David Remnick: I last sat down with Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2017. Clinton was still working through everything that had gone so badly wrong the year before: how she'd lost the election, and how Donald Trump had come to occupy the White House. Trump had campaigned with a chant of "Lock her up" - a threat that electrified so many of his supporters. Clinton, for them, was not merely a political opponent, but somehow the embodiment of evil. Now it's been almost a decade, and Donald Trump has, for the most part, moved on to yet other enemies.

Clinton remains very much a power broker in the Democratic Party and a leader of its centrist wing. She's also a voice of authority on US foreign policy. With the Clinton Foundation, she's advocated for bringing down the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide and getting phones out of classrooms. I sat down with Hillary Clinton again this past week to talk about the war in Iran, Joe Biden's doomed campaign for the presidency, and how America might perhaps begin to move beyond Trumpism. We met on Stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

[applause]

David Remnick: Secretary Clinton, in your book Something Lost, Something Gained, you write about your state of mind after the election of Donald Trump. You describe yourself as someone who remains an optimist that worries a lot.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Now, we all worry, but I want to grasp the extent of your agony, and I want to begin with a big question: Does Donald Trump and Trumpism represent a real and sustained era of authoritarianism in this country?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I really believe that he does represent the threat of authoritarianism. The people who enable him, who support him, who follow him, have clearly decided that his performance politics, his deliberate cruelty, is exactly what they want to see for the country. Now, the good news is his favorability is in the mid-30s, but he is doubling down. He's doubling down on his impulsiveness, and it's very worrisome to me. I teach at Columbia University now, of course, with the dean there - it's called Inside the Situation Room - and we talk about the traits of leaders, their behavior, their psychology.

There is a view that is rooted in how people make decisions - all of us, not just leaders - about what happens when someone finds themselves in what's called the "domain of loss." It's a psychological concept. Almost counterintuitively, when people feel they are losing, they very frequently take greater risks; they double down on their behavior. That's what I'm now worried about, because he's lashing out; he's demanding that we accept his version of reality, which is unhinged from the actual world that we live in and the actual consequences of his actions. I think we have to be extremely vigilant and just ready to push back every chance we get.

David Remnick: How has your understanding of his support evolved? You were criticized a lot, probably rightly, for using the word "deplorables" for many of his followers. How do you view the evolution of his followers and what it is that they want most of all from him?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: First of all, I said only about half were.

[laughter]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: To be fair.

David Remnick: Are you doubling down on "deplorable"?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I gave a speech, for example, about something called the "alt-right", which the press had no idea what I was talking about. Certainly, the public had no idea what I was talking about. I was beginning to see this really disturbing rhetoric: racist rhetoric, sexist rhetoric, the authoritarian, demagogic claims about our politics. It worried me. I tried to put that into the political debate, but I also did try to draw a line between those who were following him because of that. It wasn't a bug; it was the feature. People didn't take it seriously. People were like, "Oh, that's just Donald. He's just spouting off. Don't worry about it."

I saw something darker, but I was in not the strongest position - since I was running against him - to make that case. I was trying to say, "Look, I understand there are people who believe that kind of stuff, but most of the people, at least half, who are following him, they want change. They are not satisfied with where we are in the country." It was something that I was aware of and I respected because people were feeling that it's hard to succeed a two-term president of your own party. I knew that going into it. People liked and respected President Obama, but they wanted something that might be a little different.

David Remnick: A little different.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: They didn't know how different at the time.

David Remnick: I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I think it's fair to say that so far, JD Vance has not covered himself in glory, and Marco Rubio probably doesn't appeal to the base with quite the same stick-to-itiveness of Trump himself. I wonder if you think it's possible - and I think maybe this has run through your head - that the Trump family has dynastic ambitions, whether it's Donald Jr. or someone in the family who might pretend to succeed him.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: David, you and I think alike. I think, number one, if he could figure out a way to stay, he would. My husband likes to say, "If he tries to stay, I'm running again."

[applause]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: If that's unlikely, which we have to hope it is, I don't get the feeling he's all warm and fuzzy about JD Vance. I don't think he is warm and fuzzy about nearly anybody other than himself and who is closest enough to him, and that is possibly a son or a daughter.

David Remnick: A son or a daughter.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: A son or a daughter.

David Remnick: The daughter is thought to be cleverer than the son.

[laughter]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I'm not going to characterize them; it's the blood relationship that matters.

David Remnick: Understood.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Look, we're speculating like we know something which we don't. I'm not hanging out in Mar-a-Lago and picking up the breadcrumbs of gossip.

David Remnick: I think you'd like it.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Yes, but given his psychology - given Trump's psychology - he definitely, if he can't do it himself, wants somebody he can control and preferably somebody related to him. That would be, I think, his hope.

David Remnick: You've watched Trump over a long period of time. You've debated him three times. You've observed him very carefully, obviously. Is he disintegrating?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I think he is certainly not what he was; he falls asleep in lots of public meetings. Poor Joe Biden - he shut his eyes once or twice - but Donald Trump is falling asleep all the time these days. Part of that is he stays up all night posting on Truth Social, so he's not getting enough sleep anyway, which is pretty disturbing because I don't think people who are sleep-deprived make good decisions, on top of everything else.

I really think he has a number of traits that have gotten more obvious; he doesn't even try to hide them. His impulsivity, his immaturity, his lack of curiosity about anything going on around him. Like when he launched the war against Iran, and then, out of the White House, you hear that: "Nobody told me about the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody told me they could close the Strait of Hormuz. Where is the Strait of Hormuz?" You can't make it up; it's like some movie that you walk out of because it's so outlandish.

David Remnick: Dr. Strangelove.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Yes, exactly.

David Remnick: Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The day we spoke, the administration announced an agreement or a memorandum of understanding to end the war with Iran. We'll pick up right there in just a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come.

[music]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking with Hillary Rodham Clinton. While serving in the Senate, Clinton ran for the presidency in 2008. Shortly after Barack Obama won that historic election, he appointed Clinton Secretary of State. She was quoted around that time saying, "We have a lot of damage to repair." She was referring to alliances frayed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton oversaw the State Department through the Arab Spring and the beginning of negotiations with Iran, which eventually became the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. Trump abandoned that agreement in 2018 with fateful consequences.

We're talking on a day where the United States and Iran seem to have signed an agreement to end, at least for now, this war. Did the United States lose this war?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Yes. The United States has come out weaker; Iran has come out stronger. It's not even an agreement; it's a memorandum of understanding, which we haven't even seen the details of. Now, I started the negotiations that led to the JCPOA, the agreement that President Obama eventually signed. It was an intensive diplomatic effort. We started by getting the UN Security Council to impose sanctions - global sanctions on Iran - in June of 2010. We then worked to get secret negotiations started through Oman. Those began with several meetings and with a plan about going forward, which I handed off to my successor, John Kerry.

These were serious negotiations with high-level people. When we sat across a table from Iranians, we had our own nuclear physicists there, as did they. We had experienced diplomats, people who had negotiated on many different fronts for many years. That's not the way this administration does its business.

David Remnick: The United States doesn't send bombers to Iran because anybody else commands it to. It's very clear that Bibi Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, pushed and pushed Donald Trump to do this. It's my understanding that when you were Secretary of State, Bibi Netanyahu made the same case. Tell me about that.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: You're absolutely right. When I was secretary, it was a constant theme by Netanyahu and his then government, the then Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, the former prime minister. It was relentless; it was a constant push.

David Remnick: What would he say to you?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: What?

David Remnick: What would he say to you?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: He would basically say, "You need to support us in attacking Iran." There was a constant argument that we would have. I remember one day I was on the phone for hours with Ehud, with Bibi, with others, and they would say things like, "Our planes are on the tarmac." I'd say, "Well, good luck. Great. Why are you doing this?"

David Remnick: You're saying you were being played.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: All the time. All the time.

David Remnick: By an ally that receives an enormous amount of aid?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Of course. Look, Bibi's been obsessed - as long as I've dealt with him - with two things: Iran, as you know, and his desire to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia. The first formal meeting I had with him in 2009 - probably March at the State Department - it was absolutely, "How can we get normalization with Saudi Arabia, and how do we totally decapitate Iran?" He had this view that I think has become very clear in his dealings with Trump. Number one: decapitate the regime; it will fall. Number two: disable the military insofar as possible; the people will rise up.

That was just never our read about what was going to happen, in part because this is a ruthless, theocratic regime that - at least at the top levels, the clerical level - has a kind of apocalyptic view of their own importance in the struggle against Israel, the United States, the West, their Sunni neighbors, the whole map that they look at. They are also a regime that learned, sadly, a lesson from the overthrow of the Shah. There's a lot of analysis about why the Shah was finally deposed, but one of the arguments is, at the end, he would not murder his people; he would not order the mass murder of the demonstrators in the street. This regime has no such compunction.

If you have a regime that has already proven, as it did last year, they were willing to kill 35,000, 40,000 Iranians over the protests that were going on, if you have this alliance between the clerics and the military, they have enough folks in their ranks to keep moving up and taking over. Our take on Iran was absent an effective armed opposition, which we've never seen, and absent some internal dissent, whether like a general who would say, "I'm not going to tolerate this any longer." This regime is not-- they're not going to be toppled by appeals to their humanity, to the angels of their better nature.

David Remnick: If I hear what you're saying correctly, is, number one, Bibi Netanyahu bamboozled Donald Trump. Number two, I don't imagine the intelligence changed radically about the state of play in Iran, that the president ignored not only the advice of his vice president and Secretary of State, but the intelligence community telling him on the ground this would be a terrible idea.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I can't speak to that; I don't know what was presented to him. I also think coming off the attacks of last June, which I supported-- I supported the very specific surgical attacks on the known nuclear weapons sites. I believed that that was a clear mission with very achievable goals. I didn't know whether you could eliminate the program, but I thought you could certainly set it back.

David Remnick: Let's stay in the same region for a moment. I know that you're for a two-state solution and see it as the only outcome that any peace can exist for. If I look at the Israeli polity, they don't want a two-state solution, certainly not now. If you look at the Palestinian polity, which is an even more complicated set of geographies and population, two-state solution is not anywhere near the offing there. A two-state solution, which was fought for so hard but began going out the window many years ago, seems impossible. Am I wrong?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: You might be, but you might not be. And here's why. I'm going to say something positive about Trump, so hold on.

David Remnick: Okay. I've got a grip on my chair right now.

[laughter]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza is actually a pathway to security for Israel, reconstruction for Gaza, and the possibility of self-determination - however defined - for the Palestinians. There are a lot of people who reject it because Trump did it, but it's the only game in town; there's nothing else. I've engaged in some track II diplomacy with Israelis - not in the current government, former governments, military, intelligence, political officials - Palestinians, Arabs. It's a very painful discussion because these are experienced people with lots of scars to show for their efforts over many years, not just on peace, but on security, particularly for Israel.

I really believe if we took this 20-point plan - which starts with the disarmament of Hamas, a huge important step yet to be accomplished - but took all of the 20 points so that it wasn't just disarm Hamas and maybe do some reconstruction and build some resorts on the coast, but if you really took the whole approach that is embodied in that 20 point plan - and I know there are people who are working to try to move forward on that - there is a glimmer of a possible path forward.

Now, having said that, you are dealing with two peoples that are even more traumatized than perhaps has happened in the past. You had Rachel Goldberg-Polin on your podcast last week. I met her during the time when I was trying to help and support families who were advocating to get the hostages back. She writes this very moving, profoundly sad book about her son, Hersch.

David Remnick: We've had Mohammed Mhawish and Mosab Abu Toha, who lost multiple members of their family.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I've met with them as well.

David Remnick: Did the Biden administration fail to push hard against the Netanyahu government? Did it give too free a rein to the Israeli government during the war?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I think it's a very, very hard question to answer for this reason. As I said, October 7th was a mass trauma event. Clearly, the people who were murdered, the families who lost loved ones, the hostages - 250 plus - who were taken into Gaza, it was a long, terrible trauma.

David Remnick: 100%. Biden came to Israel, and the wisest thing it seems to me that he said was, "I feel your pain. I understand how horrible this is. We support you, but at the same time, do not repeat our mistakes and act out of prolonged vengeance." He was obviously referring to Afghanistan and even more so to Iraq - the misadventures there, to say the least, and the damage they did and the lives lost there. I think a lot of people would say that is exactly what Israel went ahead and did by such a prolonged war, and that the United States and the Biden administration, and later the Trump administration, did very little to put a pause to it.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Again, I wasn't there. I don't know what the internal discussions were, but every time there was a push against Israel to change tactics to avoid certain targets, the response would be, "We know that there are tunnels." Could and should the Israelis have been more careful with civilian casualties? Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. Did they have a response to what they were trying to accomplish - rescuing hostages, getting access to Hamas leadership and fighters in these tunnels? They did.

Trying to walk that line in the middle of a war is very hard. I try to imagine myself: I'm sitting in CENTCOM and talking to the Israeli military; I'm sitting at the CIA and talking to Mossad. They are coming back, not with totally unbelievable claims. They're coming back with, "Here's what our intelligence tells us. We think if we can get there, get there, maybe we can get Sinwar, maybe we can rescue hostages." The fog of war was totally overwhelming.

David Remnick: When you hear Ehud Olmert refer to war crimes, when you hear a scholar like an Israeli scholar, like Omer Bartov, refer to genocide, or even David Grossman, a novelist you know well, do you agree with them?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Again, I am looking at facts. I'm trying to figure out, and I have not reached my own conclusions because I don't have-- Oftentimes, there's after-action reports. The thing I am most critical of is there has been no after-action report about what happened leading up to October 7th, on October 7th, and post-October 7th, so we don't have all the information. I personally would like to see and know about.

The original sin is: why did October 7 happen? What were the signals that were missed? What could have been done differently? What did Bibi Netanyahu think he was doing, having Qatar pay Hamas millions and millions of dollars a month, in order, in his thinking, to weaken the Palestinian Authority? What did he think was going to happen? I guess my point, David, is I want to know everything I can know. I want to know everything I can about the intelligence failures, the military decisions, before I'm willing to say, "You could have done this," or "You should have done that," or pass judgment.

[clapping]

David Remnick: I received a text today from the best journalist I know in Israel, a very keen defense analyst. He said, "This memo of understanding is the end of Bibi." I think a lot of people have gone broke predicting the political end of Bibi Netanyahu. Are you willing to go broke?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: He has certainly more than nine lives politically, but I think this is a real defeat for him. He did push Trump into the war against Iran. We didn't gain anything of real importance, and we may have lost a lot. That means Bibi also lost because to go into that kind of alliance and to push Trump to do something that Trump, I'm not sure even understood the implications of, and then for Trump wanting to get out of it, because what did he say a few weeks ago? "I'm bored. This is boring. Trying to make peace is boring." Bibi's left out there by himself.

There are several really serious questions. What he's doing in Lebanon now is, to me, counterproductive. He has never had - Israel, has never had, in as long as I can remember - a government that started out more open to working with Israel to try to disarm Hezbollah. Rather than trying to be, in my view, smart about how to build up a Lebanese government for the purpose of disarming and neutering Hezbollah, which is definitely in Israel's interest, Israel has been engaged in this bombardment of Lebanon. They're fighting on that front. I think their turning a blind eye to the settler violence in the West Bank is extremely dangerous.

I think Netanyahu believes that war is his friend because he wants to contain the opposition by creating conflict so that he tries to rally the country behind him. I think this Iran deal may be the straw that finally breaks that and creates an opening for his departure in the upcoming elections. I'm worried that if you don't see a government that understands the importance of tending to Israel's economy and future, you're going to see a big exit by particularly young Israelis. There is some evidence of that.

[music]

David Remnick: My conversation with Hillary Clinton continues in just a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

[music]

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Welcome back. I've been speaking today with Hillary Rodham Clinton. She's a former senator and secretary of state, and she's the author of a number of books, including the most recent, Something Lost, Something Gained. I'll conclude my conversation now with Hillary Clinton.

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee released an autopsy report on the 2024 election. It satisfied nobody; not one person did it satisfy, except for maybe the Bidens, because it didn't mention Joe Biden's decision to run. When you look back on his decision to run, did he make a terrible mistake?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: He made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country. He had said that he would not run again, and counterfactual narratives are always a bit tricky. I believe if he had kept to that plan and said that he wasn't going to run - that he was going to pass the torch to the next generation - we would have had a real contest. Very sadly, I believe whoever emerged from that contest, whether it was the vice president or a governor or a senator or anybody else, would have beaten Donald Trump. I think it was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden, but once he held on for as long as he did, we were in a terrible dilemma.

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

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I think there were a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes. I certainly am aware of that, participated in a number of them. There was no way to convince him by going public. Eventually, what convinced him was polling information.

David Remnick: After a horrendous public disaster. Were there private discussions? Were there people on your level of your eminence that went to Joe Biden and said, "Look, Joe, we love you, but it's time. You're not the guy you were 15 years ago. Enough already."

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I know of a few people who tried that, and they were met with total denial - not just from him, but from the people around him. Before the debate, before what happened at the debate, there was a belief, and it was strongly held inside the White House, that he would win again. After the debate, I think they were in a state of disbelief about what happened and kept trying to explain it, rationalize it, justify it. There were a lot of people who publicly and privately then said that's not recoverable. Initially, that was denied, but look, it happened. It's over; it's behind us. I don't think it's useful to keep beating that horse.

David Remnick: One other retrospective question.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Beat one more horse. Okay.

[laughter]

David Remnick: No, different horse.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: It's a donkey.

David Remnick: I know that joke. It's a good joke. You come to the why they all know the joke. Did Kamala Harris lose solely because she only had 100 days to run?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I think that was definitely a factor. I think she also found herself really in a difficult position, trying to run as the sitting vice president but separate herself from the sitting president. There was no gap between her service, as there was with mine, and her campaign. I think that was a real problem.

David Remnick: Then there's the other thing. I can't tell you how many people -people on the left, people who consider themselves good feminists, enlightened about identity in all senses - will say to me, "Next time in 28, we cannot take the risk. It can't be a woman. It can't be African American, et cetera, et cetera." I find this shocking. We're a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and we're still having this conversation.

[laughter]

David Remnick: You've lifted the microphone, and you're ready to go. I don't need to continue.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: First of all, there is a global pushback on women's rights, and part of that is being led by this administration. The first person that Trump fired was the woman commandant of the Coast Guard. The second person was the Black combat veteran Air Force general who was the chair of the Joint Chiefs, and the third person was the first woman to be chief of naval operations. We've seen what just happened last week with Hegseth removing women and Black military officers from promotion. We've seen them taking down pictures of the first woman who flew with the Thunderbird formation, the first Black General Chappie James, who was an incredibly effective fighter pilot.

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

I think that's in the culture. It's not made up when people say, "Well, I don't know. I don't know if we could vote for a Black candidate or a woman candidate." My ultimate answer to that is it depends upon the candidate.

David Remnick: Let me ask you about one. The candidate that's polling now the highest among women certainly is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. How would you feel about her as a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party nationally?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Those are not the same polls that I've seen.

[applause]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Look, she is a very talented politician, and she is in the top five, but so is Kamala Harris, and depending upon the poll, sometimes Gavin Newsom.

David Remnick: Among women. Gavin Newsom is not that.

[laughter]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I'm talking about what I consider to be reliable polls of voter sentiment, which is both men and women, because you're not going to win with just women. I wish that would be someday possible, but not. I don't know. It's way too soon. Here's what I really think. Number one, stay focused on the midterm elections. We have to win the House and hopefully the Senate.

[applause]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: We have some really good chances of doing that in the House, and I think we have a 50-50 chance in the Senate.

David Remnick: To win the Senate, one of the seats that the Democrats have to win is in Maine. How do you feel about him?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I feel about him the way I feel about any candidate. I want to see what kind of candidate he actually turns out to be - the bumps on the road that he has experienced and some of the things he has said.

David Remnick: Bumps on the road?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Yes, clearly bumps on the road in terms of some of his prior behavior, some of his prior statements. I will tell you, I served with Susan Collins. She is going to be very hard to beat. It's going to be a tough election, so I'm reserving--

David Remnick: If you were a Mainer, where would you pull the lever?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I'm not a Mainer; I'm a New Yorker.

[clapping]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: No, but seriously.

David Remnick: You're going to let that pitch go by?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: David, look, I think this election has to be about affordability and accountability. We need to start holding the people around Trump accountable. We're going to see whether we can take the Senate, but I think the House has to be the primary objective. Then once that election is behind us, you're going to have 10 or 12 pretty good candidates, in my view, running in 2028. I don't know who's going to emerge because I don't know who's going to catch the moment. I don't know who's going to be able to convince the various factions of the Democratic Party to support him or her. I wouldn't rule out any woman who wants to run, or any African American, or any Latino, or anybody else. If they want to get into the arena, get in the arena, show us what you can do, and see whether people will vote for you.

[clapping]

David Remnick: Do you think the Democratic Party has an elites problem?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: No, I think some people believe it does, and that, I think, is somewhat amusing because our elites are not stealing money from the treasury to pay off the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol.

[clapping]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Our elites are not going around the world making business deals for their children, at least so far as I know. When people say that, they're really saying, "Well, you guys, you're in blue cities and blue states, and you don't relate to us." I think that's the problem. I think it's more of a political identification problem. You just have to take what people say about your candidates and be ready to fight back. That's a false equivalence a lot of time.

David Remnick: I lived in Moscow for four years during the collapse of the Soviet Union and then thereafter. I would often think to myself, "What would it be like to actually live in a society like this, where I loathe my government? Would I be someone who, in order to keep my family together or to preserve my bank account-- would I collaborate?" I have to say -I hope not with a minimum of righteousness - it has shocked me, shocked me to see the level of acquiescence in our society among elites who have turned on a dime, on a dime in order to preserve their immense fortunes and to make them greater.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I'm afraid you're right in terms of the acquiescence. For some people, it's simply staying in power, being able to feel like they are important. The people who are in positions of great economic power - like the tech companies and other large businesses - have been so disappointing in the way that they have basically aligned themselves with Trump, Trump policies. In large measure, I guess, because they think, quote, "It's good for their business."

What they're not appreciating is that this unchecked, unaccountable power can turn and bite them just as easily. You saw it. You saw it in Russia. You saw the transition from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and you saw the oligarchs being formed, the privatization. Then, when Putin came along, it was, "I want 5%." "No, I now want 25%." "I want 50%." That's why people say he's the richest man in the world, because he's basically--

David Remnick: I must say, he loves you.

[laughter]

David Remnick: I have never seen somebody speak so harshly of anyone as to watch Putin speaking about Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I wear it as a badge of honor.

[clapping]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Contrary to what you hear from Donald Trump, he did help Donald Trump win, and partly because he knew what kind of leader I would be compared to Donald, whom he knew would not.

David Remnick: I want to ask you two quick questions about the law. On a scale of 1 to 10, how worried are you about being locked up?

[laughter]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: It's not for lack of trying that I'm not. They continue to not only go after me, but go after all kinds of people that Trump considers his, quote, "enemies." I'm not worried about it. If the law matters and if the facts matter, I have nothing to worry about. What I've been slightly reassured about in the last couple of months is the way the Courts are actually enforcing their orders: the name is off the Kennedy Center.

[applause]

Hillary Rodham Clinton: The $1.776 billion fund is enjoined. There is finally the pushback. Our big problem has been the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has enabled and approved so much of what he's done on the so-called shadow docket. That is what has given him the permission to go forward with a lot of the things that he has pursued without there being yet any final adjudication.

When I think about the law, personally, I'm not that worried for myself, but I do see him continuing to unleash his private law firm, which used to be called the Justice Department, against people and forcing them to be investigated, spend money, everything, to just put them at risk. Yes, I do think that he is going to continue to do that, and we unfortunately are going to have to continue to fight back.

David Remnick: Has John Roberts, in particular, as Chief Justice, failed the law?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I voted against him as a senator; I met with him. I voted against Alito. Alito was a much more obvious movement conservative - a results-oriented judge. I had no doubt about what he would do, and I gave a speech on the floor. John Roberts, though, as I looked into his past, when he clerked for Justice Rehnquist, he wrote a memo about reversing the Voting Rights Act back in the 1980s. He has been a known commodity to some of us who paid attention for some time, but he comes across as more affable - a country club person that you would have a nice dinner with.

Make no mistake about it, he led the charge against the Voting Rights Act. He led the charge against campaign finance reform. He has been on the side of the federalist agenda since he was a young lawyer - a young law clerk - and this is his court. I think they have concluded, led by him - the majority, certainly - that their job is to turn the clock back as much as possible on the 20th century. They believe in almost the height of corporate power. They believe in the role that corporations should play in our politics and basically undisclosed, unlimited money, plus then things like the Voting Rights Act, which they view as - in the way they describe it - unnecessary in a, quote, "colorblind society that's gotten beyond race."

I don't know where they live; I don't know who they talk to. I don't understand it, but that is their stated view. I went to law school with Clarence Thomas. He just gave a speech for the 250th commemoration, I think at Texas or somewhere. He gave a speech basically saying that the progressive movement-

David Remnick: I'm David Remnick.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: -had destroyed America-

David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: -and it needed to be-

David Remnick: Thanks for joining us, and see you next time.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: -reined in.

David Remnick: Secretary Clinton, thank you so much.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Thank you, David.

[applause]

David Remnick: I spoke with Hillary Rodham Clinton this past week at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

 

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