Susan Rice

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Welcome to The Ticket.

I'm Isaac Dover.

You know, back at the beginning of the year, we changed the title of this show to The Ticket, thinking I'd be out on the road talking to politicians, and also because we knew it would be focused on what the two parties were putting together ahead of the election, what the ticket would be.

Instead, I've been recording in Washington Washington via Zoom, and this conversation is a remote Zoom recording between two people both sitting in DC.

But for the last interview before the Democratic ticket is finalized, we're talking to someone who may be on that ticket, and we're expecting that decision any day now.

We know Joe Biden's going to pick a woman, and likely a woman of color.

Kamala Harris has long been seen as the frontrunner, but another contender stock has risen recently, even though she's not as well known outside of the usual Washington circles.

In fact, by the time you're listening to this, my guest may be the next Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States.

Susan Rice was United Nations Ambassador and then National Security Advisor for the Obama White House.

She spent all eight years in the administration working on global and security issues.

You've probably heard about the pandemic response office the Trump White House closed two years ago or the pandemic playbook they shelved.

Rice was the advisor in charge of both those efforts.

She's the rare government official to have weathered intense national political exposure without ever running for office.

Most people first became aware of her after the tragedy in Benghazi and the political circus that followed.

Before Hillary Clinton was beat up over it, Susan Rice was the main target of congressional Republicans.

She wrote about her experiences last year in an autobiography called Tough Love.

It's back out in paperback this week, and it's incredible how much has changed in a year, and yet how weirdly relevant a lot of what she wrote about has become.

And I asked her about some of those stories from the book in our interview.

We talked about statehood for Washington, D.C., racism and sexism in American politics, and the formative experiences that made her who she is today, a person who who may soon be our first woman of color on a national ticket.

Take a listen.

Hi, Susan.

Hey, how are you?

Hang on a second.

I'm trying to put my phone on do not disturb.

Okay.

I mean, I guess there's one call that you might want to make sure can get through if necessary, but

he'll leave a message.

Oh, Lord.

How are you doing?

I'm okay.

Where are you?

Are you in Maine or you back in DC?

I'm not answering your questions on my whereabouts.

All right.

It's that stage of things.

In the book, one of the earliest memories that you talk about is walking around in Washington after the riots, after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

I'm wondering, can you just talk through that memory?

Sure.

Well, you know, to date myself, I was born in 1964 in Washington, D.C.

And my earliest memories are in many respects of my parents trying to make sure that I was aware of the world around me.

After Dr.

King was assassinated and Washington exploded into riots, particularly on the 14th Street.

corridor.

They took me and my baby brother, who was, you know, if I was not quite four, my brother was, you know, not quite two.

And he was in a stroller and I was holding my parents' hands.

They took us down after the riots were over to see the burnt out 14th Street corridor and to understand to the extent we could at that age that we were part of a community and that this community was hurting and that

we

had the good fortune of being safe, but that we were not apart from the suffering and the anger and the distress that was African-American Washington, D.C.

in that moment.

That made sense to you as a four-year-old?

Well, I think it did enough because it really sticks in my memory.

The other thing that sticks in my memory from right around the same time is they also took us down to the National Mall, which I remember to be just full of mud to see the Poor People's Campaign.

This was Dr.

King's

final project to focus on poverty in the United States.

And for

a substantial period of time in the spring of 1968, there were encampments of peaceful protesters on the National Mall arguing that

America had to be more not just racially just, but economically just.

And they took us to see that too.

So they were all about educating us.

You've talked about the memory of walking around Washington and linked it to the idea of statehood for Washington, which is something you, as a native Washingtonian, which there are not many.

I am a transported Washingtonian.

Actually, I think there are many.

You political reporters and the people who are of Washington, as opposed to the District of Columbia, don't really understand that there are 700,000 of us, that many of us are actually from here.

That's fair.

When I first moved to Washington, right around then, I was in a cab, and the cab driver said to me, you're not a real resident of Washington until you've lived more than eight years, because eight years is the maximum that you'd be just for being here for a presidential administration.

So I have passed that point from, I've been through multiple administrations now.

But the idea of DC statehood is one that came up again this summer.

To some, it's an obvious one.

There are 700,000 people in Washington who don't have the same voice in the government as lots of other places.

To some people, it is a ridiculous idea that Washington should ever be a state.

I want to read to you what Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, said about it.

He said, Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction, and ten times as many workers in manufacturing.

In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state.

I feel like your laugh is the response to that.

Well, why don't you tell me what that's?

No, I'm asking you, since you raised the quote.

Well, I mean, to me, it is Senator Cotton saying that there are some Americans who are better than other Americans.

And by talking about mining and logging and construction as somehow more American industries or professions than industries that are

and professions that are all over Washington is something that feels like it has at least some kind of a racial tinge to it.

Maybe.

What are the demographics of Wyoming versus Washington, D.C., Isaac?

They're very different.

I haven't spent much time in Wyoming, but I spent just a tiny bit.

And it is a more homogeneous population.

Exactly.

And a more white population.

Is that what this all is?

I think it's that and more.

I think it's, well, first of all, let's make sure people understand the facts.

The District of Columbia has over 700,000 Americans, citizens.

That makes D.C.

larger than two other states and equal in size to another two other states.

We pay more taxes, federal taxes per capita.

in Washington, D.C.

than any other state in the Union.

Our sons and daughters fight in our wars, and yet we have no vote in Congress.

Not in the Senate, not in the House.

And by vote, I mean on legislation.

We have a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives.

How big of a priority should that be to change that?

Should that be at the top of the list?

I think it's an important priority, particularly.

We have 700,000 disenfranchised Americans here who are as

red-blooded, hardworking, decent, tax-paying paying as any others.

And

there's a large, you know, there's a history to this, which is that the Constitution has established something called the federal enclave.

But the Constitution doesn't require that that federal enclave be any larger than the federal buildings and territory within the city.

So you could take the Capitol and the Mall and the White House and the Supreme Court and the Smithsonian and the federal entities and continue to reserve them as the federal enclave per the Constitution and allow the rest of the city, which is where the population is anyway, to have statehood.

And if we had statehood, Isaac, it would have been a lot harder for President Trump for political purposes to call out federal forces to club and beat and terrorize people in the District of Columbia who were peacefully protesting.

So this is not a theoretical, this is not, you know, a vanity cause.

It's a real issue for the 700,000 people who live in the District of Columbia.

And for Tom Cotton and the Republicans,

you know, I won't characterize his offensive statement more than you and I already have, but the Republicans clearly, and then President Trump has been explicit about this, they don't want the District of Columbia to have statehood because they don't want a largely Democratic city, which is almost still 50% African American, to have two senators and a vote in the House.

It's that simple.

And he's on the record saying that.

Yeah.

It makes me think of another moment in the book that you write about and talk about

how much of an issue race can play,

which is this moment when you're in high school and your coach walks up to you and says

something that really struck you.

I feel like I should just let you tell the story because it'll be better coming out of your mouth than trying to remember.

But interestingly, Isaac, i don't consider that in this unique instance even though she used the n-word an expression of racism uh i have experienced plenty of racism in my life and i i can i know it when i see it but the story here was i went to a all-girls private high school here in washington dc where i live now that um had a basketball team on which I played for four years on the varsity team as a point guard.

And we had a wonderful coach early in my time at NCS, my school, who was young and came from a working class Catholic family.

And she'd never been around the children of Washington's

elite and found that to be troubling and offensive for reasons that I totally understand.

I mean, these are basically, you know, it was a very

highbrow school where the kids were the daughters of senators and ambassadors and wealthy businessmen substantially.

And she was a great coach who pushed us all, kicked our behinds, made us run as many suicides as we could before literally collapsing in exhaustion.

She turned us from a lame team into a really competitive team.

And she took a very personal interest in each of us that you know i appreciate to this day i just want to be on the record saying she is a wonderful coach she was a wonderful person who shaped me profoundly But one day, in a strange context, she literally just off the cuff, used the n-word directed at me.

And my response, which, you know, was, I was surprised and shocked, obviously, because it came out of nowhere.

And it wasn't said with malice.

It was, it was clear to me even in that moment.

that this was something that she had heard plenty of times and it came out in a way that wasn't meant to be hurtful.

But of course, in my judgment, you can't use that language and get away with it.

So I responded with a profanity directed at her.

It's a podcast.

You wrote it in your book.

You can say what you said.

I'm not going to, you know, because the next thing I know, Dana Milbank will be,

will be quoting me.

You know, by the way, can I just a little diversion here?

I am accused of using profanity.

I cop guilty to that.

Okay.

I do occasionally use profanity, not in my official functions, not when the circumstances make it inappropriate, but it is the case that I have used the occasional profanity.

And that was, you know, that was a deliberate example where I did it because what I was trying to do was to make sure she understood that that was not an acceptable way to speak to me or anybody else.

And she understood it.

We moved on.

It never subsequently affected our relationship.

She knows she made a mistake.

I don't curse out teachers as a matter of course.

And

never before, never since.

And, you know, I remain deeply indebted to her and very fond of her to this day.

So I don't consider that an example of racism as much as a culture clash in the 1980s that would be...

was unacceptable then and would be unacceptable now and that you know she understands is the case the reason why i have to

say one thing about the profanity thing because this is i think noteworthy.

You know,

does anybody remember what Dick Cheney said on the Senate floor?

I think it was in 2004 or 2004.

Yeah, it's to Pat Leahy.

Yeah.

Senator Leahy.

He told him to go F himself.

Yep.

On the Senate floor.

Does anybody talk about Dick Cheney's foul mouth?

Or does that in any way define him as the vice president of the United States?

Well, what do you think that is?

I mean, in your book, you write about this a little bit.

You say,

well, I want you to talk about it.

You say, you write, I'm a direct person.

I think it's sexist.

That's what I think it is.

As you write about it, you've been called a hothead, other things like that, questions about your temperament.

Those are things that end up being written much more about women.

It's definitely true.

That's my point.

I mean, first of all, I'm not a hothead.

I've accepted the profanity

charge on occasion, you know, behind closed doors, not in public, with one notable exception that my my mother would be, if she were still alive, would be berating me for.

But I raised a Dick Cheney point to underscore the contrast.

Men all the time, Donald Trump tweets in profanity.

I just think there's something of a double standard.

There's a lot in your book about how what you went through when you were the focus of the attacks, the political attacks after the Benghazi attack and your Sunday show appearances.

And your mother is obviously super important to you and

died just after Trump won.

But there is

you're taking a walk with her and she has what seems like a premonition that you shouldn't go on the Sunday shows for that appearance.

I don't know if it was a premonition or just her normal prescience, but she said I shouldn't do it.

She warned me on the Friday when I told her, I stopped by her house.

She'd been quite ill

after work on my way home.

And she asked me what I was planning to do on the weekend.

And I said, actually, I was planning to take the kids to Columbus, Ohio to the Ohio State football game on Saturday for their first Big Ten game.

And that I did, by the way, because I'd made a commitment to them.

And then I said that, you know, but I'd been asked to go on the Sunday shows in the wake of the terrorist attack on our facility in Benghazi, but also the attacks on a number of other facilities that weren't terrorist attacks, but sort of mob attacks throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

It had sort of been a week of unrest.

And she said, you know, why you?

And I said, you know, White House asked me to do it.

You know, she's like, well, where's Hillary?

And I said that, you know, she'd been asked, but declined.

And I presumed, I hadn't had this conversation with her, that she had had an extraordinarily draining week having lost, you know, four Americans, an American overseas facility, and all the pain and trauma that that entails for the people of the State Department, for the families, for everybody.

So I said, you know, I was asked, I wasn't planning to do it.

It's not what I want to do this weekend, given that I want to take the kids, but I agreed as a team player.

And her instinct was, you know, I smell a rat.

You shouldn't do it.

And I said, Mom, don't be ridiculous.

I've done this many times before.

She was absolutely right.

And what did that whole experience then teach you about the way that politics and

at least cable news, political media work?

Because first of all,

the core lesson is always listen to your mother.

It's a good one.

When I try to underscore that to my own kids, I use it with no success, I have to say.

But anyway, that's the lesson number one.

Lesson number two is, and I think this was what she was getting at, and what I suspect in retrospect that Secretary Clinton and other senior officials understood is that when you have a tragedy, tragedy, a crisis of the sort we had in Benghazi in the terrorist attack, particularly in the height of a presidential campaign, it's going to be politicized and the opposition is going to be

looking to shoot the messenger as much as shoot at the message.

And that's what happened.

So that's another lesson learned, which is my thinking, Isaac, quite honestly, was I wasn't thinking about myself.

I was thinking about, you know, I'm part of a team.

The team has had a very hard week.

We've lost our colleagues.

Christopher Stevens, our ambassador in Libya, was somebody that I knew and worked with and respected and liked.

It was painful for all of us.

And for me to sort of think about myself rather than think about the responsibility that the administration had to communicate to the American people was not where my head was.

And, you know, in retrospect, you know, maybe it should have been.

Maybe I should have been more self-centered in how I thought about it because clearly uh it is not redounded to my my benefit in right-wing circles um but if it if not that i'm sure they would have found something else and to your question of what does that tell us you know that was eight years ago and it was sort of a leading indicator of how ugly and dishonest our politics were going to get you know eight congressional committees investigated Benghazi ad nauseam through 2016.

Not one of them found that I had done anything wrong or that I had deliberately misled the American people or anything else.

They understood that I was providing the information that was given to me as our best current information by the intelligence community.

And the fact that some of that information,

actually really only one piece of that information, later turned out to be inaccurate.

doesn't make me a liar for having shared it and caveatted it as our best current information that could change with the investigation and other stuff.

But it it shows you how the right wing latches onto a meme or a caricature and drives it relentlessly.

And they do it to this day.

But there's, you know, this one is tired and overwrought and there's no substance to it.

And frankly, you know, for the Republicans to be harping on Benghazi in 2020, when under Donald Trump's watch, three Americans were killed on a U.S.

military base in Pensacola, Florida last year in a terrorist attack inspired by al-Qaeda, what appears to be the first foreign-directed terrorist attack on U.S.

soil since 9-11, because the Defense Department failed to adequately vet the Saudi military personnel who were being trained on that base.

But no investigation, no outrage, not a boo out of congressional Republicans.

Four Americans servicemen were killed in a terrorist attack in West Africa on Donald Trump's watch.

Not a boo, not an investigation, not an expression of concern.

So this is all political distraction.

And in a year when over, you know, almost 160,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 because of this president's ineptitude and incompetence and disregard for human life, putting his own political interests above the health and well-being and the economy of the United States and the ability to educate our kids, they want to talk about Benghazi.

You know, I say, fine, let them.

We're going to take a short break.

When we come back, I ask Ambassador Rice about the pandemic, America's standing in the world, and how having a son who's an outspoken conservative has shaped her thinking about political division in America.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen.

Only on Netflix, September 10th.

Let's talk about the pandemic a little bit.

You

were the national security advisor when the office was set up in the National Security Council to deal with pandemic response under President Obama.

That's the office that famously President Trump disbanded.

Now, of course, we have a pandemic.

You used to say towards the end of the administration, especially after what you guys experienced with Ebola, that a real pandemic was the thing that kept you up at night.

Yes.

I wonder with your experiences and the awareness you had of the dangers of a pandemic, how does what has actually happened compare to the fears that you had of what it would look like?

This is about, you know, in the realm of my worst nightmare.

The only thing that would be worse potentially is a very deadly flu virus that's as transmissible as COVID, but much more deadly.

You know, some of the avian flus have a mortality rate of 50%.

So think about that.

But in terms of its impact, in terms of the number of infections, the number of deaths, the economic implications,

the complete disruption to our domestic and global economy, this is exactly what I worried about and wrote about in the book when it was published almost a year ago.

So, this is entirely foreseeable, which is why we tried to put in place plans, offices, equipment, preparatory briefings to help the incoming administration be ready for such a scenario.

Because we knew it was going to happen, we just couldn't know when.

There's a new afterword to the book, and you write.

I find it exhausting and difficult to remain hopeful in the face of such immoral and incompetent leadership.

I guess that's the kind of thing that you're responding to.

So over the course of this, as we've all been living through it, and you've been living through it with the perspective of having been doing preparatory planning for something that then came to be, it must be even stranger than the normal experience on this.

Strangest, put it mildly.

I mean, it's infuriating.

because it didn't need to be this bad, Isaac.

We did not need to lose this many Americans.

We did not need to suffer this many infections.

We have the worst performance of any developed industrial country in the world, hands down.

And it is all because President Trump has mishandled this virus, downplaying it initially, not stepping up, testing, comparing it to the flu, saying it was going to go away.

closing down the economy in a haphazard way, failing to provide the states with the coordinated federal support they needed to treat and protect patients, and then reopening the economy prematurely for purely political purposes.

Let's be clear.

There are many more Americans dead than needed to be the case.

Many more Americans dead because of Donald Trump's failed leadership.

When I was preparing for this, I was thinking about a conversation I had with Ben Cardin, the senator from Maryland, in 2016 when Trump was not the nominee yet.

He was the primary candidate who who most people were still dismissing.

And he had gone on a trip that he had been asked to go meet with Robert Mugabe to get a sense of whether Mugabe was in okay shape.

And he said that Mugabe was laughing when the American delegation came and was checking in on democratic reforms and the system and saying, You Americans, lecture us about how the world should be.

And look at you, you've got Donald Trump, you're just like the rest of us.

Donald Trump has squandered America's moral leadership in the world

by setting a horrific example of dishonesty, incompetence, corruption, personal dealing, but also by his policies of

failing to stand up for democracy and human rights all over the world, trampling on the rights of American citizens here at home, embracing dictators from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin, attacking and undermining our allies from Canada to Germany.

So it's hard for the United States with Donald Trump as president to be an effective voice for our core values that set us apart in the world and that lead like-minded countries that share our values to want to cooperate with us.

It's very detrimental to our leadership and our security ultimately.

Does that have a permanent effect though?

I don't think it's permanent, but I think it's very damaging.

You know, know, if we re-elect Donald Trump, I think the world's going to assume that we've just, you know,

we're irredeemable.

So I think one of the many, many reasons why we need to elect Joe Biden, somebody who understands the United States' role in the world, that we are supposed to lead on the basis of our values and our interests, who represents integrity and empathy and decency and respect for the rule of law, that is what we need.

And if we don't do that, then I do think it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to restore faith in our moral leadership.

I want to

talk about some of the bigger issues, just come back and we'll only keep you for a few more minutes.

But there is a

mention in your book a couple times about your son who has

much more conservative politically views than you do.

And I just think it's interesting because we are at a point in this country where a lot of families are divided and a lot of people, a lot of friendships have been put at stake.

Can you speak about how you, who you're very clear on what your views are

and he is very clear on what his are,

how you are able to keep your mother-son relationship in strong shape?

Well, first of all, Isaac, I've got two kids.

Son is the eldest.

now 23.

He's very conservative.

I've got a daughter who's almost 18.

She's very progressive.

And my husband and I are pretty much in the same place on politics.

So

my husband and I hold down the center.

And then our kids are on either side.

Although I think my husband and I are quite a bit closer to my daughter than to our son, let's be frank.

And, you know, it's, I was raised, as I write in the book, in a family where We had robust political discussions around the dinner table, where we were expected to be able to have a view and state it clearly and have the courage of our convictions.

And that's how I've raised my kids with my husband, you know, to be interested, to be engaged, to have a view of what is going on in our community and our world and to have the courage of their convictions.

And Isaac, unfortunately, that's what happened

with both of them.

And I'm proud of them.

I'm proud that they are conscious of what's going on, that they care, and that they're not afraid to be in the arena but how do you have that kind of all the feelings you have about president trump and your son who is publicly a trump supporter and i don't mean that how do you have him be out there publicly but you feel like he is such an existential threat to this country and people should just be able to understand it and your son doesn't see things that way well first of all i i think you should not

accept press characterizations of my son.

You should read what I say about how he, what his views are.

And I write about them in the last chapter of the book.

He and I worked on that portion together so that to fairly reflect his views and where we agree and where we disagree.

He likes to characterize himself as a Reagan Republican.

But beyond that, whatever you want to call it, we have really fundamental disagreements on a lot of issues.

And sometimes they get heated, as I write about in the book.

I mean, we

disagree strenuously.

And, you know, it's hard not to.

But at the end of the day, Isaac, it's so much more important to us to be united as a family, to recognize that we have a shared history, we have shared interests, we love each other, we want to stay together, and we fight not to let political differences or any other kind of differences divide us in any kind of irreparable way.

And I really strenuously believe that, you know, much as I disagree with Donald Trump and his policies, I can't can't write off or discount or fear or hate or dismiss those Americans who support him.

That's not,

if everybody did that, we would literally be irreparably divided as a nation.

And I don't think we can afford to do that.

I can't afford to do that in my family.

I love both my kids.

I love my husband.

I'm blessed that we have a close family, even where we differ.

And we work to make that possible and to sustain it.

And to me, that's what we have to do as a nation.

We cannot hate and demonize each other and shut each other down and refuse to understand each other's perspectives, or we are sunk as a democracy and as a secure, prosperous leader in the world.

We cannot allow ourselves to devolve into that.

And unfortunately, in Donald Trump, we have a president who thrives on dividing us, whose whole political strategy is about divisions and fear and sowing.

But that's not how I intend to live my life.

That's not how I'm running my family.

It's not how I'm loving my kids.

And that's not how Joe Biden would govern.

That's the whole point of it.

He understands that we are, as I believe, and as I write in the book, that we are all in this boat together.

So let me just ask a closing question.

All the stuff in your book, how you came to be the person you are, you were a diplomat.

You were a behind the scenes person.

You were involved in a lot of political campaigns.

You have over the course of the last couple of months gotten much more into the political back and forth.

In fact, there's a photo in the book of you throwing a pitch at a Nationals game that is the opening pitch and it's just an opening pitch.

It's something cool that you did in your life.

And then a couple of weeks ago, when President Trump pulled back on when he said that he was going to go throw the opening pitch at the Yankees game, you tweeted that same photo and you said, what's the matter, matter, Mr.

President?

Can't get it up and over the plate.

I just wonder what it's like coming into the political fray after a life of being behind the scenes and being not in politics.

Well, first of all,

that was for fun.

And I hope we all can continue to have a sense of humor.

But, you know, what I discovered the hard way, Isaac, is, you know, even when I was serving in New York as our ambassador to the United Nations, trying to be, you know, very much a policymaker in a policy role, and then went on to be national security advisor.

I was sucked into the political fray.

I didn't ask for that, but that's the nature of the way Washington has devolved.

You know, as long as I was a sitting U.S.

official, I was responsible to the interests of the United States.

I was speaking on behalf of the United States and on behalf of the president and our administration.

Now that I'm a private citizen, I have the ability to speak in my own voice.

And

because of how

governing has transpired under Donald Trump, I feel compelled not to be silent about the many ways in which I think he is disserving our nation.

And so the tweet about the pitch was a joke, but the rest of this, much of this is not a joke.

It's deadly serious.

And Americans are dying who didn't need to die because of failed leadership.

And I refuse to be silent about that, whether I'm a private citizen or not.

And I guess

we'll let you get off the phone so that you can see if you have any missed calls from any former vice presidents of the United States.

It must be kind of odd these days.

Why I put my phone on, do not disturb.

I wanted to give you my undivided attention.

I'm glad that, even with the other things that you've got on your mind, that you realize that this podcast

ranked higher.

I didn't say that.

Well,

Ambassador Ambassador Rice, thank you for spending the time with us to do this.

I really appreciate it.

And we'll see how much more

we hear about you and like campaign signs or other things over the course of the next week.

Thank you, Isaac.

Either way, I'm not going away.

All right.

Thanks again for doing it.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

That'll do it for this week of the ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode, and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

If you have thoughts on the show, ideas for interviews you'd like to hear, email me at isaac at theatlantic.com.

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If you do, thanks for your support, and thanks for listening.

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