Clinton addresses Comey, sexism, losing to Trump and her thoughts on therapy in new interview

The former presidential candidate opens up in a new magazine interview.

ByABC News
May 27, 2017, 3:29 AM

— -- It's been nearly seven months since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. Now, she’s re-emerging onto the national scene to give a window into her post-election life.

New York magazine released on Friday next week's cover story, in which Clinton shares her reflections on the campaign, election night, sexism, James Comey, and slew of other topics.

Below, excerpts from the the 8,000-word-plus article:

ON TRUMP’S DECISION TO FIRE FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: “I am less surprised than I am worried... Not that he shouldn’t have been disciplined. And certainly the Trump campaign relished everything that was done to me in July and then particularly in October.” But “having said that, I think what’s going on now is an effort to derail and bury the Russia inquiry, and I think that’s terrible for our country.”

ON LISTENING TO TRUMP’S INAUGURATION SPEECH: "It was a really painful cry to his hard-core supporters that he wasn't changing… The 'carnage' in our country? It was a very disturbing moment. I caught Michelle Obama's eye, like, What is going on here? I was sitting next to George and Laura Bush, and we have our political differences, but this was beyond any experience any of us had ever had."

ON HER FEELINGS ON ELECTION NIGHT: “This was a crushing, devastating blow… I just thought we had to get through this with a level of dignity and integrity, and there’d be plenty of time to try to figure out what went wrong and what we could have done differently, but for that moment we just had to stick to the ritualistic process: Okay, when I was sure, I have to call Trump. I want to call Obama. And then I have to figure out what I’m gonna do the next day… I had to get through that before I could go, ‘What the hell just happened?’ and be angry and upset. And be disappointed and feel I let people down and feel everything that I felt.”

ON THOSE WHO SAY SHE WASN’T LIKABLE ENOUGH: “Well, this is the joke… You gotta be authentic! So you go out and try to be as effective as you can in presenting yourself and demonstrating the qualifications you have for the job, but you’re always walking a line about what will find approval from the general population and what won’t. It’s trial and error.”

ON SEXISM DURING THE CAMPAIGN: “Once I moved from serving someone — a man, the president — to seeking that job on my own, I was once again vulnerable to the barrage of innuendo and negativity and attacks that come with the territory of a woman who is striving to go further.”

ON PROGRESSIVE GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING: “It has to be sustained… And here is my big worry. The other side is sustained by greed and hate and power and ideology, and they never quit. They get up every day looking to take advantage and drive their agenda forward.”

ON LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM HER CAMPAIGN: “Whoever comes next, this is not going to end. Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win?… So take me out of the equation as a candidate. You know, I’m not running for anything. Put me into the equation as somebody who has lived the lessons that people who care about this country should probably pay attention to.”

ON MOVING FORWARD: “Forget the detractors, forget the kibitzers, forget the nasty guys and women… And figure out how we communicate with people who feel what we’ve been talking about, who know there’s something much bigger than me and my campaign. The values that 66 million people voted for are worth fighting for.”

Related Topics