'I had not prepared a concession speech' reveals Hillary Clinton in Late Late Show interview
Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared on RTÉ One's Late Late Show tonight to promote her new book 'What Happened' and discuss her links with Ireland.
Speaking to host Ryan Tubridy, she said she had a strong connection to Ireland through the work she and her husband had done for the peace process.
"Both my husband and I are extraordinarily interested in and devoted to the future of the island. It has been an absolute privilege to be involved, in some small way, in everything that's going on."
She said coming to Ireland was like "a big sigh of relief".
"Partly because of Bill's background and his feeling close to Ireland and his Irish roots and I think because we were actively involved in a time of such hope and optimism."
“It’s like a big sigh of relief” - @HillaryClinton on how she and husband Bill feel when they visit Ireland #latelate pic.twitter.com/899V4ba4sK
— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) September 29, 2017
Ryan Tubridy asked her how she reflected on being described as "one of the best friends the island of Ireland has ever seen" by Martin McGuinness.
"I had the opportunity to work with Martin and so many others on both sides of the sectarian divide in the North. I made it a point to continue my support in an official capacity because I didn't want the progress that had been made to be lost," she said.
The former US secretary of state joins a list of failed US presidential candidates to release a post-mortem of their campaigns.
She said she wrote the book to come to grips with what happened.
"I wanted to sort it out because I felt like I had to be as candid as I could, what my shortcomings were, what I did or didn't do that might've a difference.
"I knew there were these other forces at work that needed to be unpacked and analysed. It's not only about what happened, it's about preventing it from happening again," she said.
She described Donald Trump as "unpredictable" and said the current president was "injecting instability into a dangerous world".
She said his recent "provocative" UN speech was "dark, dangerous and selfish".
"Provoking not only the North Koreans but provoking the Iranians. Why would anybody want to unleash nuclear proliferation on our planet?" she said.
She described election day as "so excruciating".
She said she coped with the loss by screaming into pillows, taking walks and a considerable amount of chardonnay.
"I was in a state of shock. I had not prepared a concession speech," she said.
"I would have been disappointed and really unhappy if I had lost to a normal republican. But to lose to someone who I believed profoundly was not ready for the job, was temperamentally unqualified for the job - was such a burden.
"I thought I let everybody down, my country down and the world down," she said.
She also had a poke at the size of the inauguration crowd, and the electoral college system which elected Trump despite the president not receiving a majority in the popular vote.
“It was so bizarre” - @HillaryClinton on the experience of attending @RealDonaldTrump’s inauguration #latelate pic.twitter.com/dORw8Imbcp
— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) September 29, 2017
She told Tubridy fake news had a role in her loss.
"We're learning more about the role Facebook played in the propagation of fake news. The weaponisation of information, something I think the Russians were involved in," she said.
She went on to compare Vladimir Putin to a man on a subway "manspreading".
"He is a dedicated opponent of the United States, the Atlantic Alliance, the European Union, NATO. He really does want to turn the clock back and try to have a resurgence of Russian power beyond its borders.
"He wants to destabilise our democracies. I think the role he tried to play in France and the Netherlands was stopped because people saw what happened to me in our election," she said.
Tubridy asked her what else contributed to the loss.
"The e-mail mistake was at the core of what eventually tripped me up and stopped me from winning," she said.
She said she didn't figure out Trump's tactic of "running a reality TV campaign" in time.
Speaking about her Democratic Party primaries with Bernie Sanders, she said that while she won in what she described as "a landslide of four million votes", that battle "bled into" the presidential race.
She argued that Trump had not faced the same scrutiny she had in his primaries.
Tubridy closed the interview by asking about her grandchildren.
"I'm going to make the most out of every single day and a lot of that is spending time with my family and particularly my grandchildren," she said.
"I'm a happy woman because I'm not going to let what happened tear me down and turn me bitter and cynical," she added.
