What Happened

by Clinton, Hillary Rodham

  Fourth, we need to beat back the assault on truth and reason here at home and rebuild trust in our institutions. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has called for “a massive campaign” against fake news. “All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news,” he said.

  Companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google have already begun taking steps—adjusting algorithms, deactivating bot networks, and partnering with fact-checkers—but they must do more. Facebook is now the largest news platform in the world. With that awesome power comes great responsibility, which it must accept.

  The mainstream media also has a responsibility to do more to debunk the lies infecting our public life and more directly hold the liars accountable. American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the more responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron. It will also be important to remain vigilant against misinformation like the fake leak that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow exposed in July 2017. “One way to stab in the heart aggressive American reporting on that subject is to lay traps for American journalists,” she warned. And while there has been a lot of terrific reporting on the Russia scandal, we need to see the same rigor brought to the blizzard of deception from the administration and Republicans in Congress on everything from the budget to health care to climate change. (I love it when CNN does real-time fact-checking in its on-screen chyron. More of that, please.)

  Speaking of Republicans, ultimately it’s on them to stop enabling Trump and genuflecting to billionaires such as the Mercers and the Kochs. Aggressive campaign finance reform and a reinvigorated Federal Election Commission would help a lot. But unless principled Republicans step up, our democracy will continue to pay the price.

  We all have to do our part if we’re going to rebuild trust in one another and our government. As Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, put it in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee: “Until we get a firm basis on fact and fiction in our own country . . . we’re going to have a big problem.” It’s up to each one of us to stay informed and make good decisions with rigorous reasoning and real deliberation. This is especially important when it comes to voting. Choose wisely and don’t fall for scams. The same way you try to be careful about where you put your money or the car you buy, be careful and informed with your vote. And we all have the ability to break out of our echo chambers and engage with people who don’t agree with us politically. We can keep an open mind and be willing to change our minds from time to time. Even if our outreach is rebuffed, it’s worth it to keep trying. We’re all going to share our American future together—better to do so with open hearts and outstretched hands than closed minds and clenched fists.

  Worse Than Watergate

  As this story continues to unfold, there’s a moment from the campaign that I keep replaying in my head over and over again. It was my third debate against Trump. He had just attacked me by quoting out of context a line from an email stolen by the Russians and released by WikiLeaks. The moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, was piling on as well. I thought the American people deserved to know what was really going on.

  “The most important question of this evening, Chris, is finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this, and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in this election,” I said. Trump retreated to his usual pro-Putin talking points: “He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good.” Then, turning to me, he added, “Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person.”

  “Well,” I fired back, “that’s because he would rather have a puppet as President of the United States.” Trump seemed befuddled. “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet,” he stammered.

  I think about that line every time I see him on TV now. When he’s yucking it up in the Oval Office with the Russian foreign minister and divulging classified information. When he’s giving the cold shoulder to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and other European allies. When he’s lying through his teeth about Russia or anything else. “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.” This man is President of the United States. And no one is happier than Vladimir Putin.

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  In mid-July 2017, as I was putting the finishing touches on this book, Trump met with Putin in Germany. He not only didn’t challenge him publicly on interfering in our election—he actually floated the idea of a joint cybersecurity unit, which is a classic example of asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Then, the news broke that Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin who promised to provide damaging information about me and wanted to discuss easing the sanctions on Russia included in the Magnitsky Act. Donald Trump Jr. admitted all this! He was disappointed the dirt didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped. You can’t make this stuff up. I’m sure there’s more to come, so stay tuned.

  I know some will dismiss everything in this chapter as me trying to shift blame for my loss in 2016. That’s wrong. This is about the future. In the nineteenth century, nations fought two kinds of wars: on land and at sea. In the twentieth century, that expanded to the skies. In the twenty-first century, wars will increasingly be fought in cyberspace. Yet our President is too proud, too weak, or too shortsighted to face this threat head-on. No foreign power in modern history has attacked us with so few consequences, and that puts us all at risk.

  I’m not saying this as a Democrat or as a former candidate. I’m saying this as someone who loves our country and will always be grateful for the blessings America has given to me and to the world. I’m worried. I’m worried about our democracy at home, with lies and corruption threatening our bedrock values, institutions, and the rule of law. And I’m worried about the future of democracy around the world. Generations of farsighted leaders on both sides of the Atlantic came together to build a new liberal order out of the ashes of World War II. They defended universal human rights, defied totalitarianism, and delivered unprecedented peace, prosperity, and freedom. As Americans, that is our inheritance. We should be proud of it and we should protect it. But now, between Trump and Putin, all that is at risk.

  In June 2017, Jim Clapper was asked how the Russia scandal compared with Watergate. “I lived through Watergate. I was on active duty then in the Air Force. I was a young officer. It was a scary time,” he replied. “I have to say, though, I think when you compare the two, Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now.”

  I also lived through Watergate. I was a young attorney working for the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry into Richard Nixon. I listened to the tapes. I dug into all the evidence of Nixon’s crimes. And I agree with Jim Clapper. What we are facing now—an attack on our democracy by our principal foreign adversary, potentially aided and abetted by the President’s own team—is much more serious.

  In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

  —Robert Frost

  Election Night

  The night of November 8, 2016, started with me chasing my granddaughter and pretending to just miss catching her. Charlotte would squeal with glee and shout, “Again!” and I did it again. This went on for a while. It was almost enough to distract me from the television.

  My family and senior staff had gathered at the Peninsula Hotel in New York to watch the returns. I’ve always dreaded election nights. There’s nothing left to do but wait.

  Hours earlier, in the predawn darkness, we finished a final whirlwind campaign swing that took me from Pittsburgh to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to a massive rally in Philadelphia with the Obamas and Bruce Springsteen; then to another rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, capped by a raucous late-night duet between Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga; and finally back to Westchester, where a cr
owd of fired-up supporters met us on the tarmac even though it was close to 4:00 A.M.

  I was exhausted but happy and enormously proud of my team. Standing with Bill, Chelsea, Barack, and Michelle in front of tens of thousands of people at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall was one of the high points of the entire campaign. The President hugged me and whispered in my ear, “You’ve got this. I’m so proud of you.”

  After a quick stop at home to shower and change, Bill and I voted at an elementary school in Chappaqua. People pulled out their cell phones to text friends or discreetly shoot photos of me getting ready to vote. I walked over to the table staffed by diligent volunteers and signed my name in the book of eligible voters. We joked about whether I had identification to prove I was really me. (They didn’t make me produce a photo ID, but many Americans would have to do so, and too many would be turned away that day.)

  Campaigns are full of minor annoyances and major frustrations, but at the end of the day, it’s inspiring to watch our democracy whir into action. When all the arguments are made and rallies are finished and TV ads have aired, it comes down to regular people lining up and having their say. I’ve always loved that quip from Winston Churchill about how democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others. I still believe that, even when our system feels totally nuts. (Electoral College, I’m looking at you!)

  It’s quite something to see your name on a ballot. After twenty months, twelve debates, and more speeches and town halls than I could count, it all came down to this. All over the country, 136 million people were going to look at my name and Donald Trump’s name and make a decision that would shape the future of the country and the world.

  Before I could mark my ballot, a woman walked up and asked if I would take a selfie with her. (There really are no boundaries for the selfie obsession—not even the sanctity of voting is off limits!) I told her I would be delighted to, as soon as I was finished voting. I filled in the bubbles by my name and the down-ballot candidates, walked the ballot over to the scanner, slid it in, and watched it disappear.

  I felt pride, humility, and nerves. Pride because I knew we had given everything we had. Humility because I knew the campaign would be the easy part; governing in this contentious time would be hard. And nerves because elections are always unpredictable. Most of the polling and analysis looked positive. The day before, my chief pollster, Joel Benenson sent me an encouraging report. He said I was leading Trump by 5 points in a direct head-to-head, and by 4 points when third parties were factored in. “You’re going to bring this home,” Joel told me. Still, I knew our campaign faced hurricane-force headwinds, thanks to Comey and the Russians. Anything was possible.

  Voting turned out to be the highlight of the day.

  When we arrived at the Peninsula Hotel in the late afternoon, the word was, “Things are looking good.” The streets were clogged with police officers and Secret Service agents. Our hotel was just a block away from Trump Tower. Both candidates would be within a stone’s throw from each other as the results came in.

  I tried to keep my head clear. Unlike my husband, who devours every exit poll and stray anecdote on Election Days, I didn’t want to hear it. I’m not convinced the breathless reporting during the day is reliable. And why stress about something you can no longer do anything about? In a few hours, we would all know the outcome.

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  For weeks, I had been carrying around heavy binders full of memos relating to the transition and the first decisions I would have to make as President Elect. There were Cabinet Secretaries to pick, a White House staff to hire, and a legislative agenda to begin working on with Congress. I loved diving into the details of governing, but in the homestretch of the campaign, it was hard to focus on anything past Election Day. Late at night, I would set aside time before bed to read a transition memo or review a few résumés. Sometimes I’d fall asleep halfway through. Other times I’d get fired up and call my team with some idea or plan I wanted us to get ready to pursue on Day One.

  On Election Day, with the campaign all but finished, I had a chance to think in earnest about the work ahead. It was exciting. The hundreds of detailed policies we had proposed over the past twenty months hadn’t gotten the press attention they deserved, but they provided a solid foundation for getting right to work tackling the nation’s problems. I decided that first out of the gate would be an ambitious infrastructure program to create jobs while improving our roads, rails, airports, ports, mass transit systems, and broadband networks. There was a good chance the Democrats would retake the Senate, but I expected to face a hostile Republican majority in the House. In theory, infrastructure should have bipartisan appeal, but we’d learned that partisanship could overwhelm everything. So outreach would have to start right away.

  The challenge went well beyond rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an infrastructure package. The election had further divided our country in troubling ways. Trust in government and in our fellow Americans was at historic lows. We were yelling at one another across deep fault lines of class, race, gender, region, and party. It would be my job to try to help bridge those divides and bring the country together. No President could do it alone, but it was important to set the right tone from the beginning. And I knew the press was poised to judge my transition and first hundred days on the basis of how well I reached out to disaffected Trump voters.

  My first test—and opportunity—would be the speech on election night, which would be watched by tens of millions of Americans. It would be my final act as a candidate and my first act as President Elect. The advance staff, led by Greg Hale, had built an amazing set in the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan. I would walk out beneath an actual glass ceiling and stand on a stage the shape of America. The podium would be right over Texas. When the votes were counted, we hoped the symbolic glass ceiling would be shattered forever. I had been thinking about what I wanted to say for a few weeks. My speechwriters Dan Schwerin and Megan Rooney had been working with Jake Sullivan and Jennifer Palmieri on a draft. I knew they also had a draft concession speech under way as well, but I preferred not to think much about that.

  Once I got settled in our suite on the top floor of the Peninsula, I asked Dan and Megan to come up. Bill and Jake joined us, and we sat in a small office going over the latest draft. One challenge was how to balance the need to reach out to Trump voters and sound a note of reconciliation, while also giving my supporters the triumphant victory celebration they deserved. There was also history to consider. If everything went as we hoped, I would be giving this speech as the first woman elected President. We had to find a way to mark the significance of the moment without letting it overwhelm everything else.

  Most of all, I wanted to reassure Americans about the strength of our democracy. The election had tested our faith in many ways. Trump had violated every norm in the book, including warning that he might not accept the results of the vote if it went against him. The Russians had interfered. So had the Director of the FBI, against long-standing Justice Department policy. And the news media had turned the whole thing into an absurd circus. A lot of Americans wondered what it all meant for our future. I wanted to answer those fears with a strong victory, a smooth transition, and an effective presidency that delivered real results. Winning with a broad coalition would help counter the idea that the country was hopelessly divided. I would argue that despite our differences, a strong majority of Americans had come together in defense of our core values.

  We worked on an opening for the speech that would convey that confidence. The election, I would say, showed that “we will not be defined only by our differences. We will not be an ‘us versus them’ country. The American dream is big enough for everyone.” I would promise to be a President for all Americans, not just those who voted for me, and I’d talk about how much I had learned over the course of the campaign by listening to people share their frustrations. I would be candid about how hard it had been to respond to the ange
r many felt and how painful it was to see our country so divided. But, I’d say, the outcome showed that “if you dig deep enough, through all the mud of politics, eventually you hit something hard and true: a foundation of fundamental values that unite us as Americans.”

  I wanted to end the speech on a personal note. Throughout the campaign, my mother’s story had been an emotional touchstone. Her perseverance spoke to the perseverance our country needed to overcome its own adversity, as well as the long struggle for women’s rights and opportunities. With help from the poet Jorie Graham, we had written a closing riff for the speech that made me tear up every time I read it. I want to share it here because, as you know, I never got a chance to deliver it that night:

  This summer, a writer asked me: If I could go back in time and tell anyone in history about this milestone, who would it be? And the answer was easy: my mother Dorothy. You may have heard me talk about her difficult childhood. She was abandoned by her parents when she was just eight years old. They put her on a train to California, where she was mistreated by her grandparents and ended up out on her own, working as a housemaid. Yet she still found a way to offer me the boundless love and support she never received herself . . .

  I think about my mother every day. Sometimes I think about her on that train. I wish I could walk down the aisle and find the little wooden seats where she sat, holding tight to her even younger sister, alone, terrified. She doesn’t yet know how much she will suffer. She doesn’t yet know she will find the strength to escape that suffering—that is still a long way off. The whole future is still unknown as she stares out at the vast country moving past her. I dream of going up to her, and sitting down next to her, taking her in my arms, and saying, “Look at me. Listen to me. You will survive. You will have a good family of your own, and three children. And as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up and become the President of the United States.”