♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: hillary clinton is here. she was the democratic party's nominee for president in the 2016 election. she previously served as first lady, senator from new york, and secretary of state. secretary clinton received more votes than any other u.s. presidential candidate in history, besides president obama. but despite winning the popular wrote, she lost the election to political newcomer donald trump. secretary clinton reflects on the 2016 campaign in her new it is called "what happened," appropriately titled.

first off, it is a best seller. the fastest rising nonfiction book in five years. this is what one reviewer said. it is a candid and funny postmortem in which she is both -- it is a feminist manifesto, a score settling jubilee, it's a rant comey, bernie sanders, vladimir putin, and james comey. [laughter] it's a primer on russian spying. i sometimes wonder if you add together his time spent on golf -- golf, twitter, and cable news, what is left. let me begin with this and take you back. i know you have been doing this a lot. 9:00 p.m., election night, you thought you were going to win. ms. clinton: i did.

the first returns that came in were not what we thought, from florida and north carolina, but we knew that those would be challenging states. we still felt good about everything we knew about the states to come, to get the electoral college majority. and it went downhill from there. it was a shocking, devastating evening. i write in great detail about it. because i wasn't prepared for that. charlie: you had a victory speech, but not a concession speech. ms. clinton: i did. it was an effort to reach out to all those people who were against me, who my opponent had stirred up against me, as well. because i thought it was important to be president for everybody. and that's what i was looking forward to do. charlie: you found out about 12:00 it was not going well. ms. clinton: that is right. charlie: you chose not to go speak that night and to wait and come back the next morning. ms. clinton: right. charlie: and you try to speak to the idea that your heart was smashed, your soul was smashed.

how would you characterize it? ms. clinton: i was still in shock, but i was devastated, so once it became clear that the electoral college was going the other way, i had to do several things, which i did, and described. i had to call donald trump, which was something that i can barely remember. i've sort of reconstructed it, because it was surreal, to wish him well, hope that he would be a good president for everybody. he didn't think he was going to win, so he was also unprepared. i had to call president obama and tell him how sorry i was, because i knew that there would be a great effort under a new administration, the other party, to try to undo much of what he

had accomplished, and then i had to work on a speech. so i really wasn't prepared to go out until i had gotten all that done, and by then it was 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, so we had to go find a place to deliver a concession speech, which my stalwart band of advance people did, and i showed up and delivered at the next -- delivered it the next morning. charlie: richard cohen reminded me of this, though fox knows -- the fox knows many things, and the hedgehog knows one big thing. did that sort of happen here? ms. clinton: i think if you look at it, i thought i was running a campaign that was about many things. but it turned out, in part because of coverage, based on my mistake with the emails, because of intervention of other forces, it turned out to be one thing about me, about my

shortcomings, about the attacks on me, about the, in my view, phony attacks on me. i thought i was speaking about, and i have in the book, analyses which prove up was talking more about jobs than anybody else. the exit polls showed if you cared about the economy, you voted for me, all of that. but, if you do a word cloud that was done, it was all about emails for me. i thought i was done with that in july, and it came back 12 days before the election. charlie: so you went back and walked in the woods, and cried a lot? ms. clinton: not cried, so much. i really worked through, over a week, not days, over a week, the disappointment i felt at letting people down. my hope that donald trump turned

-- would turn out to be a better president than what his campaign suggested. unfortunately, in my view, he has not. i did various things. i spent a lot of time with family, friends, walked in the woods, the other day at a book signing i saw one of the young women i met in the woods on one of those first jaunts. i spent a lot of time reflecting, and it was only through that process that i thought to myself, everybody's asking these questions, and everybody has their own theories about what happened. i want to know what happened. i want to the best of my ability to really explore that. was it my shortcomings, what the campaign could have done differently, and all these outside forces. i started writing the book, which was very painful. i would literally write something and then go to lie down for a while. charlie: what is painful? reading what they said about you, reading how they rejected you? understanding what people believed about you? charlie: well, all of the above.

but what was painful was sitting down and trying to sort through it, and to be as honest as i could, which there is no point in trying to avoid what the facts were, but also, to be clear, i was looking for evidence. there was a lot of anecdotal going on.ng i did not find that particularly useful, and there was a lot of debate about what caused it and what happened and what we could of done differently. i wanted to try to sort it out, get to the bottom of it, and then see how i felt about it. charlie: this is why people are calling it raw, going to the bone, you were self-critical. you were going to contain the fury, but let the analysis in full flight? ms. clinton: i think that's a fair way of saying it. and i do try to say look, here's what i did wrong. i'm not going to be a candidate again, so if you can learn from my mistakes, please do so,

because i want us to win elections. here are some sort of institutional issues, obstacles that exist, whether it is suppressing voters or sexism, and here is one huge problem that is a combination of a reality tv campaign, the role that the russians played, things that had never happened before. so we were not prepared. and now we have to be prepared. i think my losing helped prepare the dutch, the french, and the germans to defend themselves against some of the same forces. charlie: the macron campaign came after that, and the dutch campaign came after that. when you put your team together -- you are arguing, debating it all, letting it all hang out. you also had done some of that in terms of whether deciding whether you would run for president. you knew there was in some places, clinton fatigue. you knew in some places you had

been around before and people may be tired of you. you knew there was a press attitude perhaps, about you. , you knew you were going to have to face that, but you believed you could overcome it. ms. clinton: i did, here is why. when i hold a job, i get very high approval ratings. i come out of the state department with 69% in one of the polls. because people saw me representing my country, working for our president, and thought i had done a good job. i knew all these other factors would certainly come to bear, but i believed that it was a good bet to say look, we are going to build on the progress we have made. i am not barack obama, but i appreciate what he did to save the economy, get health care, and so much else. but i got some ideas of my own i am going to throw into the mix. a vigorousg to run campaign, we are going to be

reaching out to people. look i did get more votes, as , you said in the introduction, and things happened, especially at the end, that i think now more analysts are paying attention to. they are saying, was it economic anxiety or cultural anxiety? well, it was both. certainly trump fomented a lot of cultural anxiety. charlie: what do you believe? ms. clinton: i believe it was both. but i believe the dominant reason for his support, starting in the republican primary was the dog birther, the controversy that he was a leader in, the attack on immigrants and mexicans the very first they have his campaign, and then a steady drumbeat of attacks. i have in the book an example. after the convention, tim kaine i go on a bus tour through pennsylvania and ohio, and we are highlighting jobs. i've done this before, i did it with my husband and with other candidates. i did it when i ran for the senate. we were getting very positive feedback from people, talking to

guys working on the floor of a factory and the like. but it was also at the same time that trump was attacking the family of the goldstar, muslim american soldier. if you are reading the philadelphia inquirer, you saw an interview with a guy who heard me speak and said i like what you say. but if you were looking at any other outlet, it was, attack the muslims, attack the family, and sold them. that was the constant drumbeat. charlie: so he sucked all the air and the attention. ms. clinton: he sucked all the air and the attention. he did it by literally causing people to say my gosh, did you hear what he said? or, i have never heard anybody say that. he called it ending political incorrectness.

it was unleashing all kinds of attacks on race, ethnicity religion, gender, and everything , else. charlie: some say it's about rage, guilt, anger and more. do you would all feel sorry for yourself? ms. clinton: no, not a bit. i have had a great life. i was privileged to run for president, i was honored to be the nominee of the democratic party. obviously, i wish i had figured out how to combat some of these factors at the end, but i don't feel -- charlie: do you feel like if you figured out how you could do it over, you could come back -- combat these circumstances? ms. clinton: one thing for sure, i spent a whole chapter on this, about russia is, to sound the alert. the russians succeeded in their goal. their goal was to elevate trump, in their wildest dream, to elect trump and to hurt and damage me. , they succeeded. and you know what, charlie? they are not going away. they are going to come back in every way they can to undermine our democracy to subvert our

,election. and at some we need the whole point, country, regardless of partisanship, to say no, we're going to take a hard look at what is happening in these voting machines and at the state level. we cannot let this go on. do i wish i had understood more about it at the time? charlie: would you have called president obama to say you got , to speak out on this -- you did not do that. ms. clinton: i didn't know, i only knew what was in the public arena. charlie: this is the washington post today, the lead story. "for months leading up to the vote, obama and his top aides quietly agonized over how to respond to russia's intervention of the donald trump campaign without making matters worse. weeks after trump's surprise victory some of obama's aides , look back with regret and wish they had done more." certainly you do, too.

ms. clinton: i do, too. i try to be clear in the book. i understood the predicament they faced. in part, they faced it because mitch mcconnell forced them into that predicament. charlie: you were saying the president understood the challenge, there was no doubt in his mind. ms. clinton: but he also thought i was going to win. he had his own sources of information, the night before in philadelphia, he gave me a hug. he thought i was going to win, just like i thought i was going to win. part of what weighed on him was mcconnell's threat after the leadership of the congress was briefed about what the russians were doing by our intelligence committee, to say, you know what, if you raise that, we are going to say it is partisan. he didn't want to inject partisanship into what was a national security issue. and he thought i was going to win. in retrospect, as we now see in articles like that, a lot of people who were in the white house at the time know it had a big effect. i would point to what happened in france. because the french were put on

notice by our election, there was a really open discussion. we are not going to let the russians win. charlie: they knew they had to meet it head on. ms. clinton: that is right. and the voters knew it. charlie: this paper is a good example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. health bill fails -- failed to find support. kushner uses private email for his official work. nfl players stand in solidarity, questions of race, white house expands travel ban to a country. ms. clinton: it's just like being in a pinball machine, it's coming at you from all directions. what you just read is what happened over the weekend. one weekend of tweets and actions and all of the reactions, and i'm very concerned about the way the president is stoking these attacks against black athletes.

while at the same time, what's not on the front page is that american citizens in puerto rico , and the u.s. virgin islands are in a catastrophic situation. charlie: and you are calling for them to send the navy down there and support the people. ms. clinton: yes. we sent the navy to help support haitians after the earthquake in the obama administration. there is a big hospital ship, i think it is an nor right now. should be on its way down there.

charlie: back to the campaign, did you feel as you suggested earlier that you did understand how people were hurting that you , do understand that there were people out there who had lost faith in government? ms. clinton: yes. charlie: but you did not communicate what it was that you believe? ms. clinton: i did not do a good enough job in capturing the emotions and in recognizing the anger. i knew it was there, honestly, i saw it, i heard it. everybody talked about it. i believed that people didn't want to just hear slogans, they wanted to have somebody say, here's what going to actually do to help you. which is what i tried to do. charlie: what did donald trump understand that your campaign didn't? ms. clinton: i think that he understood reality tv, and the power of saying and doing things

that sort of broke the fourth wall, that people couldn't turn away from. he understood from his past experience with the birther nonsense that there was a real core constituency for that. i think he started out aiming at winning the republican nomination by stirring that up. and i go through some of the calculations in the book that he must have gone through, like how many people will vote in a republican primary, how many do i have to get to get there, and they are going to respond because , they think it's really great to have somebody saying all this stuff. he was more anti-immigration and more zeroing in on people, starting with the mexicans, obviously going from there. so he was very adept, and then when he got on the stage with those 16 republican nominee candidates, he was so insulting to them. he attacked them personally. they were amazed and unsure about what to do.

when they tried to respond, they could never out-bully the biggest bully on the stage, so they were not successful. he got awhen he won, lot of extra reinforcement from the republicans who had other , things they wanted to accomplish. charlie: then at his convention, we heard, lock her up lock her , up. ms. clinton: and we heard, only i can fix it, and a lot of authoritarian rhetoric. it was aimed at really inciting the most visceral emotions, and it made a lot of people feel like he understood them, he provided them scapegoats. charlie: he felt their pain, to coin a phrase? ms. clinton: no, he felt their anger, and that's a big difference. charlie: but their anger came from pain. ms. clinton: no -- charlie: you don't think so?

ms. clinton: look, the average voter for trump in the primary was making $72,000. people making a lot less who were suffering a lot more actually ended up largely voting for me, if you take both white and nonwhite voters. in exit polls, if people were asked if you care about the economy who would you vote for? , the majority said they voted for me. but if you cared about immigration and terrorism, you voted for trump. it was resentment, it was grievance, it was anger. i am not somebody who wants to foment anger. i think it is a dangerous thing to do. he relishes it. what he said in alabama a few days ago about black athletes, it just got hoots and hollers and standing ovations. charlie: it appeals to his constituents. ms. clinton: yes, it does. he gets who he is trying to days ago about black athletes, reach, and they were very

receptive to that. charlie: would you have used the term deplorables if you had it to do over? ms. clinton: when i say in the book is what i believe. i think a lot of what he said and did was deplorable, and he continues. charlie: it is not smart politics, it seems to me -- you can condemn the candidate, but don't condemn the people who vote for the candidate. they are very different things. ms. clinton: i regretted giving him that gift, obviously. but i don't think that's why i lost. and i don't think it's why i ended up in the challenge i was in at the end of the campaign. charlie: looking at all of it, do you believe you lost primarily because of sexism? ms. clinton: no. charlie: you did not say that? ms. clinton: no. i think it hurt me and i think it proves that sexism and misogyny are endemic in our society, that's why wrote whole chapter called on being a woman in politics. i think it had a lot of impact, and there's a lot of evidence that has come to light about how

people are still -- when i say people, it is predominantly republicans men and women, more , men than women, who are really reluctant to even imagine a woman president. so i think it had a role, and it wasn't just me. charlie: the country is ready to elect a woman as president. ms. clinton: i hope so. charlie: hope is one thing. do you believe in your heart, having seen and done what you have done in your public life, with the progress we've made on so many fronts, is the country ready to elect a woman as president? i think the evidence -- charlie: it's hard for you to say yes. ms. clinton: and why? look what they're trying to do to kamal i think the evidence -- charlie: it's hard for you to hh warren, to kiersten gillibrand. these women hold their heads up and they get knocked down. charlie: yet, you believe that except for letter by james , comey, you would be sitting in the white house today. ms. clinton: i do. charlie: so you do believe that

-- except for james comey. because you believe the country was prepared to accept a woman. i'm talking about experience. ms. clinton: experience, i was ready to be president. charlie: president obama said the most qualified person to ever run. ms. clinton: yes. let's not separate out what happened at the end. happened at the end. charlie: you had the capacity to transcend whatever sexism -- you won the popular vote. ms. clinton: i came a really long way, so i'm hoping to have a woman i can vote for soon. charlie: i want to get this straight because it is really an important point. it is at the center of our consciousness. except for james comey, you believe you would have won. prove de facto that a woman can be elected, who can rise beyond all the problems we talked about, all the baggage we

have talked about could be , elected president of the united states? ms. clinton: i would not have run, had i not believed it. charlie: do you believe it now? ms. clinton: i believe it now. charlie: a woman to be elected president today? ms. clinton: i believe that trump has unleashed a backlash of overt sexism that is going to really make the atmosphere even more charged. so any woman who decides she wants to run for president just has to go in with her eyes open. that's part of the reason why i wrote this chapter. it wasn't just on the democratic side. the things he said to his only woman opponents, the things he said at the republican primary, the things he said to women interviewers. when you are subjected to those kinds of constant attacks, like leave the floor, senator warren, quit talking. nevertheless, she persisted. senator harris, that's enough. don't ask these hard questions.

charlie: did you experience that yourself? you are a united states senator. ms. clinton: i did not. charlie: so you were a woman in the senate and did not experience it. ms. clinton: i'm saying there's a big difference from going to in the senate, house, even a governorship, to running for president. there is something so charged about that position in our country, and what i saw happen is that people were saying things about women in general, about me specifically, that were really out of bounds, off-limits. i couldn't believe some of the stuff that was being said. i remember very well at one of his town halls, senator mccain was asked a pretty racist question about senator obama, and he just shut that woman down. we had a candidate surrounded by people who were saying vile

things about women, me in particular, we had a convention filled with such kinds of comments. he kind of threw up the odds that it was ok to do and say these things. charlie: do believe that in charleston, the way he reacted gave cover to white supremacists? ms. clinton: absolutely, charlie. he goes after black athletes who are standing up for what they believe by their protest. charlie: he said they should be fired. ms. clinton: he calls them s.o.b.'s, goes after them. he does not -- he does not do that to white supremacist, neo-nazis, clan members, or vladimir putin. he's very strategic about who he attacks. he is sending a message, a huge, loud, dog whistle, to his supporters that we are still on , the same wavelength. charlie: i did an interview with steve bannon, and he said we

don't want them, they are no part of us there's only a , small percentage of people who voted for us, we don't want them or their support. we are denouncing them. ms. clinton: he is so full of it. breitbart, if you go back and look at the headlines they were running when he was running they , are outrageous. maybe he now wants to put on a good face because what he is trying to do is to build up support outside of the white house for not only trump, but their larger agenda. look what they are doing with health care. it is a fraud. it is so cruel that they're trying to force republicans to vote, because part of what breitbart is doing for trump is to be the enforcer. he wants to make sure that trump has "loyal republicans" who will further his agenda. in my opinion -- charlie: right now in the alabama senate race, they are on opposite sides. ms. clinton: except when trump

allegedly went for strange, saying, but i would be fine with moore. it was a very halfhearted endorsement. they want the partisan support. -- they want the hard-core folks. in part because they will keep cultural anxiety going. charlie: tell me how you see the divide in america. ms. clinton: there has always been a dark underbelly of american politics. lyndon johnson famously said when he signed the civil rights act, we've lost the south for a generation. it's obviously longer than that. there has always been a kind of push back to expanding the circle of rights and opportunities for african americans, for women. charlie: some would say we've had a steady stream of successes. ms. clinton: we have, but those successes engendered the blowback that we're seeing now that trump artfully

has played upon. a lot of the new media, the sort of downside of all the decentralization of media, are the things that can be said on the internet and other kinds of outlets that only small groups of people would say to themselves. when trump started re-tweeting from white supremacist sites during the campaign, they went from a couple dozen viewers to thousands. it is when somebody running for president gives the ok to these kinds of people -- david duke said he was essential to furthering our agenda. charlie: he said it charleston he said what we wanted to say. ms. clinton: that's right. i think this is a bit of a dance they are doing because they serve several masters. they serve these really unfortunate throwback news, but -- views.

but they also serve financial masters who want to use the government to further their own ends. whether it's a tax system that gives them everything they want, or a health care system that ends medicaid. charlie: how much damage did

bernie sanders do, because of

excessive attacks on you for goldman sachs speeches, attacks on you as being corporate -- all of that in the same defying new view -- view? and yet, at the same time, when the general election came, he was not there in the way that you wanted him there. the way you said you were there for obama. ms. clinton: i think that is undeniable. charlie: did you confront him and say, i need you -- it is me or donald trump? where are you? it is time to get moving. ms. clinton: a lot of people who supported him never came around. i worked very hard not just to endorse then senator obama, but to convince my supporters. i was still arguing with my supporters at the convention in denver to make sure they got out nnd voted for them -- the senator obama. so i know the difference between -- charlie: why do think he did it? ms. clinton: i do not know.

here's what i want to say about this. his attacks on me, name one example of anything you are talking about. you just keep reiterating these attacks, and of course he couldn't. democrats rejected him. i beat him by nearly 4 million votes. charlie: he is not a democrat. ms. clinton: he's not a democrat, and that's not a slam on him. he says he is not a democrat. democrats were more comfortable with and more supportive of what i was saying and where i came from. but his attacks did feed into the whole line of attack that trump adopted against me. charlie: do you believe that president trump has any redeeming qualities? ms. clinton: as a leader, i haven't seen any. because as a leader, he says things he doesn't follow through on, during the campaign he was never going to touch medicaid after the first failure of the health-care bill when john mccain stood up and voted against it, he was going to replace it with something even better. i don't think he really cares that much about policy. i don't think he studies it.

he says things he has no intention of following through on. charlie: so you do not see any redeeming qualities you instantly recognize? ms. clinton: not as a leader. i see someone who is divisive. charlie: what about as a human being, a person of value? ms. clinton: every person has value, there is no doubt about that. charlie: what is of value? is he a good family person? ms. clinton: he certainly supports his family. [laughter] yes, that's true. charlie: do you believe he's a racist? ms. clinton: i can't look in his heart, but a lot of what he said and done, and the charlottesville experience was chilling. he certainly has given aid and comfort to those who are. do you believe he is a misogynist? ms. clinton: absolutely. he has a long history of sexism and misogyny, the things he says about women, he objective eyes tifies women.

he's only interested in how they look and how they serve him, and we saw on the hollywood access tape, confessions of sexual assault. charlie: you believe he is sexist, obviously. ms. clinton: i do. here's what i'm most worried about. i believe he has a very deep fascination for authoritarians, and in particular, for putin. i think you not only likes putin, he would like to be like putin. charlie: in what way? ms. clinton: in the way that he sees putin as this sort of macho guy who basically gets to do whatever he wants to do in his own country. hemp himself has said -- understands the complexity of governing, what it means to bring people together in democracy. i don't think he really values democracy, charlie. charlie: he's not a democrat, little d. ms. clinton: he's not, he is a top down guy. charlie: he has tendencies

toward authoritarianism? so he's no different than putin? ms. clinton: hopefully he is not ordered the killing of people, journalists and the like. what i most concerned about is am how he has turned a blind eye to russia's attacks on us. charlie: why do you think that is? ms. clinton: first of all, it helped him. secondly i think he had financial entanglements and other connections with russians. charlie: do you think it you would have won the election without russian interference? ms. clinton: i think the russian interference certainly influenced voters, and were just -- we are only just beginning to appeal that back. we only now have information, as you saw from the front page of the washington post. i did not believe the role facebook was playing. charlie: they like everybody else thought you were going to win. ms. clinton: charlie, having a foreign adversary want to damage one of the two people who could be the next president of the united states, just think of that.

charlie: how offensive it is to us in democracy and everything we believe in. ms. clinton: how frightening it is. these guys are not going away. they are going to be back. charlie: why do you think he has not spoken to it, why does he refused to accept it? this is the eighth month into his presidency. ms. clinton: i think that he has connections with them. charlie: what kind of connections? ms. clinton: i think, financial. charlie: this is all about you looking at every possible thing there is. ms. clinton: i think he has all these financial entanglements with russians and the oligarchs. i think this is huge. whether or not other allegations that have been made about him have any -- charlie: do you think there's reason to believe that dossier? ms. clinton: certain things have been proven to be accurate. charlie: do you definitely believe that putin has something on donald trump? ms. clinton: either he has something on donald trump, or trump thinks he helped him so much he will not turn on putin.

either one is so horrifying. charlie: i would not believe the latter so much. the stakes are too high. ms. clinton: i think they know enough to know that putin helped him. and why would they bite the hand they think fed them by putting out false information, by weaponize thing information, by having people pose as americans who were russians, with fake demonstrations and fake news? you had russians acting like americans, demonstrating against me. he had a full suite of supporting activities from trump. why would he turn his back on that? since he doesn't believe in democracy and doesn't understand how our system works, i think he believes, somebody else helping me, what difference does it make? i don't think he gets how serious this is. charlie: and to this day refuses to say what most people believe he should be saying about russia, and the people around him obviously know.

ms. clinton: they do know. i'm waiting, obviously, like everybody else. for the mueller investigation and the congressional investigation, the senate intel committee, they are the ones who found out the facebook ads were being paid for with rubles. they have seen his tax returns, you would assume. ms. clinton: i would assume. charlie: he had the power to see his tax returns. and he had subpoena power. and people he has been following. ms. clinton: that's all true, based on the public record. let me make this point. there is lots and lots of smoke, and i want to be very clear about this. whether or not anybody is indicted or exposed in terms of the trump connections, with putin, with the kremlin, with all of that. collusion is not a legal term. certainly connections, coordination.

whether or not that or some part of that is proven true, let's not lose sight of what's really at stake. charlie: another foreign country, an adversary -- ms. clinton: yes. just because they were after me in the last election does not mean they wouldn't be after a republican or someone who stood up to them. charlie: you believe it will come out because of the mueller investigation? ms. clinton: i think a lot of it will come out. began after sort of yale on the watergate committee, a long time ago. you were there and you saw how the committee can investigate and how they can use the power of speech. ms. clinton: remember, that was a bipartisan investigation. charlie: howard baker and sam ervin. ms. clinton: that's right. i worked the judiciary committee. republicans on the committee were open enough, honest enough patriotic , enough to view the evidence. charlie: bob mueller will be the same. ms. clinton: bob mueller is terrific. what i'm saying is it took a

special counsel. republicans in the house and senate are hardly enthusiastic about pursuing this. you read the headline about jared kushner's email. i'm waiting for them to launch an investigation like they did over mine. on thenton: -- charlie: email question, i talked to you about it during the campaign. did you handle it well, the investigation? ms. clinton: obviously i didn't do anything wrong, so i didn't handle it well enough to survive. charlie: people felt that you had not come forward, you would not acknowledge being careless, even though they used that word. ms. clinton: you can read the chapter in the book. charlie: i can't read it right now. ms. clinton: we can stop and read it. not through my own words, but through independent third-party people who both agree and disagree with me, but make the case, look, it was a dumb mistake, but it was a dumber scandal. they were obsessed. we got through july and even what he said, which in the book

i point out was unprecedented and really unfair to the state department, not just to me, we got through that. and then in comes this letter. the convention was positive -- charlie: what should he have done? ms. clinton: he could have done several things. if he thought this was serious which i have doubts about how , serious he thought it was. he had went ahead and wrote the level -- wrote the level -- letter -- what was james comey's motive? ms. clinton: that is the unanswered question. charlie: do you believe he understood it would have the consequence is that it did? if he had known that he was trying to derail your candidacy? ms. clinton: he was under pressure from rudy giuliani and others, both former and current

fbi officials. charlie: who folded under pressure. giuliani announced giuliani and something big was coming in two days. it happened two days later. that's a fair assumption. charlie: the idea that you believe that james comey, who was much admired as an fbi director, even by supporters, and this is what came out the first time when he said there's no reason to go ahead, then people said he had a lot of support. then candidate trump was criticizing a lot of people in the fbi. you think you folded under pressure and made a decision that he knew would derail your candidacy. ms. clinton: ask yourself this. he did that to me, when there were other ways. if he thought there was anything there to be investigated, he could have asked me if i had any objection,

he could have asked others if they had any objection. he could have done it without some big letter announcement to the congress, which he knew would leak. at the very same time, he is not at all talking about the investigation that had been started into trump and russia. he would not join with the department of homeland security and the director of national intelligence. charlie: did he even disclose? ms. clinton: no, he did not disclose. he said it was because it was too close to the election, which makes no sense at all. on october 7, which was a big day in the campaign, it started with secretary johnson from homeland security and jim clapper from national intelligence saying we are concerned about activities by the russians. and people thought it was primarily about the dnc hack. we now know they knew a lot more, but we didn't know that at the time. then the hollywood access tape comes out.

within one hour, russians through wikileaks dump the to create aled diversion that lasted through the entire rest of the campaign. charlie: let me just set this up. i remember at the time right before this, there was a belief that you were expanding your lead, correct? ms. clinton: yes. it was also said the election if the election had been -- it was also said that if the election had been held today before, you would've won. ms. clinton: i believe that, and based on the evidence, not just my wishful thinking. charlie: so the conclusion is that, without that, you would be president. ms. clinton: that's what i believe, charlie. charlie: more than any other thing. ms. clinton: more than any other thing. i will give you an example from the book. before the letter on the 28th,

there was a poll which was a reliable poll, showing that i was ahead by 26 percentage points in the suburbs of philadelphia. that cannot have happened without republican women, suburban voters, even independents. charlie: and those republican women went home? ms. clinton: if you were a voter and all of a sudden on the 28th of october, the director of the fbi says we are reopening the investigation, and the trump campaign says bingo, lock her up, you're going to say, i was thinking about voting for her, but i can't vote for her. and that went on until the sunday before the election. charlie: the question also that has to be asked, why didn't you go to handling it wisconsin, , michigan? ms. clinton: i went to pennsylvania all the time. i was in michigan a lot, and i was there before the election. i went to minnesota. i did not go to wisconsin. the reason was come all the data we had -- charlie: so all those people say

you did not appreciate how the states were changing simply had it wrong? ms. clinton: yes. charlie: you had no regrets about not campaigning there the last two weeks of your campaign? ms. clinton: no, because i was in pennsylvania constantly. i was in michigan. i was not in wisconsin, because our data, plus the data of the russ feingold senate campaign, showed that we were comfortably ahead. and it showed that he was ahead. here's what i want to emphasize because i think this is important and relates to the whole russia weaponization of information. the comey thing hits and blankets everything. i think it stops my momentum. -- thele, though wikileaks are being dribbled out every day. charlie: how does that connect to the trump campaign? ms. clinton: because they were serving on these facebook posts, these fake news. charlie: but they were getting the information from russians. ms. clinton: that was not the

way it was presented. charlie: is that true or not? ms. clinton: wikileaks got it from the russians, there is no doubt about that. but when they made them public, then there was this constant effort by the russians, the trump campaign, everybody working together, to come up with fake stories. two quick examples, one of the worst things was this ridiculous, horrible story that based on a single line in an email from john podesta, whom you know, said he was going out for pizza these total right-wing , people made up the story that he was running a child trafficking operation with me in a -- in the basement of a pizza shop. a total lie, and somebody came up from north carolina to rescue the children, but it was all over the internet. charlie: it shows you the information and power that the internet has. ms. clinton: and it was all over facebook posts, dark posts that

are there and disappear. charlie: one of the things president obama spoke to in his closing remarks one of the , primary concerns he worried about. ms. clinton: and there were all these terrible lies about the clinton foundation which we know , affected people. one of the reporters on the post -- charlie: the charge was that people who contributed to the clinton foundation got favors of you as secretary of state. ms. clinton: much worse than that. that was not true, but they said we took money from the foundation that , paid for our daughter's wedding, totally horrible made-up stuff. another said they kept hearing this anecdotally, and would not vote for her because they read about all this. this was well coordinated. and it was well coordinated because -- charlie: well coordinated by? ms. clinton: that is the question. charlie: who do you believe coordinated it? ms. clinton: somebody associated with the trump campaign was able

to strategically, geographically, and personally target people based on their facebook profiles, and based on, i think, working the google ranking of subjects, and was able to deliver that. charlie: who do you believe? ms. clinton: whether it was the trump campaign itself, whether was cambridge analytica -- able to deliver that. charlie: but it was one of those that you believe coordinated the fake news to impact people to determine the election. ms. clinton: someone who understood targeting in a presidential campaign and delivering those fake news messages certainly did that. look, i'm done. i'm not running for anything.

charlie: you have no reason not to say what you think. ms. clinton: i'm trying to sound the alarm. i'm very worried about what the russians got away with and the kind of precedent that it sets. i am worried about facebook being the biggest news platform in the world, unable to figure out and control what our propaganda uses of facebook to influence our election. charlie: clearly it seems like mark zuckerberg has gotten the message. ms. clinton: how much control does he really have? how is he going to rein this in? i don't have the answer to that. charlie: do you think this calls for a federal investigation? ms. clinton: i have called for an independent commission with subpoena power because if i don't fix it -- it also needs to be public. what the special counsel is doing is to determine whether there is a crime that has been committed. open hearings. charlie: an independent commission appointed by?

ms. clinton: it could be some members from congress and some members from the white house. and make sure it is bipartisan. sort of what we did with 9/11. the 9/11 commission is a good model. charlie: do you think donald trump will be reelected? ms. clinton: i have no idea. i hope not. i hope democrats will do everything they can to win in new jersey and virginia this year. charlie: do you think he will serve the full four years? ms. clinton: i don't know the answer to that either. i think so much depends on what is uncovered and how people -- public reacts to it. not everything wrong has a legal remedy. some of it is just politics. e veryare very -- ther well could be a conclusion that all this stuff that happen with russia, maybe we need better disclosure, maybe facebook needs better controls. but it didn't fit any criminal statutes that we currently have unless it's the foreign funding of it all. charlie: that is the only

criminal statute it might have violated? ms. clinton: if they ended with that conclusion, saying that all the stuff that happened over here, i'm not talking about obstruction of justice and whatever manafort was up to. what we do to combat russia, that may not have criminal remedies. it's going to require us working as americans to try to prevent it in the future. charlie: we are just beginning to understand the extent of it. ms. clinton: the russians have had a lot of practice in this. there is a description called active measures on what they do to insinuate propaganda, to destroy reputations, and now to manipulate the online world to their advantage. this should be a big wake-up call for all of us. ♪ alisa: i am a alisa parenti in

new york, and you are watching "bloomberg technology" the senate will not advance a vote on the graham-cassidy health care bill. the legislation to replace obamacare would cost millions and cause a 100 $33 billion deficit reduction by federal 2026. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges against university coaches, financial advisors, and representatives for sportswear companies accused of mutilating -- manipulating young athletes and steering nba-destined college stars towards certain sports agents and managers. president trump plans to visit puerto rico next week. it comes after the administration came under blistering criticism for its