thank you for coming. we will be around for further questions. [applause] [inaudible conversations] secretary clinton, in the book what happened, you write the first warning sign was north carolina. walk us through that evening.

we always knew north carolina would be hard, if we thought we had a good lead going into the election day because of the voting in florida. it wasn't the end by any means because there were a number of ways we saw that we would get to the 270 electoral votes. it's a very long night and around midnight when michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania came in. >> what was going through your mind? >> at first i was worried but not alarmed and as i said, our numbers look very good in pennsylvania and michigan, wisconsin as did everybody else as we consulted.

as the evening went on we were only getting broadcasters in reaching ouandreaching out to pg out in those states. i wanted to collect myself. i haven't prepared the concession speech. it is hard painful thinking obviously. i erased some of those questions in the book about what was going on but as of the moment i had to call donald trump who seems to be pretty surprised about the outcome.

you picked up the phone and then what happened? >> basically i said congratulations. it was very much thank you and thanks for calling and then he went out to address the crowd. it is very sad to me i take no pleasure in any of this. i knew the kind of campaign that he ran which i found deeply disturbing.

i was hoping that we would see donald trump emerged who understood the gravity of the position he was about to assume. it didn't work out the way that i would have wanted for the country and starting on the inauguration day, a lot of the same impulses and behavior sending the wrong signals here and around the world. >> the letter john adams wrote to his wife named none but wise men rule under this earth. roof. what you put trump in that

category? >> i used to go down at night and walk the first floor of the white house and think about the history that have happened ending up before the fireplace with the engraved at the top of it. i had lost two in number of republicans seeking the nomination. and i wouldn't have agreed with them on many of the policies they are going to pursue. but i don't think i would have had the talent and worry is that i have. in fact i'm sure of it with respect to president trump and his behavior. i came back from the trip to england, wales, korea and there is a great uncertainty out there like what does he mean when he what is he trying to achieve on behalf of america and the world because he's created so much confusion in the minds of so

many. we thought that it was our duty to do that. those that supported him and those that did not touch i intended twhich iintended to do. if you could give him some advice with what you tell him? >> take a deep breath, slow

down, be willing to listen to people who may not necessarily already agree with you. have an open mind about some of these tough decisions. be more open to facts and evidence about the consequences of the policies. as a former secretary of state i would talk about korea and the threat russia opposes to europe and our internal lobbying because of the continuing attacks that we know putin is undertaking against our own unity at home. i would do my best to lay out a case and say mr. president, you have the opportunity to change course. look, i know that we are all fully formed adults and get into this office but that doesn't mean that we stop learning. as president like barack obama, you're not averse to having

someone give you some tips about how to be an even better golfer. this job is so demanding. you have to have an open mind so you can take in the information and listen to people. and please, get more people who know things into their government. the state department is missing so many of the top positions that speak the language and the culture. there are people that have experienced that can help you be the best president. i know others have tried, and i've talked with people that have been in the oval office trying to help him and provide support. he has to dominate and overcome especially those who disagree with him. he's in this fight with senator corker and congressman wilson,

fighting with people this time. he's undercutting as the secretary of state. one of the saddest that i'm aware of and there've been a bunch of them is when tellers and was doing his job to get us on a diplomatic track which is what we must do bringing the chinese into the forefront. so he was doing this job and basically the president said forget about it, there's only one way to go. if you are the secretary of state, you've got to be perceived as speaking for the president and the nation and that is what he thought he was doing. and basically he humiliated him. >> ho >> how do you solve a problem? >> was asked to come speak about

that and other matters. there is no easy solution. i am aware of that and followed it closely for 25 years. here's what i know. they are closer to being persuaded than they were in the past. the behavior is dangerous to them and dangerous to peace and prosperity in the region. they've always taken the view that they can balance the north and south korea and keep the united states on a back foot. now with the behavior and frankly very rude attitude that he's taken towards very much of the chinese leadership and his person and intercontinental ballistic missiles with the nuclear warhead, the chinese now have a huge stake trying to rein

him in and enforce the sanctions that have been tightened at the un in getting korea by working through the people's liberation army to get them to the negotiating table. it was to see if something was possible. it took years and i know what happened in the peace process. it took years. you've got to have strategic patience. in a world unless you want to cause nuclear warfare, which i hope nobody wants, you're going to have to. but at the same time that you are working patiently to get everybody at the table and convince china to play a more active role, you do need to say there will be consequences if

you send a missile over our allies and if we are sworn to protect japan and south korea. but you don't say that. that only plays into his hands. it's a calm way that delivers the message and we have to continue putting missile defense and south korea. the chinese don't like that and i was asked about that because they in response are boycotting certain businesses. the answer is don't boycott people trying to protect themselves from what can happen. help us to contain the north from ever doing anything. >> when they made reference to

world war iii, what was your reaction? >> is a very sober guy. he does his homework and studies things and comes to thoughtful conclusions. we could have a war by the total miscalculation. when you are using twitter to communicate and insulting instead of doing the slow hard work instead of putting together some kind of a diplomatic response, somebody can miscalculate and that somebody certainly could be kim jong. he's flown two missiles over japan and already threatened the united states. if he believes there is no appetite in this administration

at least by the president to deal with some of these bigger issues, who knows what he might do come and he might not even intended the consequences, but they would float. in the discussion speech walk us through that afternoon. >> i gave a concession speech and there were a lot of friends and supporters and a lot of tears. it basically just sat there.

i was just in a state of total confusion. i didn't know and i relayed in the book what it felt like for the walks in the woods, cleaning my closet, i shared a chardonnay and all of that. but then i began to see the analysis and commentary about the election and i thought people were missing a lot of what i thought wa felt was crite outcomes. we were just understanding what the russians ha have done and ar the election, the obama administration came out with more information about what they had been up to and began to sanction certain russian individuals and institutions for

their interference in the election. but it took weeks, months and we are still learning what they are up to and how effective they were. they were masters of propaganda. this wasn't their first rodeo. they used social media and so-called content farms and fake news and of course the question that is being investigated is is were they coordinating and campaign. but i thought that it was important that people begin to pay attention to what the russians did it because it is an ongoing threat. it's not going away. they had intruded into these systems and maybe as many as 30 or more states. what does that mean and how do we protect ourselves from a foreign adversary. then as you remember there was a

big debate that started after. was it economic anxiety or cultural and i thought that was an important question. of course there was economic but there was also a very clear theme appealing to the anti-immigrant attitude to race from anti-islamic attitudes, on and on. so, that information started coming out from the well respected third party is looking at a lot of data and one of the things that struck me, for people who have said that the economy was their number one issue, i won those people and maybe despite trying to get my message across, people heard me talking about jobs i talked about endlessly an independent voter suppression. every day that goes by, we are getting more information.

there've been excellent studies that i think are compelling. as this went on and i was saying to myself what happened, i thought i want to know what happened to you and the only way that i could figure out how to do it was to immerse myself in all the information as it was becoming available to sort it out to try to get to the evidence as best i could, and as i thought about that i thought maybe there is a book and i owed an explanation towean explanati. 65 million of them in to myself in history. so, i wanted to be personal, political and historical. >> host: sean hannity on his program has been critical saying with regards to russia that is the story in all of this. what would you say to the critics?

>> it's the same baloney they've been peddling for years and there's been no credible evidence in fact it has been debunked repeatedly and it will continue to be that here is what they are doing it i have to give them credit. they are experts at distraction and diversion. so the russian ties between the trump associates as we heard jeff sessions admits t admit tos testimony the other day the more they want to throw mud on the wall. we are the ones they always like to put into the crosshairs. so i am not surprised that i think that the story is how nervous they are about these continuing investigations. >> in the book you read the following. i blame myself and my fears have come true. so what are those limitations?

it led to my finally deciding to run. i was worried that it was a hard historical trend to try to succeed a two-term president of the party. my husband in the very beginning in the chapter i'd write about in the process i went through said you could lose because it is a hard historical burden to carry. i worried that i would not be quite as effective in taking my brand of leadership every time i'm in office people give me high marks but translating it into a campaign. and i write about this. they seem to be kind of a mismatch seen what i consider thbut i consider theseriousnesse responsibility of what you would do as president and the performance aspect of running

for president. donald trump was our first reality tv candidate. i tried to match that's the best i could but i wasn't going to go after immigrants or racism. i wasn't going to do any of that. and i saw in the primary campaign how effective trump was in dismissing the 16 or 17 people he was running against many of whom had tough elections and policies they wanted to put forth and that's when i realized this is a different kind of campaign right out of reality tv, which is what he had been involved in for years. and how do i try to deal with that and then there was the

whole other question on the double standard. i knew it was alive and well and i thought that i could get through it and demonstrate i was not only up for the job but best qualified for the job. running against in unapologetic sexual assault or going after people in the media, going on to me, on the one hand as i write about the second debate within trying to assert his dominance over me on the stage if you turn the sound off he looks like the big alpha male. he is buried ready to take on all of the encores. there is no basis to it.

it isn't a good quality in a president, but it's entertaini entertaining. and i thought that was a big challenge. we knew we had to try to blunt the appeal of that kind of entertainment. do you think your staff but hillary be hillary? >> here's what i believe. my staff who helped elect barack obama and had been with me and came from other experiences put together a phenomenal campaign apparatus. but i believe we were playing on the field of what the presidential elections have been

like. so when you think about what we were trying to do, we were trying to beat obama three-point. be prepared with average digital data analytics moderation to target voters so we were operating in the arena but unfortunately, the trump campaign was operating this new arena. the press couldn't get enough of his entertainment. i've never imagined he would have national coverage of an empty podium. they are all just waiting to see what would happen. it's great for profits. people tune in because like a reality tv show, you don't know what is going to happen next and he was quite an expert. they are held accountable quite the way that should have been held accountable.

they dismiss, and i point out in the book we get 32 minutes of coverage. there were like 174 in 2012, so i don't blame the voters for not knowing. the only thing i knew is that they have been around and i had an e-mail controversy, which as i spend a whole chapter explaining it was never the video was made out to be and i took responsibility for it from the very beginning. you said in the book the media needs to do its own shoulder. let people draw their own conclusions and i understand the pressures under broadcast and online. they've got to get dollars or

whatever they are looking for. i get that. but presidential election is a big deal and now we see what happens when someone is not vetted. we talked about the hollywood access tape and how much continuing coverage you give to the women that followed up with very personal stories. not much. it was always on to something new and i think the campaign did a good job changing the subject all the time and so they had a dark divisive claim only like i can fix it and walk it up and ld all that kind of stuff they did. so w we have to resolve the very positive upbeat optimistic convention and it's been my experience being around presidential politics optimism is what americans were looking for.

the messages then as i write in the book we went on a bus tour and went to places in pennsylvania and ohio and talked about what we were going to do and i thought we had a good chance of getting these things done even in a divided congress. and trump continued to attack the family. so the pric press covered that d other people we were visiting. i have to give them credit for understanding how to capture and hold television and the attention dot one guests. they have two objectives to lift him up and tear me down. they have to lie about me which they did persistently.

they have to convince people that otherwise would have voted for me not to because they came up with my y. old fables about me. we hope now the candidates in the future will understand that the combined impact of the fact of the e-mails and the release of them which happened within an hour of the hollywood access tape being released would have a better extent of communication and coordination. drop them now. so it became a dominant theme, stuff totally made up, just outrageous.

it's totally nonsensical but they delivered it and it went from russian tv to facebook pages and twitter. we know that now that we didn't know at the time. time. >> so it came from who? >> we know from the intelligence that has been the gathered putin said we are going after her i don't want her to be president. if she makes that i've want her to be damaged. that was my job as the representative of this country of ours into the behavior in cvs and ukraine. but putin took it personally and

is a clear exhibit of sexism so they were now only understanding that they wanted to hurt me. the order went out and they are good at compromising by making up active measures. it came from the kremlin and was executed through the intelligence services and proxies which basically has become a proxy of the government interests. >> you write about vladimir putin, how to understand him,

his mother. what is the story? >> i was stunned to hear the story from putin himself. this was early september of 2012 attending an international conference. it was from the far east of russia closest to alaska. he wouldn't meet with me at first because he knew what i was going to say. and as i have been saying repeatedly for many months trying to end the massacres and prevent the consolidation of everything else we were concerned about. they wouldn't meet with me and we had a short 15 minutes sitdown. i have seen that before, i was used to it and i always used to

come to any encounter with him with the question to ask that might get him interested that i knew i was going to sit next to him at the dinner because protocol required that the representative of the united states be on one side of him because he hosted the prior confidence into the next post on the other side, so i'm sitting with him and i say mr. president, i finally had a chance to go to the war memorial in st. petersburmemorialin st. s astonishing in its power and incredible stories of those th that. then he tells me this remarkable story about how his father was on the frontlines during the siege and he got some time off to go home for just a few hours

to maybe spend the night. he's walking down the street where there apartment building is [inaudible] he recognizes his wife. the body collectors are loading them up into parts to try to prevent the plague and the disease. so his father runs up and says that's my wife you can't take my wife and gets into a big confrontation and satisfying. so he pulls the body out of the pile and when he has her he realizes she's alive. he takes her up to the apartment, nurses her back to health. the war ends a few years later vladimir putin is born. i have studied a lot about his life the best you can because

there isn't very much information and i have never heard that story. i thought if told us a lot about his mindset and his feelings about what russia must be in order to protect itself and to defend its interests. i got back to the room i was staying in and i called our ambassador and other experts in russia and tell them this story. none of them have heard it. i put it in the book and the russians never contradicted it so to this day, they've never confirmed, but they've never contradicted it so i assume it's true. and i thought it was an important insight into how this man thinks and of course now we know he is determined to reinsert russian greatness and along with that his own and he is also determined to make an enormous amount of money, hundreds of millions maybe even a billion or two out of his connections with the oligarch

interests so he has a piece of the action he is determined to disrupt the european union, disrupt nato and disrupt us and now we know a lot of what he was doing wasn't just aimed at me but a discourse in america. fascinating person not to be underestimated but not to be pandered to either as i say in what happened he is fond of a russian quote you take a steel bayonet and keep pushing. i think what he's doing is trying to have it both ways for example congress passed more sanctions on russia and in part we are learning how much they interfered in the election so he was forced to sign them and he is not implementing them.

they have not yet been ruled out. no one yet has been sanctioned so he's trying to get into the congress that we need for this horrible tax cut and i may not have given you everything but i'm trying to hold the line and he's acting like his puppet and the fact they are not ruling out the sanction is more evidence of that. >> where do you think the investigation is going to end? >> i've been somewhat pleasantly surprised that the congress particularly in the senate intelligence committee is digging deep into the russian interference on social media. calling it facebook and twitter and google and others and demanding answers as we should. we all need to know. the companies need to do a better job protecting our

country going forward and they also need to be really transparent. tell us everything that happened, show us every ad. we need to know what you're up against uwe are upagainst so thn people can develop a defense to this interference. so, that i think is as i say promising to get to the bottom of a lot of what has gone on particularly with the russians. i think that the investigation is obviously looking at whatever communication and coordination connection there was between people associated with trump and his campaign and the russians and what the reason for it might have been or what they would have done. i am not going to hazard any kind of potential conclusion. they have to go where the evidence leads them. you pretend how many books? >> i've written for big ones. i wrote it takes a village and d

living history, my autobiograp autobiography, hard choices and i wrote what happened this year and two other books that have been published. letters to our cat and dog in the white house and then an entertaining book about the white house. >> do you have another book in you down the road? >> i probably do. this book was very important and cathartic i didn't imagine i could get it going but once i got going i was put forward with a lot of energy and i've been very gratified by the response. people said i didn't know whether i wanted to read it or i wasn't sure what to expect and they find it both personal and political so for people interested in the personal how much do you spend on time running or political leaders about voter suppression and figuring all this out. i think there is something for every reader and it's been

exciting going around talking about it and having a chance to answer questions. >> a couple stories i want to ask about, matt lauer and the commander-in-chief war. you wrote i was almost physically sick i watched matt lauer soft-pedaled donald trump interview. >> oh my gosh i was sick and bad news that. i was on the today show and he's aware of how i feel about it. look, being the commander-in-chief is the most awesome responsibility, sending young men and women into the war potentially using the most lethal weapons. if we were going to have a forum on being the commander-in-chief i expected tough questions about iran, north korea, russia, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. instead, more than half my 30 minutes was about e-mails, something he already asked about in a prior interview after the kobe investigation closed.

i tried to take the reader behind the scenes and what it's like to be sitting there with so much to say about how to protect and defend the country which is part of the oath, and not get a chance to do that because i'm being asked things that have no real long-term effect and it's not going to be wit the next president would face. i said look i started iran negotiations. i was in the situation room for osama bin laden, i went through some of the things that i had done personally and donald trump hasn't done anything. he lied about his support for the war and said he was against it when he was on tape saying that he was for it. there was so much to question and i was disappointed because it wasn't up to their standards and when he came on it was a bunch of softballs. any viewer who wants to know the

difference between war and peace, they wouldn't have gotten anything out of it. >> host: you also write about the debate what was your tactic? >> guest: i prepared, number one. i knew how other democratic nominees had prepared, and i thought it was the right thing to be as prepared as possible. but here's what i believe. i thought okay there's going to be a moment of reckoning. he's beehe spends a reality tv e but as we get into the debate and public and press have to make this decision on who to vote for, there's going to be a moment of reckoning. i had seen it in the past. but it didn't come so i was prepared and in the first debate he made fun of me for being prepared and i said yeah i will tell you something else i prepared for, i prepared to be president. then he gets into the job and what does he say, it's a lot

harder than i thought. yet it's a hard job and preparation matters. i don't think that it was the kind of moment i hoped for in a debate where a moderator really pinned him down and basically said what are you talking about. explain that and show the people that basically he didn't have anything to say. but that did not happen. so i prepared and i felt good about my performance in the debate. i thought it was weird in the second one and a third one more information was coming out about the role and i accused him of being russia's puppet and he didn't know how to respond to that becaus but because the fbir confirmed that there was an open

investigation about the campaign's relationship i'm sure a lot of the viewers thought what is she talking about. i knew based on digging deep into all the information we could get our hands on that they were knee-deep that much to my total amazement, he was willing to make a phony charge against me and never tell the country that there was a serious over and counterintelligence investigation. what you have kept jim if he were elected? >> isn't it ironic as i write in the book i don't use my words, i use other people's words and the words of the current deputy attorney general pointing out how many rules he broke on how he defined protocol and

interviewed when he shouldn't have. those were serious matters. i think you can criticize him for that which i do very strongly as you know but i think you can still say he was fired because he was going to conduct an investigation of russia so you have to keep those two thoughts in mind. i had a really ambitious agenda. it had been an issue on both sides of the campaign. so i have really smart experienced people putting in long hours. what can you do by executive order etc..

i was ready to be president and i was excited about that because i think the united states is at a point in history we have to make some big changes, we have to deal with incoming quality. we should be taxing the wealthy, not be giving them the biggest tax break of the universe which is what trump wants to do. so i did think that there were some important challenges, but going into this i was confident and optimistic about the future and i think our diversity is a big plus in the world in which we find ourselves in that there was a lot we could have done >> host: tamika >> president bush talked about the cruelty of american politics. he didn't mention the president by name. what was your reaction? >> guest: i thought it was an important speech and i

appreciated president bush delivering it. he talked about how it is an absolute blasphemy to the american creed and he talked about the importance of listening to each other and working with each other. i didn't always agree with president bush as i think any democrat sitting across from me would say that i never doubted his patriotism or that he worked really hard all day and went to bed worried, woke up concerned about what he would do. i went to the oval office within after 9/11, looked into his eyes and understood a lot of what he was having to face. i appreciated him coming out and making a thoughtful critique of where american politics is right now because we are on the wrong path. this ideological purity that forces people to be on opposite

sides of critical issues, never to talk compromise, to engage in an ongoing assault on these ridiculous claims the republicans are making about this tax cut they say that's going to help middle-class incomes but it's not we've been down this road before. i think we should get back to the evidence-based policy making where we can have very robust debate and where we are looking for common ground of the way that omar alexander and patty murray tried to find it to keep the affordable care act going with subsidies for working people who need the help. there's good things we can do that what's happened, and it's in both parties but it's much more the republican party come it's been captured by ideological and religious and financial interests to an extent i never thought possible what happened because of citizens united and the determination of a small group of right-wing billionaires to basically destroy our government and use

it only to make themselves richer and richer. it is wrong. it's bad for america so yes it is our politics but it's also the policies they are pursuing. >> are there people that are doing it right that you can say yes he or she is -- >> i don't know because i only see what is in public and i have no access to the fights that they are waging to you by day. >> he says this is reassembling of the shrunken and beaten richard nixon and "the chicago tribune" says you take responsibility for the mistakes and proceed to blame everybody else. in the book is also quoted the news columnist. there are many more positive reviews by a longshot and the reason is this is a very balanced about. i take responsibility.

i blame myself. i was a candidate. my name was on the ballot but if that is all there was to it, i wouldn't be writing a book. i wouldn't be talking about the continuing challenges we face from sexism and misogyny conference voter suppression, which every day seems to suggest one of the reasons i lost wisconsin on the table, because it will hurt the democrats going forward unless we figure out how to stop the republicans from basically shrinking the electorate, from the russians, from the unprecedented intervention of director of the -- fbi. so i think there are some lessons people should learn. some of my critics don't like what i say about the press, and i understand that, but i think they failed on this campaign. they followed the shiny object of e-mails a day after day as all of the research shows come and they gave a pass to trump on his reality tv tactics. they now some of them have talked to me and say he should have done a better job and i had no idea.

fine, do a better job next time but don't blame the messenger. i'm coming with a first-hand personal political and historical view about what happened in 2016 and we better learn those lessons or people have even more problems in our politics and our country going forward. >> your advice to the 2020 democratic nominee whoever that person is. >> i'm not giving advice on 2020. i'm getting people -- voting people to vote in 2017 and i'm going to do everything i can for the group i work with to support candidates and causes in the e. team election. if you are unhappy in the trump presidency, don't just complain and show up at a march or protest. be sure you turn out and vote in 2018. we are going to have to do more to protect the sanctity of the vote and prevent it from being manipulated or prevented by the suppression techniques republicans have adopted.

you're done with politics? >> i'm not done with politics. i care deeply about the country. i don't want to put myself through this if i didn't believe that i would be a good president and had something to contribute more than that, i don't want to see us go backwards. these attacks on the rule of law, encores, the free press, i may have my objections about how the press covers this campaign that he would never catch me saying to take the licenses and it's only fake news. this is what you're up against. i want to stay in politics and the end the debate about the future. >> finally, walk us through the process of writing this book. >> well, when i thought that maybe there was a bug in it, i talked with my publisher and they were reluctant about getting a go-ahead on the book about the campaign and suggested other things i might write about and my response was this is what

i think about every day. this is what i gave my heart to for many months this is what i want to write about. they said okay, see what you can come up with. so i had some younger people who worked with me on the campaign and did research and worked with me but early on such an intensive sprint. i turned in the first draft of the manuscript rust but put together after like four months and may. the publisher came back and said it's really good stuff and if you can get it done by the end of june we can get it out in early september. i said you're killing me. i felt like i was back in college and i got it done by the end of june with corrections in early july. i did it all in this little guesthouse i have where lots of long nights took place and i

recorded it, too. the audio i did myself and everything was done by the end of july and out by september 12 which was remarkable. >> last question. what is on your reading list? >> i'm doing a lot of catch up reading, and i just finished the latest mystery that was kind of a retrospective look back at what had happened. i'm about to dive into george sanders bordeaux because i know it got the pen award and people had been recommending it. i now have about 4 feet of books on my bedside table, things people have given me that they hope i will read and enjoy, and i intend to. >> hillary clinton, is this your home now >> absolutely. we love it here. >> thanks for being with us.

>> thank you, steve.

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