of small business saturday. a day where you get to return that love, because shopping small makes a big difference. so, today get up, get out, and shop small. morning, glory america. srb thanksgiving weekend. i'm hugh hewitt. i interviewed hillary clinton on wednesday. a panel of clinton watchers will join me to slice and dice that long and controversial interview. and we will cover the rising death toll in egypt, which is over 300 now. the financial protection bureau being run by mcmulvaney. and president trump hinting he

ought to have been it. and urban meyer after go bucks beats the team from up north. i'm joined by one of the world famous best-selling authors ken follett. eye of the needle and the pillars of the earth. column of fire combines both about two of the most powerful women in history. elizabeth i and mary queen of scots. it's great to talk to you again. >> good morning, hugh. it's great to be on the show. >> i will come back to column in a fire" in a moment. i wanted to ask you, you just finished three novels on the 20th century. did you see coming out of that work anything like donald trump approaching history's edge? >> well, you know, hugh, the trouble with democracy is that you can get elected by telling

stupid people that they're right. and that's how hitler got elected. and i'm afraid that's how donald trump got elected too. >> the new crown prince of egypt called the supreme leader of iran the new hitler. should we throw that word around. you're a brit. you have a family member, not your own, you're not old enough. should we throw that term around, ken follet? >> i think we're getting to the point where we have to say how much of what is going on is close to what happened in germany in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly the way that foolish ideas are encouraged. instead of being examined they're encouraged. and people get away with the most terrible -- which a few years ago would have ended a

politician's career. now it seems to make no difference. that shows a strong movement in a very bad direction. and it does, your question was absolutely app sight. it reminds me of the terrible things that happened in europe during the 1930s. let's go to "column of fire." i in hailed it as i do most of your novels. it is about two very strong women. mary queen of scots sand queen . you lived under margaret thatcher and theresa may, gandhi, mair. what is it, ken, you study the ancients and then the moderns like maggie thatcher and hillary clinton that celebrate those who win elections in wars and those who lose their heads in assassinations like bhutto, mary

queen of scots. >> mary queen of scots was not very smart. queen elizabeth i was very smart. the other thing that i noticed, this novel, "column of fire" is about religious tal ropbs. we should all have freedom of worship was a new, radical idea. most thought the other thing to do was kill them all. there were two other powerful women in europe at the 16th century who shared that belief. one was queen catherine of france and margaret of parma, governor of the netherlands. it's interesting, isn't it, the three early proponents of the idea of religious tolerance happened to be female rulers. >> ken follet, i have been

teaching first amendment seminar on religious liberty. it will now begin with "column of fire." i have never been able to articulate where it comes from. you make it come alive. it's a bill under siege all around the world as we saw from the mosque attack yesterday in egypt. everywhere fanatics want to relive the 17th century. and i think a column of fire" might help slow them down a bit. >> well, a certainly hope so. although you're right that we're seeing terrible religious warfare and murder and slaughter around the world, we can at least say that in some parts of the world some progress is being made. and in some parts of the world, the idea of religious tolerances is now the norm. and happily in the uk we catholics and protestants no longer murder one another. they did in the 16th century. they did it with great enthusiasm.

but so religious warfare hasn't gone away, but we have made some progress. i think we can be kind of positive about the human race and say, well, it's not quite as bad as it used to be. >> we can also be positive about "a column of fire." best christmas going. i'm sure it will be under tens of thousands of christmas trees this year as also will be what happened hillary clinton's memoir. ken follet, thank you for joining me. hillary clinton joined me on wednesday. when we come back, we will reveal what happened when hillary clinton and i talk about what happened. that think these days. businesses are thinking. factories are thinking. even your toaster is thinking. honey, clive owen's in our kitchen. i'm leaving. oh never mind, he's leaving. but what if a business could turn all that thinking... thinking... endless thinking into doing? to make better decisions. make a difference. make the future. not next week while you think about it a little more.

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hey, welcome back. i'm hugh hue wet. monday through friday i'm on the salem radio network 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. on the weekend on phrpbz. this particular show has been on since 2000. i've done over 20,000 interviews. until wednesday, none had been with bill clinton or hillary clinton. that changed wednesday. secretary clinton joined me for a wide-ranging 45-minute conversation about her memoir of the campaign, "what happened." the most important book of 2017. it is riveting,en grossing, no holds barred. of course it was civil. why secretary discipline chose to say it on my show on jonathan allen of nbc news who co authored "shattered" by the

campaign. sue is san page, washington bureau chief of "usa today", and jake sherman of politico's daily playbook. let's play for you three the very first clip i want to highlight where i ask her did the team obama alumni on her campaign hold you back and did president obama's record hold you back? here's what she said. >> to succeed a two-term president of your own party, you have a historical headwind glowing against you. and i refer to that in the book, because it's not just this campaign can be set apart from everything that's ever happened in our politics. it is a challenge. if you are both the candidate defending a lot of the areas of agreement, but also putting forth an agenda for change, which is what i tried to do, it is off difficult to get the second part of that message

through. so i do think it was a problem. >> god love -- >> i was going to say god love governor dukakis. but you -- george h.w. bush wasn't running against donald trump during the third campaign. john allen, you wrote the book on the campaign. did team alumni hillary clinton hold back? >> i think it was an issue for her. before she actually got into the kpaeufpb she started to distance herself from the president on syria and other topics. and then david axelrod, long time campaign guru came out and knocked her on twitter. in the primaries when she was struggling against bernie sanders, some tied herself to barack obama because she needed the support of the democratic base. this was something she struggled with the whole time. can she get away from him while she has his alumni on her team and him in the white house and democrats loving him?

and also you saw i think with that struggle that she was having this in ability to define herself as anything other than either the obama third term or bill clinton third term. this was something she couldn't see coming. they needed to plan for that and they opportunity have a consistent plan for that. >> the only one that pulled it off was george herbert bush. of course we have lots of examples of al gore not going after bill clinton. did she have a problem not recognizing that and calling i am different. i am change. >> you have to be adept to do that. it's a line to walk. it's hard. it's a problem joe biden would have had if he had been the nominee instead of hillary clinton. not only did she not only have a plan. she had many strengths but she is not anymore el in the way you need to make the case to the obama supporters.

yes, i'm going to protect his legacy. but a lot of people unhappy and nervous and wanting some change. also having a message to them. i don't think she ever managed to do that. >> jake sherman in houston. when the interview came out, you wrote in politico everyone has to read this because it is very revealing. why do you think she is unbending now? is it really over, over, over for her politically? >> yeah, it is definitely of, over, over, and i think she's said that. it was way more revealing than i would have expected. and i think that she feels like it's her job, it's her duty to speak truth and to kind of unleash and unchain herself from the shackles that kind of held her back before. and i think it was -- this is her strip from the political considerations. you got this in the interview a little bit. she was held back during these campaigns. and she even admitted some of these campaign people she had on did not let her be herself. this is something john has

written about extensively. and any clinton watcher has written about extensively about how she has been managed so long and in campaign structures so long and if she can only be herself it would be better for her. and i think that's what you're seeing here. >> she was terrific in this interview. i did ask tough questions. i went right at the server. here is that exchange with the secretary. >> for me, it was never the e-mails. it was the server. and you obviously admire mike more rell as much as i do. you quote him. i always thought your server was compromised, madam secretary. that's what bothered me about it. >> as you read my comment, he talked about government servers. there is no doubt that our government servers at the time i was serving as secretary of state were compromised. and there is at least in so far as we know no evidence that my private server was. and i think that the russians, encouraged by then-candidate

trump, were certainly doing everything they could to find anything that would have been on that server. now why do i say that? because the russians, because it is clear that the only server compromised were state department servers. >> susan page, is that persuasive? >> yeah. so she bends on something things in your excellent interview. not on this. still apparently unwilling to say what a blunder that was on my part to set up and use a private server when i was secretary of state. history makes it clear that was a mistake. it was a mistake that she made. but you continue have her find various ways to defend what she did. >> she won't knit that it was compromised. i still believe it was. you're not going to find evidence of the good ones. what do you think? >> i don't have any evidence that the server was compromised. i think the argument that she

decided to go outside the government's rules and it turns out she didn't get hacked but the government has been hacked is not an excuse for her playing outside the rules. i think that was one of the big things people didn't like about the server question. as susan said, this is not her unbending in the same way. folks should read the transcript of the interview. sit more revealing than her book is. >> i was struck by how candid she was. on the server she did not give one inch. not one inch. >> no. this contradicts everything we said before. it is not only whether it was compromised or not but unrelatable to every american that somebody has a server in their house on which they send e-mails to each other. nobody -- i'd say a fraction of a percent of americans could even understand what that means and it just wreaks as strange.

it goes back to the relatable issue, which was a huge issue for her in the campaign. >> the reason i think she should have done conservative media. i asked a question about artificial intelligence. oh, was she ready. listen to this bit. >> here's the problem. the algorithms that are used to track you online have become increasingly sophisticated. and it is now clear that our tech companies have an enormous amount of private information about you and me and everybody else who ever goes online. that information can be used to sell products which a lot of us might be interested in. but it can also be used to stalk children, purr have a

pornography or provide channels for weaponizing information for political purposes. i don't think the tech companies have come clean yet about everything that you know about what happened on their watch. >> jake sherman, it's been a theme on my show here on msnbc with leader muck connell, paul ryan that silicon valley is not our friend. they're getting ahead of themselves. i was a little bit surprised to hear secretary clinton sound the same alarm. were you? >> a little bit, yeah. this is something we are wrestling with on capitol hill constantly about what constraints to put on technology companies. and you do see kind of this big struggle even with elected officials about how far the government should go. it is fascinating that she had a much more clear and articulated view. i think if you had donald trump on your show which you have many times on the radio, i would be curious to hear what his response to a question like that would be. >> susan page, artificial

intelligence is not our friends. world without mind is the most alarming book we have read in a long time. do you worry about these things the way she does. >> i'm sure. i would not articulate it as skillful isfully as she is. what kind of president would she have been. with the depth of many on so many fronts and a variety of issues that you asked about. can i say one other thing from the interview. this was a reason, this is an example by she should be targeting the conservative media. the most interesting exchange you had with her is when you asked about when she was driving across the country whatever that vehicle was. >> scooby van. they went to the chipotle listening to all the p.r. stations and saying shouldn't you have been listening to conservative radio to get a sense of what people were feeling and saying. i thought that was a fantastic point and a reminder to all of

us. >> get out of the bubble. i asked her about how many white nationalists are there in the united states? half million or fewer. she admitted there are less than a half million. but she went on to say that president trump is empowering that remnant of racism in the country. what did you make of that argument there? >> look, i think there is evidence that white nationalists feel empowered. and that has happened at the same time they won the republican nomination and game president of the united states. whether he identifies with them is a different question whether they identify with them. and when she talked about deplorables. half of trump voters are deplorable and said the amazing thing after that, that they are redeemable. >> half. >> i don't know anybody who believes that people are

redeemable. >> the key to the enter vie was trying to get down to how small is the extremist slice on both left and right. she conceded that. i'm glad she did. i don't think there are that many crazy people on the far left or far right in the united states. >> yeah. you and i talked about this on a panel recently. and i think john is absolutely right. whether they identify with them or he identifies with them are two very different things. it is definitely more prominent than it's ever been before. that is a false indicator. there is no way to accurately depict who these people are or how many there are across the country. >> last quick question, have you read what happened yet? >> i have. >> it's a great book. >> i enjoyed it. a lot of valuable things in it. however, i thought the theme was a little too much it was everybody's fault. >> i have read at it. i have looked at the critical

parts. i would much rather john allen's book "shattered" which is sitting on my bookshelf. and i think i even purchased it. john gets a little money from that. >> it is not a binary choice. you can read both. thank you jonathan, susan and jake sherman in houston. stay with us. i'll be right back. david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian,

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all of you. at the half hour, here's what we're watching. the search is on in egypt for the armed attackers who killed 300 people in a mosque. the islamist extremists detonated a bomb before streaming gunfire. retailers are still sizing up black friday shopping receipts. online sales projected to total $5 billion. as of 8:00 eastern time, adobe analytics says cyber sales exceeded $3.5 billion, up 15.5% from a year ago. after black friday trading on wall street, jeff bezos is worth $100 billion. he further solidified his title as the world's richest man. to this breaking news in egypt, the number of people reported dead in an