How Trump Could Win a Nobel Peace Prize (ft. Hillary Clinton)

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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.

Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Jessica Tarlove.

Scott-Free August rolls on, and I have a major upgrade today.

I'm joined by Hillary Clinton.

She was our first lady.

She was, I'm a New Yorker.

She was my U.S.

state senator.

And she was Secretary of State, obviously in Obama's first term.

And then she was the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for joining me.

It's a complete honor.

Thank you so much.

I'm really delighted to be here.

And I love that phrase, Scott-free August.

yeah

he pretends or maybe he does actually enjoy how much his staff love scott free august but our sl our slack channel is uh is celebrating uh the time away from scott and we get to talk to incredible people like you and like i said i'm just so thrilled that you're joining me and when we scheduled this i was thinking back like not that i would not have enough things to say to you, but what would possibly be going on in the news cycle and with Donald Trump as president, you never know.

There's no summer Fridays at all that are possible, but this actually feels like such perfect timing to be having this conversation with you as we are on the precipice of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin in Alaska.

We're recording this on Wednesday.

It is Friday when people will be listening to this.

You know, drawing on your experience as Secretary of State, if you were en route to Alaska, what would you be looking to get?

What does an acceptable deal look like?

Or would you frankly not be going to Alaska at all?

Well, you know, I would not be, but I think we have to deal with the reality that we have.

And President Trump has decided to go to Alaska to meet with Putin on, you know, our territory in our state on a military base.

So I would be focused on trying to persuade him.

that he gains nothing by capitulating to to Putin.

I understand from everything I've read, he very much would like to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

And honestly, if he could bring about the end to this terrible war

where Putin is the aggressor invading a neighbor country, trying to change the borders, if he could end it without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor,

had to, in a way,

validate Putin's

vision of greater Russia, but instead

could really stand up to Putin, something we haven't seen, but maybe this is the opportunity, to make it clear that there must be a ceasefire, there will be no exchange of territory, and that over a period of time, Putin should be actually withdrawing from the territory he seized in order to demonstrate his

good faith efforts, let us say, not to threaten European security.

You know, look, if we could pull that off, if President Trump were the architect of that, I'd nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Because my goal here is to

not allow capitulation

to Putin, aided and abetted by the United States.

I think that's a terrible, terrible precedent.

And I think it would make our country less safe.

I think it would reward Putin's aggression, and he will not stop.

We know that.

So,

you know, you can dream, Jessica, you can dream.

And I'm dreaming that for whatever combination of reasons, including the elusive Nobel Peace Prize,

President Trump may actually stand up to Putin on behalf of not just Ukraine and its democracy and its very brave people, but frankly, on behalf of our own security and interests.

Aaron Powell, yeah, I want to get to that.

First, though, you know, the headlines, and we've been consuming a ton of media about this, and every single headline that I've read does not suggest that this is going to go well for the United States and that Putin is licking his lips, essentially, at the prospect of being invited to our soil.

And in the press briefing, Caroline Levitt, the press secretary said that we're honored to have him, which is definitely not the language I would be using, or I think maybe any other press secretary would be using about this.

There's, you know, the story about special envoy Witkoff misunderstanding what Putin was saying and coming back to the president and saying, oh, he wants to make concessions when I don't think those words would ever be uttered by Vladimir Putin under any circumstances.

And Donald Trump has really been trying to tamp down expectations since this was announced.

So we went from, you know, we're going to get a great deal.

Then it leaks out that he's frustrated that Putin tells him one thing and does another, which is the most obvious thing that Vladimir Putin does.

And now this is quote unquote a learning exercise.

So putting aside the idea of a Hillary Clinton nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, what do you think is realistic to come out of Friday's meeting?

And keeping in mind that Zelensky has come out this week and said that ceding territory in the Donbass is absolutely off the table and he has never been given any security guarantee whatsoever.

And he said, I'll leave office for tomorrow.

I'll disappear from public life if you let us into NATO, if you make it clear that you're going to protect my people.

Right.

Well, the first thing I hope President Trump is either told or reminded of when he lands at our base in Alaska is that he is landing at the very base that has to send up fighter planes to watch and fend off Russian bombers that routinely harass our military assets,

do overflights, engage in provocative behavior in the skies above Alaska.

I hope he's reminded of that.

He is not meeting with a friend.

He is meeting with an adversary.

And an adversary who

hopes to play him.

And the best thing that could come out of this, frankly, is probably nothing, nothing agreed to, except a real strengthening of President Trump's understanding that Putin is not someone you can make a deal with and expect it to last.

So what I'm hoping is that on this listening exercise, which is now being called, President Trump will take off the blinders or the rose-colored glasses that he has worn in dealing with Putin in the past.

and recognize that

he's dealing with someone who wants to see the destruction of the United States and the Western Alliance.

We know that Russia's behind a cyber attack on our federal court system,

going into filings, ferreting out information, some of it the most personal private information and government information that you could possibly find.

So if President Trump goes in with

a better sense

that he can be a peacemaker, okay,

but not a Neville Chamberlain peacemaker, a Donald Trump tough peacemaker who holds Putin to account and protects the Ukrainian people, gives them the security that they need, including a path to NATO, and basically stands firm with our allies who have been extraordinarily supportive of President Trump during this first

six, seven months of his second term, and really make a stake like Churchill, make a stake against aggression, make a stake for freedom and democracy.

Now, that would be extraordinary, and that's what I would like to see come out of this.

Yeah.

I would like that as well.

And you mentioned the term liberal world order, and there's been a lot of conversation about the breakdown, right, of the post-World War II order.

And we don't have the same kind of relationships with our allies, to put it in Clintonian terms.

There's a lot of dumb power being used, not a lot of smart power.

Can you talk about

how far, I guess, you think this breakdown has been if we would be welcomed back into the proverbial fold?

It seems like from the NATO summit that that is the case, that our European allies are just waiting for Donald Trump to turn around and say, actually, I would like to go back to more or less the way things were because we are better together than we are on our own.

What are your thoughts on that?

You You know, Jessica, I actually

was encouraged by the events of the last several months.

First of all, the NATO commitment by individual member states to increase their defense spending is very welcome.

It's something that prior administrations have certainly sought, and I think it's great that we are seeing these commitments that now have to be followed through on.

The willingness of European countries to support Ukraine, and by doing so, buy American weapons in order to provide them to the Ukrainians.

I think all of that is a very good signal that there is beginning to be a better understanding, both by the President and the people around him, as well as by the leaders of our European allies, that

there can be common ground amongst us.

And the kind of dismissiveness that we saw in the first Trump administration has been replaced by a much more obvious working relationship to the good of European security, transatlantic security, and hopefully Ukrainian security.

So I'm actually encouraged.

I want to go back to something you said also, though.

You know, I think it's very unfortunate that President Trump only has one envoy for all the problems in the world.

He sends Mr.

Witkoff to deal with Putin.

He sends him to deal with Iran.

He sends him to deal with the Middle East, with Gaza.

I mean, there is no way, I don't know the gentleman.

Let's assume he's extraordinary, that he has all kinds of talents.

But that level of

incredible commitment is so intense, there is no way any person I know, and I've known a lot of our great diplomats, could do that alone,

could do that as the lead,

and expect not not to make mistakes.

So I think that one potential

problem that President Trump has is that he has dumped all these very, very large eggs into Steve Witcoff's basket, expects that one person to be his representative.

That is just too much.

I don't care what kind of bandwidth you think you have.

That is too much for one person.

So I'm not surprised there were miscommunications in the meeting with Putin.

I think it it was very confusing.

I think it was confusing to the White House, confusing certainly to our European allies, confusing to the Ukrainians.

So, my hope is that the president will either buttress him with many more people who can literally speak the languages of those with whom you are meeting,

can be able to pick up the nuances, can keep notes about what was said or what wasn't said, rather than just sending him into a lion's den over and over again.

That's just a recipe for the the kind of problem we saw coming out of the Putin meeting in Moscow.

Yeah.

People who speak the language perfectly often get outfoxed by Vladimir Putin, let alone

somebody who doesn't and is thinking about all those other eggs.

And I want to segue to another one of those big eggs, which is what's going on

between Israel and Gaza.

It feels like there has been a sea change, certainly in public sentiment, but even amongst the most ardent defenders of Israel and Netanyahu's right to

defend the country post-October 7th in the last month because of this mass starvation in Gaza that's gone on.

And I've seen that you've posted about that as well.

Was there a moment that stuck out to you where you felt like we could have done something differently that would have taken us to a better place?

I don't, you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization that uses civilians as human shields.

They have no respect for human life, Israeli or Palestinian.

So I'm not going to pretend that they're a rational actor in this.

But as you were watching this and with your set of experiences, was there a moment where you thought, oh, I would have done something different so that we could maybe get to a ceasefire?

I mean, a two-state solution would be.

you know, a dream at this point, but even just some peace and maybe a return of the living hostages.

Well,

I think the biggest opportunity that was missed

was after the, what was it, 12-day war with Iran.

Israel established such a dominance, intelligence dominance, military dominance, controlled

the air over Iran,

was able to

destroy important infrastructure of their military-industrial complex,

had the

addresses of some of the leaders in the nuclear program.

And then the United States came in and added to that dominance with our unique capability.

So after that, it seemed to me Netanyahu should proclaim victory.

You know, he should have said, Take the W.

Take the W.

I mean, look at what we have accomplished.

Hamas, which you're 100% right, is literally a death cult.

It's on its knees.

Iran, we have clearly sent a message very forcefully that we will not allow it to become a nuclear weapons power.

So here's what I'm going to do.

I am going to

lay out a plan for ceasefire on a fast track, whether or not Hamas agrees, because they have no interest in agreeing because

the more the war goes on for them, the better it is, because that fits their narrative.

I'm going to begin talking with our Arab neighbors about what we could do to put together some kind of security slash redevelopment program.

I'm going to demand that the Palestinian Authority reform itself in order to be a partner with Israel on doing anything

about governing,

you know, the

after, the day after Gaza.

And you know what?

That may cost me politically, because I have some people in my cabinet right now who do not agree with me.

But if that's the case, I will go to the people in an election.

I will go to the people with my plan for the future, which includes normalization with Saudi Arabia.

It includes buttressing the Lebanese so that they can

keep Hezbollah down and out.

It includes working to make sure we get the right regime in Syria.

I mean, there is so much that could have come from the Big

that was achieved over Iran.

And it was the perfect moment.

I also think if Netanyahu had done that, if his most extreme cabinet members had left him, I think he could have gone to the people of Israel and frankly gotten re-elected.

That wouldn't have been my choice because I think Israel needs new leadership.

And I've said that now for two years.

But I believe that it could have very well sent a message to the people of Israel, like, okay, we hired him to keep keep us secure.

He's done a good job defending us against the horrific Hamas attack.

He has set Iran back.

He's gotten rid of Hezbollah.

We see a change in Syria.

Okay, let's see what he's got to offer for the future.

And for the life of me,

he took short-term, you know, political

positioning instead of long-term political and substantive benefits.

And so now I think we're in

a very difficult period.

Everybody knows there's a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

And you can't deny what people are literally seeing.

Even President Trump said, look, I see people starving.

I see children starving.

And so every day that goes by without addressing that in a very clear way by the Israelis undermines Israel's position in the region and globally in a way that I believe undercuts Israel's long-term security.

So it's a vicious cycle that is going on, and it doesn't need to be that way.

I also was a strong supporter of the move toward normalization with Saudi Arabia.

I remember when I was secretary, Jessica, in literally my first meeting as secretary, I'd met him a number of times before with then prime minister and still prime minister NetNahu.

First thing he said was, How do we get to

normalization with Saudi Arabia?

Literally, and that was in 2009.

So it's been a goal of his.

I think it's now much farther away because of what is going on in Gaza and because of the Israelis' refusal to try to make the best efforts they can

to deal with the humanitarian disaster.

So I think there's a lot of moves that could have been

relied on that would have put Israel in a stronger position and even, you know, whether I like it or not, Netanyahu in a stronger position to go forward.

Yeah, the Israeli people, certainly in the wake of October 7th and at various points, like you're saying, like the attack on Iran, his popularity surges, and people forget about the fact that they think that he's totally corrupt and he doesn't want, you know, an independent judiciary and that he's trying to stay out of jail.

I think he's very bad for Israel.

You know, don't get me wrong.

I think that, you know,

it's way past his sell date.

And

it's a long time to be in office.

Long time.

And he has made

a series of political compromises that have

really tied him up.

He is a prisoner of the most extreme elements within the Israeli society, and therefore he is unable to get pragmatic again, which he used to be able to do.

So my view on this is he has nothing to lose by trying to do the right thing.

And the right thing is let's look to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.

Let's get organized to try to

get the Arab countries back on side to see what they can do in partnership with Israel to rebuild Gaza.

Let's demand a reformed Palestinian authority that would be a

somewhat credible partner.

I'm not saying you rush toward anything, but you set a process in place and you begin to work on that.

And let's not give any excuse for Hezbollah to get back on its feet.

Let's not,

you know, prejudge what's going to go on in Syria because we're setting the Syrians against Israel and the United States.

Let's try to be smart about that.

So I just feel like there's a lot of moves, but it's a chessboard of diplomacy that requires him to take some personal risks.

And look, if I were the Israelis, I would say, you know,

we're going to pause, you know, everything about the trial with you.

If you'll pause your attacks on the Attorney General and the judiciary, we have to deal with what is right in front of us, which is a continuing challenge.

But he doesn't talk to people who don't agree with him anymore.

I mean, he's now going after the leaders of the IDF because they're not 100% convinced that his plan is a workable or good one.

So I think that he's missed an opportunity.

You know, the Abba Iban used to say about the Palestinians, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Well, I think Netanyahu has missed an opportunity by missing an opportunity after they performed so extraordinarily against Iran with our help.

He's hurt his own cause, but he's also put Americans and American political leadership in a very compromising position as well.

And

I hate to make this about electoral politics back here, but something as a a Jew myself, as a Democrat, supporter of Israel, strong Zionist, I am deeply unsettled, disturbed.

I'm just frankly upset about this fissure within our party, essentially, where depending on how you feel, either you feel like Israel should be back to the hilt, right?

And a lot of those folks went and voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and I worry are kind of lost forever to the Republican side because they don't believe that Democrats stand with Israel strongly enough or the majority of the base of the party that feels like our leadership is too in the pocket of Netanyahu and didn't speak up soon enough about the mass starvation in Gaza.

So is that something that you're thinking about as well?

Like, does the Does the fissure seem irreparable at this point?

Because it feels that way to me.

And I'm kind of dreading the next presidential election because everyone is going to have to be tap dancing around this issue and I don't know what happens.

I don't know how we can rebuild that coalition, that strong base of Jewish support for democratic leadership.

Well, I think you're right to raise the question, but I think that you have to keep several things in mind at the same time.

I, too, am a very strong supporter of Israel, Israel's right to defend itself, Israel's security.

I've worked on this issue both directly and indirectly for a very long time.

And so

I don't think there's any reason why people like you and me, who care deeply about the future of the state of Israel, should not put that stake in the ground, but say,

you know, in life, you have to make hard choices.

And the Israelis had no choice after October 7th.

They had to respond and they had to try to get the hostages back.

But you also have to keep your head about you.

And what has has happened in the recent period,

because of Netanyahu's policies and his feeling that he has to placate the very far-right extremist elements within his cabinet, is that, in my view, as a strong supporter of Israel, that is undermining Israel's security.

It is undermining Israel's position in the world.

It is putting Israelis and Jews

at risk around the world.

Because again,

people who can see with their own eyes have a right to ask themselves, but wait a minute, can't you do two things at once?

Can't you feed hungry children and continue to defend yourself?

And

anytime a true member of Hamas pops up,

take

appropriate action.

Can't you also begin to try to work with the Arabs in the region, those who are part of the Abraham Accord, like the UAE, those you want to normalize with, like Saudi Arabia, who have their own internal politics about whether or not they can really get close to Israel, work with Israel.

Can't you begin to work with them about the day after?

There needs to be a day after planning process in Gaza.

I think that's the way to talk about this.

And, you know, people who don't support Israel, they're on a different, you know, they're on a different track.

You know, that's them.

But that's

us.

And that's not who I am.

That's not what I care about.

But because I care so much about the future of Israel, I care deeply about the decisions that are being made now.

And I have every right

as a human being, as an American, as a Democrat, as a former Secretary of State.

to say, I don't think these decisions are in the best interests of Israel.

Now, Israel gets to pick its leaders.

That's their prerogative.

But friends of Israel, defenders of Israel,

are remiss if we don't at least say what we believe.

I wrote an article in the Atlantic, you know, sometime in the spring, I think, of 2024, as I recall.

in which I defended Israel's right to defend itself, in which I called Hamas out as the terrorist death cult that it is, but in which I said Israel deserves different and better leadership, because I feared that the war would become

the only strategy, continuing to wage war.

That would be what would motivate Bibi.

And you've got to keep your eye on many moving pieces at the same time.

And so

I give Bibi and his various governments that have been in office since October 7th,

You know, a lot of credit for what they did with Hezbollah, what they did with Iran, the changeover in Syria, defending the Druze, everything else that's going on.

But that is all overshadowed by their refusal to deal with the humanitarian suffering.

Now, in a war, civilians are going to suffer.

That is the terrible, unfortunate truth.

But this is beyond that.

This is not the usual suffering that comes from active warfare.

Israel has other options.

The IDF has presented other options.

Mossad has presented other options.

People within the Israeli security establishment have presented other options with, you know, going back, you know, to previous regime, but also prior VB governments.

So there are other options out there that could continue to protect Israel, but move it out of this,

you know, quagmire that it has gotten itself into.

Well, let's hope some cooler heads heads prevail and fast

since we are facing a huge humanitarian disaster.

We're going to take a quick break.

Please stay with us.

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Welcome back.

I want to take us back home to America to talk about what's going on with the government.

The power consolidation that the Trump administration has embarked on is moving at a faster clip than I even expected.

And I've been known to be a bit of a Pollyanna.

Like I thought Trump 1.0 was terrible, and now I yearn for the days, right?

And I'm sitting here watching, and, you know, just this week, we have the

federal takeover of the DC police.

We had the same thing in Los Angeles when he dispatched the National Guard there.

He's saying, we're going to go to more blue cities.

The way the immigration raids are being conducted, you know, firing public servants who give you bad news and putting yes men in those positions.

We're going to redo the census.

We're going to redistrict mid-cycle.

We essentially have state-run capitalism at this point, where if you pay me a kickback, you can sell to whoever you want with the NVIDIA and AMD deal.

And even, frankly, what happened with Apple, right?

Parading Tim Cook around the Oval Office and saying he's giving me $100 billion.

He thinks all of this is a personal slush fund that the EU is giving him money or Japan is giving him money, though.

No one has actually formally committed on paper, which I always find amusing in all of this when he says, oh, it's a deal.

And it's like, a deal's on paper.

But what do you make of this moment?

Are we, you know, screaming authoritarian too early?

Are we too late?

I think we are at a very critical turning point.

These are authoritarian tactics, everything

from creating your own police force with what they did in the bill they passed to increase dramatically the size of ICE

to taking over, as you say, law enforcement activities in Washington, D.C.,

following on what they tried to do in Los Angeles.

State capitalism, crony capitalism, extortion capitalism, however we want to refer to it,

is another very clear

signal of authoritarian tactics.

Also, the,

you know, corruption, the corruption.

Yes, maybe the deal with the EU, if it ever comes to pass, goes to the U.S.

Treasury, but there's a lot of other money flowing into the Trump family coffers.

So all the hallmarks are there.

And for the life of me, I don't understand

why

everybody is not worried about this.

you know, firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because you don't like the facts.

Facts are stubborn things.

Those are the facts.

So, what do you do?

You fire her, you hire somebody who you hope will not report the facts, not analyze them, and make up their own.

The same way Bobby Kennedy is doing with health information that is totally out of bounds.

It has no basis in fact, science, evidence-based health care.

This is all in service of the nostalgia that you often find in authoritarian, even fascist regimes,

where you harken back to some Halcyon day where everything was so much better, where people knew their place, particularly women and minorities,

where white men were

in charge of everything because that's the way nature intended it.

It often has a religious component, a kind of white nationalist

perversion of Christianity that is being promoted by a number of the people around and even working for Trump.

You put all these pieces together, and I don't understand why otherwise intelligent folks can't see the danger to our way of life and even to themselves.

Because, you know, if you cross an authoritarian,

you know, just look at Putin.

People fall out of windows.

They drink polonium-poison tea.

They have poison put in their underwear.

I mean, people who worked with Putin, who were oligarchs or government officials,

had to keep giving to him.

Some people think he's the richest man in the world.

I don't know.

But a lot of people who study his kleptocracy very closely believe that because he started taking

percentages of the deals that happened after the Soviet Union fell.

And, you know, they did go into his pocket.

Maybe some of them ended up in the government, but a lot of it ended up in his own bank account.

So anybody who thinks that because they

think we should crack down more on immigrants,

maybe not all these poor women and children, but all of the criminals, well, they're having a hard time finding them.

I mean, they're picking people up who are actually working.

They're raiding workplaces.

They're taking farm workers out of fields.

They're taking, you know, hardworking people off construction sites.

These are not the caricatures that Donald Trump painted for the folks who voted for him on that issue.

Or take a look at inflation.

Lots of political analysis

argues that

Biden and then Harris really were unsuccessful because of the cost of living.

And I think there's a lot of truth to that.

It's going up under Trump.

And when the full impact of the tariffs hit in the fall, it's going to go up even more.

Now, what will they do?

They will try to suppress the data.

They will try to lie about it.

But for how long will people be deluded?

I mean, if you go to the grocery store, if you buy a cup of coffee and it's increasing in price, and this is all on Trump's time, not on the prior administration.

How long do they think they can keep the big lie up?

Now, apparently, they think for quite some time.

They think they can

lie about reality over and over and over again, find other people to blame and scapegoat for that new reality, divert and distract from the unpopularity, for example, of so many provisions within that bill they passed.

and that their cult members, their followers,

will fall in line.

What has happened to the people that I knew and served with when I was in the Senate for eight years?

I worked in a bipartisan way.

I sponsored legislation with nearly all of them.

I spent time talking with them.

I traveled with some of them.

How can they continue to support the

constant barrage of falsehoods, lies, and undermining of the rule of law, of our institutions, of facts and evidence.

That's been the biggest surprise to me.

I think they know better.

I have reason to believe that they do.

I know still friends of mine who are Democrats in the Senate talk about the private conversations with Republican senators who are rolling their eyes,

but they don't stand up and they don't say, the emperor has no clothes.

You know, when I was a little girl, Jessica, and I first read that fairy tale, The Emperor Has No Clothes, I remember thinking, why didn't somebody tell him he had no clothes?

Why didn't it take two little kids standing watching a parade to say, the emperor has no clothes?

People were scared.

They were intimidated.

They thought they would be advantaged by ignoring reality.

That's what's going on now.

And so I am very worried about the kinds of actions that Trump and his administration are taking that I think are going to put our country at such grave risk going forward.

Yeah, I have

two little girls, three and a half and 16 months.

And I can tell you, at least from the three and a half year old, that they are your harshest critic.

And they tell it like it is.

I got a lot of like, ugly mama.

Where's something else?

Well, maybe we should, you know, have you seen that site?

I don't know where it is.

Maybe it's on X, Twitter, or whatever called Diaper.

Whatever we call it.

Diaper Diplomacy, where they have babies talking.

Well, maybe we get some real babies, you know, little toddlers saying, why are you doing that?

This seems kind of mean to me.

Baby Tulsi is my favorite of the diaper diplomacy.

But obviously, this is quite a serious problem.

And it does make me think back to, you know, one of my favorite ads from the 2016 cycle was the role models ad, where you had kids watching footage of Donald Trump mocking veterans, the disabled, going after women, and the central premises,

no one would want their kid to grow up and turn into that person.

So why would you want to make that person the most important person in the entire world?

But we're unfortunately so past that.

And the 2024 election was a repudiation of the thinking that the argument that democracy is at stake or that January 6th should mean something or that character matters was thrown by the wayside because, as you say,

of cost of living.

People were saying, My grocery bills are up, and I want to go for the guy who said he'll fix it on day one.

Day one has long passed.

We're in mid-August at this point.

His approval numbers on everything from personal approval to how he handles immigration, the economy, foreign policy, it's all going in the negative direction, mostly fueled by independents, who did swing in his direction.

I think he's at 37% approval with independents at this point.

But that is not translating into support for Democrats.

We're up on the generic ballot, but our approval rating is dismal.

Is that something that surprises you?

And what do you think Democratic voters are looking for from our representatives to meet this moment?

It doesn't surprise me.

Obviously, it concerns me.

But I think we have been hit with

a thousand fire hoses filled with false information.

All the time.

It is the way they control the media ecosystem.

So it doesn't surprise me that there is just an enormous amount of questioning and even confusion on the part of both Democratic and independent voters.

What they are seeing with Trump, they are rendering an early judgment on.

We don't like it.

His approval ratings, as you say, overall are

quite low.

You don't wage an election against

a non-entity.

You have to have candidates, and you have to have candidates engaged in the back and forth of a campaign so the reason i'm not like totally um oh overcome with worry about this is we will have an election next year now they're trying to rig the election why are they trying to rig the election because they know they would lose the house they would lose because this big bill is so unpopular and the more people learn about it the worse it gets.

They sacrificed Americans' health,

Americans'

security, financial security, in order to give huge tax cuts to

billionaires and other people extremely well off, because that is their ideology.

So, when more people know that they are being disadvantaged in this bill, their health care premium subsidies are gone, their cost of health care is going up, their hospitals are already planning on closures in a lot of rural and poor urban areas.

When they begin to see the results of what this ideology has inflicted on them, plus the cost of living continuing to go up with these tariffs, then you can have a joining of the issues between whoever the Republican is and whoever the Democrat is.

Now,

the new challenge is if they try to rig this through gerrymandering so that it's not a fair fight at all.

They are trying to preordain the outcome because they know in a fair fight they would lose.

And this has been one of the

biggest

complaints that I've had is that American voters and to some extent the American media don't understand

how many years the Republicans have been working in order to get us to this point.

It took 50 years to overturn Roe v.

Wade.

The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage.

My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to

abortion.

They will send it back to the states.

Anybody in a committed relationship out there in the LGBTQ community, you ought to consider getting married because I don't think they'll undo existing marriages, but I fear that they will undo the national right.

And so fewer than half the states will recognize gay marriage.

There are going to be real world consequences, but a lot of them are not likely to hit with the velocity and intensity until after the 2026 election.

So they're trying to set it up so that they can win that election and then dump all of this other bad news on the American people.

And they're doing state capture of capitalism, state capture of institutions.

The courts are doing their best, but you know, it's slow.

And the Supreme Court gave Trump a big victory when they said no nationwide injunctions to stop allegedly illegal activity.

You have to go district by district, circuit by circuit.

So I think that in an election, we have a better than fighting chance, but we're going to be fighting with maybe one or even two hands tied behind us if Texas does what it wants to do, if other states do what Trump tells them to do.

Because they don't want a fair fight.

They don't want to have a fight about the issues.

They want to distract and divert attention away from all of their problems and more importantly, not just their political problems, but the problems they're causing to American businesses, American consumers, to our institutions, all of which will have a lot of

bad effects on most people in this country, one way or the other.

Yeah, it seems, especially because the business community is what Donald Trump most closely associates himself with.

It shocks me that these Oval Office meetings that he's having with the head of GM, Ford, Volkswagen, you know, Walmart, Jeff Bezos, whoever is showing up and they're telling him what is going to happen to the business and what the toll is going to be.

And that he just kind of turns it in the other direction.

And it makes you think that they're not only taking a kind of YOLO approach to governance, which is the backbone of Project 2025, right?

It's rip it up as fast as possible, consolidate as much power as you can, as quickly as you can.

And frankly, you know, 2028, would I love it if a Republican won?

Sure.

Maybe it's J.D.

Vance, maybe it's not.

You know, it depends on which way the wind blows that day.

But there doesn't seem to be that much forward thinking past the Trump presidency.

You know, I think you make a really important point, and it's a historic point.

You know, businesses often just want to put their head down.

Look, I got to do my business.

I can't get involved in all this.

Guy wants to give me a tax cut.

Great.

Wants to give me all kinds of, you know, tax credit and benefits for my company.

Great.

I'm not going to get into any fight with him.

And then along comes a really aggressive leader like Trump, and the inclination to just

avoid confrontation is just too much.

I mean, the other day, you know, Trump called on Goldman Sachs, for heaven's sakes, to fire one of their economists because guess what?

The economists said, tariffs will bite.

And, you know, up till now, businesses have absorbed them, but they're going to bite.

Because look, they're attacks.

They're attacks.

They're attacks

on businesses that then pass the cost to consumers.

This is like Economics 101.

So

what I don't understand is that part of the reason we have been a successful economic engine for so long is because we've had things like the rule of law.

You didn't have to worry about

a contract you signed.

You had someplace to go to get it enforced if the other side tried to get out of it.

You had rules.

Maybe you didn't like the rules, but they laid out the rules.

And so you knew if your competitor was breaking the rules, you had a recourse there.

That is the kind of

playing field that benefited American business.

I mean, it took a long time to get there.

A lot of reform had to be done in the late 19th, early 20th century.

A lot of labor laws had to be passed.

Couldn't exploit workers.

You couldn't literally work, you know, six-year-old kids in textile factories, you know, 18 hours a day.

All the things that led to a

prosperous but fairer, safer society.

So, businesses that don't understand that this is a risk to their business are missing the point.

If you go back and read some of the historical accounts of Hitler coming to power, you see a lot of German businessmen saying, oh, who cares?

He's a clown.

We can take care of that.

We can manage it.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter who the chancellor is.

And they, you know,

they learned otherwise, and some some made their alliances and some ended up in a concentration camp.

I mean, part of the reason to read history is that human nature doesn't change that much.

And what we know about Trump's personality, his need for dominance, his refusal to accept even constructive, accurate criticism, all of that is the personality of an authoritarian.

And if businesses think that they can escape the kleptocracy, they are badly mistaken.

Suppose one of Trump's big supporters shows up in Mar-a-Lago next fall or winter and says, you know, my major competitor is just a bad guy.

He doesn't really like you, Donald, or Mr.

President, whatever they call him.

And,

you know,

we don't need that kind of

subversion within American business.

Why don't you have Don Jr.

or Eric or some other representative go tell him that he has to make a huge contribution to the Republican Party, to your library fund, to whatever.

And if he doesn't make it,

put some pressure on him, send the SEC after him, send somebody else after him.

If people think that is not likely to happen because this is America, they are caught in the past because that's the kind of economy that we're moving toward.

A corrupt kleptocracy where businesses and leaders of businesses who go along with Trump, no matter how much it hurts them, no matter how embarrassing it is, will stay in his good graces and will avoid too much pressure, but they will get pressure.

They will get pressure to contribute.

They will get pressure to sign up and show up.

They will get pressure to contribute to Republicans, but they won't be put out of business.

But if you cross him for very good reasons, like the tariffs are killing you, then you know what?

Watch out.

I mean,

this is like a bad version of, you know, 1984.

I mean, you can't make it up in our country that we were having that we're having this kind of conversation.

I mean, we've never had a situation where it was so blatant that the personality, the preferences, the grievances, the grudges of the leader is what determine policy.

So nobody is immune.

And anybody who thinks he or she is

is just not paying attention.

Yeah.

Bleak stuff.

Thank you for that, Secretary Clinton.

You did mention having candidates.

And my mind goes to obviously the midterms.

Let's hope that that goes in our direction.

They were smart about when the Medicaid cuts come into play.

Even Josh Hawley and Steve Bannon are saying that that's going to be a problem.

But thinking about 2028, something

that I've focused on, frankly, since your candidacy and then this reaffirmed when Kamala Harris lost.

And that's a totally different kind of election because we didn't have a primary and, you know, she wasn't chosen by the party.

But there's a lot of skittishness about nominating a woman again to be our nominee.

And, you know, apologies to Gretchen Whitmer that this is

coming at a moment where, you know, she may do very well in the primary if she chooses to get in, but there are going to be a lot of people saying,

I want to pick the most standard white man that I can possibly find, which may be Andy Bashir, who I happen to like a lot as well.

But I hear people even gravitating towards him because they're scared of this.

And as someone that went through the process and lost the election, do you think that we are right to be concerned about nominating a woman again?

I think we have to nominate whoever that person is that we think has the best likelihood of winning.

And I think it's absolutely fair for voters to factor in every possible attribute, including whether the candidate is a woman, whether the candidate is a person of color, whether the candidate is

too tall or too short or whatever the reason might be.

It is deeply

disheartening.

that we are living in a time of such overt misogyny and pushback on the rights that women have gained over the last hundred plus years,

I was frankly not surprised, but deeply

hurt that

you have this growing

attitude within certain elements of the kind of Christian nationalist movement that you literally should repeal the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.

So there is no doubt that there is a very

vitriolic, viral misogyny.

And it's particularly evident online, but it's also evident in real life.

I mean, who was the first person Trump fired?

The woman commandant of the Coast Guard.

Who was the second?

The Black Air Force combat general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Who was the third?

the woman admiral who was the first woman to be the chief naval officer.

So the message is totally clear.

Nobody should be mistaken that the Republicans, the right wing, their media are deeply against women in leadership roles, whether it's in the military, politics, business, wherever.

So I think that has to be taken into account.

Does that mean a candidate can't overcome that?

Of course not.

We have some extraordinary candidates, men and women, who will probably

jump into our primary.

But it does mean that, you know, a lot of voters are going to be saying the only thing that matters to me is beating Donald Trump, if God forbid he tries to run again, or whoever his,

you know, chosen successor might be.

I think it starts in the 2026 election.

We have to pick candidates, and legislative elections are not as

sexist as executive office elections.

But in 2026, we have to do everything we can to field our best candidates, to do everything to support them, to make the case.

And then in 2028, or actually 27, when the primary season starts, you know, we have to test all of our candidates.

And you're right, Jessica.

If, you know, President Biden had decided not to run in the fall of 2023 and we'd had a real primary process, whoever emerged from that, I believe, would have beaten Trump.

And I believe that because if it had been Kamala Harris, she would have established her independence and her own political strength.

If it had not been Kamala Harris, whoever emerged would have distinguished himself or herself from President Biden and the Biden policies.

That didn't happen for all the reasons I don't want to go into.

So this time, we have to pick whoever we think can go the distance.

Now, remember, I got more votes than Trump.

And,

you know, I beat him by nearly 3 million votes.

And then he lost to Biden in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

And then unfortunately, he won both the popular vote and the electoral college.

But they've all been close elections.

There's not a huge reservoir.

You know, yes, some people, because of cost of living,

because of some of the cultural warfare signals.

Well, immigration.

Immigration was a huge piece.

Yeah, immigration, inflation, immigration were the two.

overwhelming issues, but there were also all the cultural signals that were being sent.

So whoever our candidate is, whoever emerges, has to be able to go toe-to-toe on all of that.

But I want to just underscore something I said.

I personally believe

that if he can, Trump is going to try to stay in office.

I don't say that lightly,

but I think all the signs are there.

This is, you know, I used to, as Secretary of State, going around promoting democracy and free and fair elections, I would say you can't have a one-and-done election.

In other words, somebody does get legitimately elected, as he was, he lost legitimately in 2020, He won in 2024.

It was much more unclear in 2016 for all the reasons why we still litigate that election.

But nevertheless, he won in 2024.

He has no constitutional right, no legal basis to run again.

Do I believe that he's got his, you know, little team working at the Heritage Foundation or wherever they work these days to try to figure out how he can?

Well,

you know, declaring an insurrection is certainly, you know, a tried and true tactic of authoritarians.

So I don't think we're out of the woods on being able to hold free and fair elections in 2026, despite their efforts to literally change the playing field with these last-minute gerrymandering decisions.

And I sure don't think we're out of danger that Trump will try to seize power even more than he already has in order to justify a run in 2028.

If not, then we'll run against whoever he picks because he will have that kind of continuing power over the Republican Party.

Yeah, he's definitely going to be a kingmaker for as long as he's around.

And a critical component of these election outcomes, and you mentioned the culture wars, was the swing to the right amongst young men.

And Scott is in here, but in honor of Scott, I want to talk about the plight of young men in this country, increasingly depressed, isolated, unable to get a good fulfilling job, you know, all the stereotypes of, you know, stuck in your parents' basement for far too long, not finding a good partner, which is, you know, one of the main ways that you can put yourself on the path to happiness and success, American dream out of reach.

Was the trend of

the Democrats not really speaking?

to young men and and understanding their current condition something that was top of mind for you and that you were aware of.

Because I have this vision and, you know, I've obviously never been to your house and I don't know what life looks like, but you and President Clinton, you know, sitting around and maybe you watch a Netflix show and then you say, like,

what's going on in politics, right?

Like, what, and that you say, there's this whole enormous demographic that is critical to our coalition.

You know, young voters align with us in terms of our policy positions and everything from gun violence to a woman's right to shoes to, you know, climate change is real, an economy that works for everyone.

And, you know, were your spidey senses up about this problem?

Yeah, they were.

They've been up for a couple of years because this is not just an American phenomenon.

It is a kind of Western society phenomenon where young men are dropping out of school at higher rates, not completing even secondary school, let alone higher education,

not joining the formal formal economy, not forming relationships, as you point out.

So, there is something at work.

And a number of people who have studied this, like Richard Reeves, who's paid close attention to it, but others, you know, have said there's this big disconnect.

You know, young men feel adrift.

They don't feel invested in their own lives, let alone the lives of those around them or their societies.

And, you know, clearly, this is a serious social and economic problem, not just a political problem.

So I buy that, and the statistics support that.

It's a little difficult to know exactly what to do.

A lot of people are trying different approaches.

I'm a strong supporter of getting phones out of school.

I supported Governor Kathy Hochl's legislation.

New York will be the largest state in the country starting in September.

That makes kids put their phones up when they show up and they can't get them back until the end of school.

I am totally convinced by the research by Jonathan Hayden and others in the Anxious Generation book that he published, as well as other researchers, that we have to get kids off their phones.

I mean, we have to get kids, men and women,

off their phones and back into so-called real life.

How do we do that?

Well, the schools play a role.

We know from the schools that have already done this, attention

is better, behavior is better, learning is better,

actual conversations in the halls, in the cafeteria are actually once again happening.

So there are some institutional structural changes that we should look at.

I think we need to do a much better job in making it clear that you can make a good living without necessarily going and getting a college degree, but you have to get some additional training if it's in the trades or the crafts or

some other kind of work that will not be replaced by artificial intelligence, which a lot of low-level,

even medium-level white-collar work will be.

You know, Senator Warner was talking to me about that a couple weeks ago.

He's 100% recent in college grad.

You know,

AI,

you know, driverless cars will get rid of truck drivers.

I don't think AI can fix your, you know, toilet if it breaks.

So, I mean,

what are jobs of the present and the future that we can really double down on in helping young men and women, but let's focus on young men, you know, make a good living, get the get the respect that they deserve for doing a job that can't be replaced by a robot or artificial intelligence.

So I think there are structural kinds of changes that have to happen.

But I also think young men, just like young women, if you look at the data that we have,

social media is a drug that has addicted young people.

For young women, it's a drug that induces anxiety and depression, body image issues,

FOMO, fear of missing out, the kind of feelings that turn inward.

You know, it's like, oh,

I'm too fat.

I'm not pretty enough.

You know, why did my friends not invite me?

You know, whatever.

For young men who spend a disproportionate amount of time online, either gaming or looking at porn,

it is an

outwardly

facing aggression.

The games themselves, you know, one of Steve Bannon's great insights was you could turn gamers into

disillusioned political supporters.

He understood that.

He weaponized it.

And, you know, that's part of what we are seeing politically today.

But you also have to convince young people that there is something for them in the so-called real world.

If they put their screens down down and they actually go out and engage, what's there for them?

Are they going to be able to get a job that's going to support them?

I think we have to look carefully about how we try to provide employment that actually does support a lifestyle alternative to a screen-based life.

I think we have to look at how we are going to make up.

for what will be an increase in this problem when 88,000 truck drivers lose their jobs because now you have self-driving trucks or whatever, or Amazon delivery people lose their jobs because drones are delivering your, whatever you ordered.

I mean, we have a huge set of problems.

And yes, it's got a political dimension because when you're confused, when you're alienated, when you're demoralized, when you're addicted, it's so much easier to blame somebody else.

I mean, if you've ever dealt with an addict, whether an alcoholic, a drug addict, you know, it's always about somebody else.

You know, they're always going to get clean.

They're always going to turn the page, but something bad happened.

Somebody did something to them, whatever.

This is the kind of

problem that we have.

And it goes far beyond politics, but of course, we saw with all of the alternative versions of masculinity that are online, you know, these people like the Tate brothers, you know, rapists and

misogynists to the core, but they present an alternative.

You know, here's what you do.

You build yourself up, you get strong, you, you know, whatever.

We have to provide an alternative.

It's not just the Democratic Party has to provide an alternative.

Our society has to provide an alternative to the vision that, you know, Steve Bannon saw and helped to create with, you know, young men feeling like they could claim a form of masculinity by attaching themselves to people like the Tate brothers or Donald Trump or whoever.

Yeah, that's a tricky one.

I mean, I think at core, speaking to everybody and acting like a normal human being would be a start and not scolding so much because humans are very complicated and we all have thoughts and interests.

Well, we all work men in lives.

And even young men in our lives.

I have two grandsons.

I mean,

I

work with a lot of young men.

I mean, we all have a big stake in trying to figure this out.

And

it's going to take some real thought.

We know what the alternative is.

It's like

a blame and name

mentality.

Never your fault.

This is what it means to be a tough man.

This is what it means to get respect, et cetera, et cetera.

We have to have an alternative that comes from families and religious institutions and schools as well as political leaders.

Absolutely.

So, Secretary Clinton, what's one thing that makes you rage and one thing that you think we should all calm down about?

You know, Jessica, I try not to rage because if I

didn't rein myself in, I'd be not just a raging moderate talking to you, I'd be raging all the time.

And it's not easy because I get upset and outraged, you know, several times a day.

I really believe that there will be a reckoning.

That's what gives me hope, whether it's in the 2026 elections or

people inside who have access to Trump realizing they have to rein him in and

don't make us sick again, don't make us poorer, don't make us even more divided.

You know, that's not a recipe for a great country.

And if he wants to be presiding over the 250th anniversary of our country's beginning, let's try to bring us together.

So I'm hoping, you know, I don't want to bet on it, but I'm hoping that we'll see a little bit more of that kind of attitude around him and from him, and that we'll see more people speaking out and standing up and realizing we have to save ourselves.

Nobody is coming over the hill to do it for us.

All right, Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for your time.

This was

better than I dreamed of, and I literally dreamed about this.

So I appreciate you talking about it.

Thank you.

Give those little kids a hug.

Oh, yeah.

Little cuties.

I mean, ratty sometimes.

Oh, yeah.

Next to the territory.

Totally.

Thank you.

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