open the door, pave the way for others.
Interviewer: You know, you said things went just the opposite way. Okay. So how painful was it for you and has it been to watch the country since that day?
Interviewee: Right. I’d say the last four years between 2017 and 2021 were incredibly difficult and painful for me because when I gave my concession speech the next day, I hoped for the best from Donald Trump. You know, I thought the campaign was really vicious and mean-spirited. I thought the help he got from, you know, literally Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks and Russia and all the rest of it was really scary. But I hoped that being in the Oval Office, being the president, would have a really both modifying and uplifting effect on him. And then I went to the inauguration and I heard that outrageous speech about carnage in the street. There wasn’t one grace note in that inaugural address. There wasn’t anything that said, okay, I know some of you didn’t vote for me, but I’m your president, which is what a president is supposed to do, which is what we’re seeing from Joe Biden, who is modeling the exact opposite of that kind of presidential behavior. But it was what he did and how he abused the office and how he mistreated people, starting, you know, with the Muslim ban through the outrageous behavior in trying to overturn the election and encouraging an attack on our Capitol. The one advantage Trump had, and to some extent still holds, is he is so outrageous in attacking our institutions and undermining our rule of law that it’s hard for people to believe literally what they are seeing before them. I think it’s still hard for some of the press, frankly, Willie, to understand this man is still trying to overturn an election he lost. You know, I will tell you, honestly, I had much more basis to try to overturn 2016 if you really looked at voter suppression and some of the other things that went on. And this guy has no basis at all in law or fact. There’s not a single credible piece of evidence. He does not care. He wants to destroy this country’s institutions. And sadly, the Republican Party has gone along with him. And for the life of me, people who I knew that I served with, who fall in line on the outrageous accusations they make, whether it’s against Dr. Tony Fauci or pretending that what happened on January 6th wasn’t an insurrection, honestly, they have hung their spines up on the wall as they walk into their offices. They have no conscience, they have no spine, and we are seeing the results of a party that has been taken over by a demagogue. And we know from history that’s not good news, that’s scary news. And we have to do much more than we’re doing now to fight back against this very organized effort to undermine our elections, to put into place laws and regulations that are contrary to fair process, to fair voting. And I worry that still too many people are like, oh, you know, it can’t be that bad, or it can’t go that far. It’s a failure of imagination. And I wrote after January 6th that one of the findings after 9-11 by the 9-11 Commission was a failure of imagination. After January 6th, I think it still is a failure of imagination that the Congress, through its committees in the House particularly, are trying to get to the bottom of what happened. And there is no sense of duty or honor on the part of many of the people that worked for Trump. They don’t want to cooperate. Probably they’re complicitous in some way, and they don’t want that to be proven. But I am very worried. And it didn’t end with his defeat. I think a lot of people thought, okay, you know, wow, he messed up this vaccine thing. And, I mean, telling people to inject bleach and this crazy stuff. Let’s get rid of him. Let’s bring in somebody who is familiar, who we think has the right values, and let’s put him in charge. And there has been nothing but relentless attacks on Biden against his policies from the very first day. And, you know, it’s a time to decide whether we’re going to be a grown-up country or not. Are we going to give in to all of this, all these lies and this disinformation and this organized effort to undermine our rule of law and our institutions? Or are we going to stand up to it? And part of what standing up to it means is, you know, supporting those people, starting with the president, who is trying to model sensible leadership, trying to get things done that will actually help the whole country.
Interviewer: So, what do you see as a potential outcome? I don’t want to go complete doomsday, but, I mean, of what might be possible here. Because, as you say, it’s not one man. It’s a lot of people who have gone along for the ride. And people you’ve worked with and people you know and people I interview who behind the scenes will roll their eyes about Donald Trump or outright say they hate the guy. And then they’ll rush down to Mar-a-Lago and take a picture with him so that they can show it to their supporters and raise some money. So, if you have, if it’s not just about a guy, if it’s about a group of people, what do you see as being possible? What could happen here?
Interviewee: Well, I think we have to keep stripping away the facade. And you just said something that I think is important. Because I know I occasionally have conversations with some of them. They can’t stand him. They think he’s dangerous. And they’re scared of their base and the base that he has inflamed. And only a very few have done anything resembling a profile in courage, as we know. More often, those who can’t take it anymore are basically quitting. They’re retiring. But they have said enough to journalists like you for you to say, wait a minute, you rolled your eyes back in the green room. You know what, last time I talked to you, before you went on, you said the guy is dangerous. I want you, in front of, you know, our public right now, to tell us, is he dangerous or is he not? I think that there has to be a continuing effort by the press and others. I think…
Interviewer: And just not to interrupt you, they won’t even come on the shows anymore.
Interviewee: Because they don’t want to be asked that question in public. They don’t want to be asked. And I think we have to continue a drumbeat against Fox News, which has been an instrument for this destruction. I mean, who was probably the first person in the United Kingdom to get vaccinated? Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch, in December, as soon as the vaccines were available, made it clear he needed a vaccine, he got a vaccine. And then he has a station which does nothing but spread lies. And then the station and the corporation tell everybody they have to be vaccinated. But then they continue to incite people and create this wild disconnect that people who are Fox News viewers are living in. And the guy who set it all up, runs it, profits from it, everybody who works for him, they’re all vaccinated. But let’s bring on another kook to say how, you know, it’s going to upset your DNA, make you infertile and, you know, put a chip in your head. It’s so… It’s not only hypocritical. It goes far beyond that. It is shameful. And it is dangerous. So anything that can continue to be done to call them out, to call them to account, you know, two journalists just quit because of, you know, something that I guess Tucker Carlson had done on the Kyle Rittenhouse case, turning this, you know, young man who had no business with an automatic weapon walking into a protest in the first place at 17 years of age, you know, turning him into some kind of, you know, minor right-wing hero. And, you know, two journalists walked out. The more attention and focus and pressure that can be brought there all to the good. But we do have to figure out how we’re going to manage the tsunami of false information that people digest and believe. And we’ve not done a very good job. And I’ve had this conversation endlessly with people, not just in journalism, but, you know, people in politics. Say, okay, if you look at the top 10 Facebook feeds, 9 out of 10, sometimes 10 out of 10, are all right-wing propaganda. And they’re saying terrible things about Joe Biden, terrible things about Kamala Harris. They’re still saying terrible things about me because they can’t rid themselves of their obsession with me. But they’re making up stuff all the time. And they are feeding that to people. And we’re just not, I mean, nobody is competing with that. And people will say to me, yeah, but we don’t lie. Okay, I agree with that. We don’t lie. We’re going to have to figure out how to tell the truth in a more impactful, algorithmic, addictive way. Because otherwise, people are just going to be lost in this flurry of disinformation. And they’re going to end up believing stuff that is not only not true, but undermining our country. And look, if I were a betting person right now, I’d say Trump is going to run again. I mean, he seems to be setting himself up to do that. And if he’s not held accountable, then, you know, he gets to do it again. And he gets to try to squeak through the electoral college because he’s going to have, you know, handpicked people running elections in critical states. I think that could be the end of our democracy. Not to be too, you know, pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this is a make-or-break point. If he were or someone of his ilk were once again to be elected president, and if especially he had a Congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognize our country. And, you know, some people, I think, say to themselves, well, it’s not going to affect me. If the level of corruption that comes with autocracy affects everybody. He doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t like your business because it competes with the business of a friend of his. Hide and watch what he does. I mean, it just is a terrifying prospect.
Interviewer: So, given everything you’ve just described, given everything that Donald Trump unleashed in the years after he won that election, do you ever have moments of responsibility or even guilt about what’s happened?
Interviewee: Of course, because, you know, I, yeah, I tried to warn people. I tried to make the case that this was really dangerous. The people he was allied with, what they were saying, what he might do. And I do. I mean, that’s why I wrote a book. I was trying to figure out, okay, what happened. And I got a lot of the, I think, pieces right in that book. It stands up pretty well over time. And I do think but for Jim Comey and the stunt he pulled 10 days before the election, I would have won. I mean, there’s a lot of evidence to that effect. I have polling. I have analytics. I have lots of things that show when he acted as though there was something to be found in old duplicate emails. Instead of doing whatever investigation he needed to do first before making a public display of it, yeah, I lost ground. I mean, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but let’s just take the Philadelphia suburbs. So before that happened, I was something like 33 points ahead in the Philadelphia suburbs. Then I lost like 18 points in that 10 days. Because people who, you know, they were just kind of coming, especially women, especially women in the suburbs of places like Philadelphia or Milwaukee or Detroit. They were just like saying, okay, you know, I’m going to give her a chance, you know, I’m not sure, but I’m going to give her a chance. And then this came along and they just kind of like said, I can’t, you know, and we have so much evidence of that. So, yeah, I feel terrible about, I feel terrible about not winning. I feel terrible about not stopping him and the people around him. But I feel like now everybody can see for themselves what kind of leader he is. And he got more votes this last time than he got when he ran against me. And clearly there were people who liked what they saw. Despite what I see as the real dangers to our country, they turned out and voted for him. And he’s trying to get it set up so that will happen again for him, even if he loses, as he did twice, the popular vote.
Interviewer: So part of being resilient, getting outside a little bit.
Interviewee: Yes, it has kept me sane for years now. I love living here north of New York City, as you know, because there are so many places, so many forest preserves and parks and beautiful trails to walk on, which I try to do every day if I can.
Interviewer: You talked about after the 2016 election, sort of going into the woods for a while. And then being ready to come out at some point.
Interviewee: I mean, literally the very first day after the election when I said, okay, I got to go for a walk. This is, dude, overwhelmingly depressing. And I ran into this young woman with her dog and her baby, and she gave me a big hug. And yes, going into the woods, I find deeply restorative. And I don’t know, just being outside is something that I want to do even more of every chance I get.
Interviewer: What would people like that woman say to you in the days after the election?
Interviewee: They would cry. They would cry. They would say they were so sorry. They’d say they, you know, lots of times they would say they worked so hard. Sometimes they would say, I’m so sorry, I didn’t vote, or I forgot to vote, or I didn’t think you needed me. Yes, so there was lots of those encounters. But it was really touching. And, you know, a lot of people are still, you know, in their own hearts and minds struggling with that election, in part because we saw what came after, and it was, you know, quite disturbing.
Interviewer: You talked in your concession speech the next morning directly to young women and girls. And said, don’t give up hope. And why was that important?
Interviewee: Well, because I had so many young girls and young women, not only who worked for me, but who would come to my rallies, who would come dressed in pantsuits, who would come holding signs they made at home. And I didn’t want them to get discouraged from pursuing their own dreams. And really, things that are important to you, things that are valuable, they’re worth fighting for. Even if you don’t win all the time, you know, you still have to get up and care about the world you’re in and care about each other and do what you can to make a difference. And I wanted to be sure to, you know, convey that at what was, you know, obviously really low moment for me, but an opportunity to have that final conversation.
Interviewer: You think we’ll see a woman president soon?
Interviewee: Well, I sure hope so, Willie, but, you know, we’ll got to make it happen. It’s not easy, as I know very well. And we have to continue to push back on all of the caricatures and the stereotypes and the unfair assumptions that still play too big a role in both the media coverage of women candidates and women office holders, but also more generally out in the public.
Interviewer: Thank you so much for your time today.
Interviewee: This is fun. Thank you.
Interviewer: We’ll get you out of the cold.
Interviewee: I enjoyed it.
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