‘TRUMP HAS AN AFFINITY FOR DICTATORS’
A White House in chaos, an increasingly unpredictable president and a ticking time bomb called the Russia investigation. Who better to talk about the Great Churn in Washington than former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Excerpts from the US Democratic presidential candidate’s interaction with Aroon Purie, Chairman and Editor-in-chief of the India Today
Q. It is commonly said that countries deserve the governments they get. Does America deserve Donald Trump? What has gone wrong?
A. No, we didn’t deserve that. But I think, as I mentioned, he ran the first reality TV campaign and he was the first reality TV candidate. What does that mean? If you watch reality TV, you know it means that the person who is the most outrageous, the person who says the most politically incorrect things, the person who is insulting and attacking drives big ratings. Q. Is Trump the symptom of a deeper malaise in American society today? Or is he the disease, so to say?
A. I think there are several big problems that beset us, and to some extent you are seeing them in Europe. One is the phenomenon of disappointment, of a sense of being left behind in a fast-changing economy. Our immigrants are primarily from Latin America, India and China. They are hardworking, productive and law-abiding. Trump started his campaign attacking immigrants because he knew that in many parts of the country, there weren’t many immi-
grants. He was able to scapegoat immigrants.
Q. Has Vladimir Putin got something personal against you?
A. Russia’s parliamentary elections in 2011 saw evidence of fraud and manipulation. What I said as Secretary of State of the United States was that the people of Russia deserve free and fair elections and they should not be manipulated and rigged to the benefit of one of the parties and Vladimir Putin. Nothing I said caused this but thousands and thousands of Russians, mostly middle class, young Russians, went out into the streets protesting the elections. Vladimir Putin blamed me for causing the protests on the streets. I wish I had that kind of influence. But I did not.
Q. You’ve met Putin many times, personally? What’s your impression?
A. He is not exactly the most feminist of leaders that I have met. In 2012, in my last days as secretary of state, I met him for dinner. He was explicit, he wants to restore the greatness of Russia. He would like to expand its borders once again. He is on a mission to try to reassert what he views as Russia’s proper place. He has a tight grip on power. He is running for re-election again. He will probably be there as long as he is alive.
Q. So, what’s going on between Putin and Trump? Seems like a kind of bromance.
A. A bromance? Yes, I would say so.
Q. What’s your take on it?
A. Well, Trump does have quite an affinity for dictators. He really likes their authoritarian posturing and behaviour. The other day when he heard that [Chinese president] Xi Jinping was going to abolish term limits, he wistfully said that maybe we will do that someday in our country. So, he does have a pre-existing attitude of favourability towards these dictators.
Q. But you said you didn’t think Trump would win because when he announced his election you said, it was a joke. And now, the joke is on us.
A. I didn’t think the Republicans would choose him or the American people would vote for him. On many of the issues that we are now worried about, I tried to warn people. But I think a lot of people didn’t take him seriously. They thought it was just campaign rhetoric. Now, he is launching a trade war with tariffs with no thought to it. He said he is happy to go and meet with Kim Jong-un, with no preparation. All the Korean experts in our government have left. It’s more troubling now to see the shoot-from-the-hip kind of behaviour that we are seeing now in the Oval Office.
Q. The president calls you a crooked and nasty woman. What would you like to call him?
A. Well… there are so many things.
Q. Give us three.
A. Well, I described his behaviour. I didn’t call him names. I said someone who has taken bankruptcy four times might not actually be the best person to preside over the budget of the United States. Someone who didn’t pay his contractors, who stiffed people, working people out of their hard-earned money doing jobs for him may not be somebody you would want to put your trust in to stand up for you.
Q. How do you see President Trump’s foreign policy unwinding most of the things the Obama administration
The United States is retreating, receding. He (Trump) doesn’t, particularly, want to engage in the tough work of diplomacy and it is hard to do diplomacy when you have got rid of all the diplomats”
did—the Iran deal, North Korea, NATO and so forth. A. A lot of what he started off doing is right out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook. Destabilise the NATO, destabilise the EU, and now it does seem like it’s as much about undoing and rejecting everything that was done before. He gets his ideas from the right-wing media, which is really frightening. The United States is retreating, receding. He doesn’t, particularly, want to engage in the tough work of diplomacy and it is hard to do diplomacy when you have got rid of all the diplomats. Tillerson (the now sacked US Secretary of State) wanders around the world with no real support from the president, the president tweets against him when he is in other countries. We have never seen anything like this and it is reality TV, I mean it is ratings. He thrives on that kind of chaos, as long as he is in the centre of attention.
Q. I look at American news. I am aghast and you must be seeing what is happening in the White House—so many exits, so much chaos. How do you feel?
A. I feel worried. Personally I feel very sorry that I wasn’t able to prevent this. I have had Republican presidents whom I disagreed with, but I never felt I was holding my breath, that I didn’t know what was going to happen next even when I had serious disagreements, that I didn’t think that they will drive our country off the cliff.
Q. US troops have increased in Afghanistan—again a reversal. Is America ever going to win that war? Can you afford to have so many Americans getting killed there? A. It is an ongoing disappointment because Afghanistan hasn’t been able to attain a level of stability that it was seeking. Afghanistan has always been under pressure from all sides. Pakistan continues to play a very negative role in trying to tamp down terrorism within Pakistan as well as across the border.
Q. Pakistan ignores American diktats on terrorists like Hafiz Saeed. You said you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to bite your neighbour. It’s biting them. Is there something America can do to control the cross-border terrorism India suffers from?
A. We tried a lot of different things, including having international troops along the border. But when you have a safe haven at the other side of the border, then people take the opportunity to flee across that border and you do not get the kind of consistent support that is needed to weed out those terrorists that are still finding refuge in Pakistan.
Q. Is there an ambivalence in American foreign policy regarding Pakistan—keep Pakistan as long as they are helping you, but it’s okay to trouble India a bit?
A. No. Never. We know there are forces within Pakistan whose main preoccupation is India. I am staying at the Taj and part because I went to the Taj shortly after the terrorist attack, when you still had bullet holes in the walls, and I met the then manager, who is a young man whose wife and child were murdered by the terrorists. So, there is no blind eye, there is no pass for anything that endangers India.
Q. What will happen to Trump with the Robert Mueller investigation? Do you think he can be dislodged?
A. I can’t pre-empt the investigation because I don’t know; we all just get bits and pieces of it as the press reports. But I think this is a serious investigation. Whether or not it affects him or just the people around him, nobody knows. I am working hard to get a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives because that would give us a balance we desperately need. So regardless of what the investigation determines, we can have some checks and balances on Trump’s agenda and that is our first step. Once we get through those elections this year, it will be 2019 and people will start saying who will run for president, and maybe even some Republicans might challenge Trump. If you are interested in American politics, it will be an eventful couple of years ahead of us.
Q. Will you run again?
A. I have no plans to do that because we really want to push more people to the forefront, try to build a strong political base. We want the opposition party to become the party in power.
Q. Is there hope that Trump will not destroy America irreversibly? A. That will not happen. There will be damage, but that will be reparable, and we will be doing that work starting next year, after these elections and then going forward.
We have never seen anything like this and it is reality TV, I mean it is ratings. He (Trump) thrives on that kind of chaos, as long as he is in the centre of attention I have had Republican presidents whom I disagreed with, but I never felt I was holding my breath, that I didn’t know what was going to happen next even when I had serious disagreements, that I didn’t think that they will drive our country off the cliff”