Hillary Clinton is promoting her new book, What Happened, by talking to various news outlets. For some potential readers the Clinton interviews are a gateway to the book.
But for others the interviews are a substitute for reading it — because Clinton talks about so much of what’s in it whenever she sits down. Because as Jimmy Kimmel said: who wants to revisit that magical time known as the 2016 presidential election? (Kimmel: “I would love to relive that magical election of 2016. It’s like reading a book about why the Titanic sank while you’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean.”)
Here are 18 things Clinton said to Anderson Cooper in her CNN sit-down.
- on Trump’s inauguration day she would have rather been “Anywhere else. Bali, maybe. You know, anywhere else.”
- “I am afflicted with the responsibility gene.”
- Back at the inauguration: “I did everything that you’re supposed to do.”
- Still at the inauguration: “I could hear some, ‘Lock her up’ chant — in the distance.”
- “This hyper partisanship and this negativity that I think has been really inflamed by the Internet — I’ve given a lot of thought to it over the last month.” (She means, in part, the Internet the Russian hackers like to push.)
- on James Comey’s badly timed reveal about new evidence in the Clinton email case: “That was the determinative day because it stopped my momentum.”
- Those pesky Russians again: “Whoever runs again, probably starting in 2018, will face Russian interference.” (What’s with that “again”?)
- “The American people don’t have the information that there’s a legitimate investigation going on about Trump and Russia before they vote.” (Comey said a LOT more about Clinton’s emails than about the Russian investigation, true.)
- to stop the Russian interference Clinton said: “I would’ve had an independent commission, I would’ve done everything I could to get to the bottom of it because it’s not going to stop.”
- Russians again: “I think it’s probably — bigger than Watergate because it is about the future.”
- When Trump stalked her creepily at the debate? “I prepared for him to try to use his size and his presence to intimidate me.”
- Debate conclusion: “I won the debate according to the analysts.” (Analysts she later found out aren’t that important.)
- Bernie Bros had bite: ” I didn’t get that same, you know, respect and reciprocity from Senator Sanders or from his supporters.”
- Electoral college? “An anachronism that was designed for another time no longer works.”
- on Trump now: “You can’t predict what he might do.”
- Clinton letting some Trump voters off the hook, while pointing at Comey: “The director of the FBI said she may go to jail. OK, look, the locker room isn’t as bad as that.”
- “There is no absolution for those who didn’t vote.”
- About the reaction of people, especially women, who feel like they didn’t do enough to help during the election campaign: “What’s more common is people bursting into tears. I had a lot of that at my book signing.”
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