Firing Line

- A conversation with Hillary Clinton, this week on "Firing Line."

- This is our time, America!

The future is here.

It's in our grasp.

Let's go win it!

(crowd cheers) - [Margaret] As Kamala Harris makes a historic bid for the White House against the same opponent Hillary Clinton faced eight years ago, I sit down with the woman who came so close: former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

- I'm sorry we did not win this election, but I still believe in America and I always will.

And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future.

- [Margaret] We spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting, where Secretary Clinton addressed threats around the world, and the final stretch of a heated presidential campaign.

- I anticipate there will be a full-court press in October to distort who she is, what she stands for, what she's done.

And we'll have to work very, very hard to make sure that it is exposed as the lie that it is.

- [Margaret] What does Hillary Clinton say now?

- [Narrator] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Secretary Clinton.

- Hello.

- Thank you for joining me here for what is gonna become a special edition of "Firing Line" on PBS.

And for all of you for joining Secretary Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative.

You often talk about what you call a global debate between autocracy and democracy.

Where does freedom of the press fit into that fight?

- Well, thank you so much, Margaret.

I think freedom of the press is, like, at the top of the list of those freedoms, those necessary elements of maintaining democracy against autocracy.

And the trends are not good.

I mean, the trends are going in the wrong direction with the targeting of journalists, the intimidation of journalists, the use of, kind of, reverse psychology to call what journalists produce "fake" or "disinformation," as opposed to the narrative from the the government, the demagogue, the autocrat.

So I think it's not only an incredibly important issue, but really timely because we are not paying enough attention to the threats at a national level and the overall global threat that we face.

- In the context of your lifetime in public service, has media freedom been in a graver place?

- Probably not in my lifetime, except, of course, in countries that were clearly dictatorships, whether it was the, you know, former Soviet Union or Communist China.

But then there was always the contrast.

I mean, we in the United States and much of the West could point to the freedom of the press as one of the big differences between our way of life, our society, our form of government and what was on the other side.

And we spent a lot of time, you know, making the argument as to why freedom of the press was so essential.

And I don't think it surprises anybody to hear me say now we are facing some of the same attitudes toward the press, weaponizing political opposition to the press that we used to point at and say, "No, that happens there, but not here."

- Certainly authoritarian regimes don't pretend to have freedom of the press, but we're even hearing from political candidates for president, at least one of them.

Donald Trump has often called the press "the enemy of the people."

- That's exactly right.

That's my point, Margaret.

You know, I think too many people, frankly, in the press, as well as all the rest of us, don't take these threats as seriously as they should.

The campaign that Trump is running, the people who enabled him, who are allied with him, they, at the very least, disdain the press, because the press will not, in many cases, you know, report what they want to see reported.

And so for Trump in particular, but he's not the only one, but obviously, he's the the leading example, to be attacking the press on a regular basis, to be inciting the crowds that come to his rallies to turn on the press that are actually there to cover it, to deny the reality that the press is reporting, and to only go to outlets that are his political allies, that are not, in my view, acquainted with the idea of objectivity because they are in cahoots with his effort to return to power for whatever reason, financial, ideological, religious, partisan, whatever the reason is.

So he's comfortable with press, which is using the term very loosely, that agrees with him and reports only what he wants them to report.

And all the rest of the press is illegitimate, enemy of the people, hoax, perpetrating hoaxes on us, and the rest.

- Well, you never got any bad press, so you didn't have to call them the enemy of the media.

(audience laughs) - No, no, I'm not going there.

(audience laughs) - Look, I'd like to ask you about a few topics that are developing right now.

In the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas continues as tensions are rising between Israel and Hezbollah.

This is going to be a major issue in the election.

And you taught as a professor at Columbia as the war opened up on October 7th last year.

You encountered a new generation of students who were not as acquainted with the peace process from your husband's administration or the many efforts that you conducted as secretary of state.

What did that generation, or what does that generation need to understand as they consider who to vote for?

- Well, you're right.

I mean, I had an incredible experience teaching last year, and October 7th happened early in the semester.

I'm teaching again.

I've written about it in my new book, "Something Lost, Something Gained," because it was striking to me.

These are incredibly bright students from all over the world, and they're obviously not just Americans.

I teach at the School of International and Public Affairs.

So I think what struck me the most was a lack of context and an absolute either misunderstanding or no understanding of history.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion, of course, but in an institution of higher learning in particular, you want there to be some context and historical basis for the opinions that are expressed.

And in, you know, many encounters with students, they held very strong opinions, often gleaned, honestly, from social media.

And the videos that they watched on TikTok and elsewhere had shaped their opinion about a conflict that, for many of them, they were just opening their eyes to for the first time.

They had not paid much attention before.

So in conversation with them, if I were to say something, for example, like, "If Yasser Arafat had accepted the offer "that my husband made at Camp David, "they would have had a Palestinian state for 24 years," I might hear back, "Who's Yasser Arafat?"

or, "What do you mean?

"What did your husband do?"

And that's okay.

You know, that was a long time ago before some of them were born, or when they were literally toddlers.

But then when they would, you know, engage in sloganeering or reductionist thinking, and not paying attention to the complexity... Because I said in the very first class after October 7th, look, it's a class called Inside the Situation Room, and it's meant to be about crisis decision-making.

I said, "We have a crisis, obviously.

"Hamas is a terrorist organization "that committed a vicious attack on civilians in Israel.

"Israel has a right to defend itself.

"And Israel has to abide by the laws of war.

"And you have to keep those things in your mind "at the same time.

"It's not either or.

"It is truly 'both and and.'"

And I was, you know, struck by how what started off as kind of questioning, uncertainty about what was happening, you know, kind of morphed into a very hard position about the conflict without regard, as I say, to either context or history.

- I suspect they didn't know that when you were First Lady in 1998, you caused a degree of controversy for calling for a Palestinian state.

This is a position that the vice president holds today, who's running for president.

But I'd like to ask you about another story that you tell in "Something Lost, Something Gained," an operation White Scarves.

Elliot Ackerman has coined the effort to evacuate people from Afghanistan as a digital Dunkirk.

And you ran your own operation.

Women would show up in white scarves at the gates at the airport in Kabul to be evacuated.

You successfully evacuated a thousand Afghan women, their family members, through this private effort.

But thousands are still left behind.

Looking forward, what can the US do now for the Afghan, the women of Afghanistan?

- You know, Margaret, as I write in that chapter, this was truly one of the most intense and stressful experiences I've ever had, personally or professionally, working with a dedicated team to raise the money for charter flights, to, you know, make the calls I made to the heads of government around the world who would take these women being evacuated, and then working with people on the ground to get them to the airport, to get them through the airport.

And the white scarves became the sign that the Defense Department suggested I use to try to, you know, identify the women that we were evacuating.

So I'm very grateful that we got those women and their family members out, and many others through other efforts.

But what's going on in Afghanistan is, you know, beyond tragic.

And the efforts by the Taliban to justify their rule, perverting their own religion in order to oppress women, should be a wake-up call to everybody.

I think the term gender apartheid applies.

We are working with a group of lawyers and advocates from Afghanistan, from Iran and elsewhere who are trying to, you know, make sure that that concept, which really is in line with racial apartheid, be understood as a description of what's going on.

And now the latest efforts to suppress women, asking, or not asking, ordering them not to speak in public, their voices can't be heard.

They have to be, you know, not just covered, but, like, literally a burka with scarves on top so nobody can even hear their voice, is a extreme example of the pushback on women's rights that's going on elsewhere in the world.

There are many places where women's rights are being eroded.

But it's very important to try to hold the Taliban to what they said when they were negotiating the agreement with Trump and Pompeo, when they said that they would let women go to school, that they were going to be more open.

And of course, that was nothing but lies in order to get the United States and others to withdraw troops.

And then, finally, I just noticed that now the Taliban are starting to impose restrictions on men.

They're being told they have to wear beards of a certain length.

They're being told they can't wear Western clothes.

And there was one poignant quote in an article that I read about these latest moves against men, where a man is quoted as saying, "I wish now I'd spoken up for the women."

And remember that because, you know, even in our own country right now, there are people who disregard the attacks on the press, disregard the attacks on women, disregard the attacks on minorities, on LGBTQ rights, on people of different religious persuasions, because that's not them.

But there is no safe haven from authoritarians.

They will go after you for any reason they choose because there is no rule of law for them.

So take a lesson from what we're seeing elsewhere.

(audience applauds) - And yet the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that we all watched, some speculate, may have emboldened Vladimir Putin, who is now waging war on Ukraine and has aspirations to reassemble the Soviet bloc.

The Republican Party's posture has changed vis a vis Russia, which you write about in your new book.

You mentioned Republican Representative Mike McCaul, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, saying, quote, "Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, "unfortunately infected a good chunk of my party's base."

Back in the day when William F. Buckley Jr. hosted Ronald Reagan and George H.W.

Bush on the program, there was a very clear sense that Republicans were the party that was strong against the Communists.

- There is a sense in which when you are dealing with a sworn enemy, in which your relations improve to the extent that that enemy recognizes that he is not going to successfully destroy you.

I think that as long as Ronald Reagan or his successor, George Bush, are in the White House, there will not be a nuclear initiative by the Soviet Union, because there is no doubt what our response would be.

- The Republicans were the ones who would stand up to the Soviets.

What has happened, and what is your analysis?

Is the GOP supporting forces that would reassemble the Soviet bloc?

- You know, Margaret, I would really like to understand completely why the Republican Party, not not everyone, to be fair, like Mike McCaul and others, have tried to warn against Russian propaganda influencing Republican lawmakers.

But there's no doubt that there has been a kind of dance between the Republican Party and Putin for a number of years now that certainly Trump took to the extreme point of talking about Putin, whom I've met and negotiated with on several occasions, as though he were a mentor, someone to be looked up to, someone to actually model yourself after.

And there is a, I think it's a kind of yearning for a strongman government that infects some of the Republican Party.

But why other Republicans, including people I served with eight years in the Senate whom I thought I knew have been dragged into this Trump-Putin, you know, bromance is beyond me.

It's dangerous for our country.

Our intelligence agencies have been putting out alerts for the last week saying the Russians are back, they're back in strength.

They're interfering in our election once again.

They're more sophisticated than they were in 2016.

Pay attention.

Don't get fooled.

He is our adversary.

He has been focused on reconstituting mother Russia, if not the complete Soviet Union, for years now.

He wants to undermine the West and in particularly has adopted a strategy of dividing the United States against itself.

So I look at that and cannot for the life of me understand completely what has gotten into the Republicans.

But it's true and it's dangerous.

And there is no way to predict what might happen if the election turns out one way.

And, you know, we know that the promise has been made to pull the United States out of NATO.

We know all of that.

And that's what we would have to be up against if it were to happen.

- And you do predict, I mean, you have a very clear chapter in your book about what happens in a second Trump administration.

"The New York Times" reported this week that Trump's efforts to pressure federal agencies to investigate his enemies, including you, were much more exhaustive and successful than we had imagined.

He has promised to be even more aggressive in seeking retaliation against his enemies, perceived and real, his political opponents, in a second term.

You've noted that presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said that a second Trump term could, quote, "bring about the end of our democracy "and the birth of a new authoritarian order."

It's hard to imagine our democracy transforming into authoritarianism.

Is it actually existential?

- I think it is existential.

And I say that based on what he says, and what Project 2025 proposes as the agenda for a second Trump term.

- May I interject?

You talk about this.

Why do we always have a hard time believing what would-be authoritarians or opponents say they'll do?

- You know, Margaret, I think in this case, it started off because most Americans were introduced to Trump as a television star, a guy who played a successful businessman, not one who was a successful businessman.

And as the character that he played, and with the kind of macho appearance of, you know, "You're fired" and tough guy in action, people bought that and people believed that.

And people also discounted much of what he said, including members of the press, because they thought it was all a performance.

You know, it was entertaining.

You couldn't turn away from it.

You have no idea what he was gonna say next.

And I think because people did not always, and still today do not always, take him seriously and literally, they are missing the larger picture.

Because I don't think Trump believes anything except his own grandiose view of himself.

And he has been played by everybody from Putin to people in this country who want to take advantage of him through flattery to get him to implement their agenda, whether it's huge tax cuts for the rich, or whether it's, you know, destroying the civil service, or ending the Department of Education, or overturning Roe v. Wade.

All of that is just, you know, a game that he's the person in the middle of that others are manipulating.

And, you know, there's no doubt that if he were to have power again, without any kind of accountability and without people around him who stopped him from doing some very bad things in his first term, people who were Republicans, people in his administration, but who knew enough about government and cared enough about democracy to put the brakes on... And they are begging us.

I mean, they are like sounding three-alarm fires.

"Do not vote for him.

"Don't let him near power again," because they know if he is surrounded by sycophants and opportunists and manipulators, there's no telling the damage that he will do.

And I think it is hard.

I think it's hard for people.

I think it's hard for the press to really grasp the danger that he poses.

And as the article you referenced said, I mean, he, you know, he basically ordered his attorney general to reopen an investigation into me.

He ordered his two secretaries of state to reinvestigate me.

They investigated the Clinton Foundation.

You know, I'm the most investigated innocent person you have ever met in your entire life, and so.

(audience laughs and applauds) But I will tell you, it is not a pleasant experience.

- Brief final question.

You liken yourself to Cassandra, the Greek mythological figure who could see the future and the prophecies but was never believed.

Putting that Cassandra hat on for the moment, but we're listening, what is something that you see happening in the near future that we should be taking more seriously?

- Well, I do think that the press needs a consistent...

I mean, the press is not supporting Trump blatantly, very persistently.

The press is trying to be the press, be objective, be, you know, reporting the facts.

The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses.

Because, you know, people may still look at the danger and say, "I don't care.

"Doesn't affect me.

"I'm gonna vote for him for X, Y or Z."

Okay, but at least people need to be woken up and given the facts about what he has done, is saying and would do.

And I anticipate that, you know, something will happen in October, as it always does.

You know, the Russians, as I said earlier, are very active in this election.

We know the Iranians are active, as well.

Chinese uses TikTok, or they certainly did against Biden and for Trump.

I think they're a little less pro-Trump right now.

So you look at where people get their information, and they get their information largely from social media.

And so the campaign is doing the best job it can to combat that, combat both domestic and foreign false disinformation.

But I anticipate there will be a full-court press in October.

The digital airwaves will be filled.

And why does that matter?

Because the press that is pro-Trump anyway.

Oftentimes stories are put on digitally that then are picked up by, let's say it, Fox and others.

And then those stories are stories, so the mainstream press reports on them.

And so that story then takes on a life of its own.

There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert Kamala Harris, who she is, what she stands for, what she's done.

I mean, look, I mean, the crazy story about me running a child trafficking operation out of a basement of a pizzeria.

(audience laughs) Don't laugh, don't laugh.

It was a huge story.

And it got one young man in North Carolina to get in his car with his, you know, assault rifle and drive up to liberate these nonexistent children and shoot up a pizzeria in Washington, D.C..

This is dangerous stuff.

It starts online, often on the dark web.

It migrates.

It's picked up by the pro-Trump media.

It's then reported on by everybody else, which makes sure it has about 100% coverage, and people believe it.

So I don't know what it's going to be, but it will be something, and we'll have to work very, very hard to make sure that it is exposed as the lie that it is.

- Secretary Clinton, for your time today and for being with us, thank you very much.

How about a round of applause (indistinct)?

(audience applauds) - [Narrator] "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (bright upbeat music) (gentle music) (soft music) - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.