Last month, Hillary Clinton shared an extract from her new book What Happened, in which she opened up about the intimidation she felt during the second presidential debate with President Donald Trump.
She wrote:
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching: "Well, what would you do?" Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren't repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly: "Back up, you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can't intimidate me, so back up.'
And now, the former secretary of state has opened up on how she felt when she found out she'd lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump and what went wrong during her campaign.
In an interview with Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning, Clinton said she was 'gobsmacked' her opponent won.
'I just felt this enormous letdown, just kind of loss of feeling and direction and sadness,' she admitted.
'And, you know, Bill (Clinton) just kept saying, "Oh, you know, that was a terrific speech", tryin' to just kinda bolster me a little bit. Off I went, into a frenzy of closet cleaning, and long walks in the woods, playing with my dogs, and, as I write– yoga, alternate nostril breathing, which I highly recommend, tryin' to calm myself down.
'And — you know, my share of Chardonnay. It was a very hard transition. I really struggled. I couldn't feel, I couldn't think. I was just gobsmacked, wiped out,' she added.
Describing the 'out-of-body experience' she endured at Trump's inauguration in January, Clinton called the president's speech on the day 'a cry from the white nationalist gut' and said he failed to unify the country in a moment of upheaval and uncertainty.
'What an opportunity to say, "OK, I'm proud of my supporters, but I'm the president of all Americans.' That's not what we heard at all,' she said.
Despite winning the popular vote by more than 2.86 million ballots last November, Clinton revealed she thinks her campaign wasn't aggressive enough and failed to show the anger towards the state of the economy she hoped it would.
'I understood that there were many Americans who, because of the financial crash, there was anger. And there was resentment. I knew that. But I believed that it was my responsibility to try to offer answers to it, not to fan it,' she explained.
'I think that it was a mistake because a lot of people didn't wanna hear my plans. They wanted me to share their anger. And I should've done a better job of demonstrating "I get it",' she concluded.
We're excited to get out hands on her new book to find out what else Clinton has kept back all these months about her former political nemesis, Donald Trump.
Katie O'Malley is the Site Director on ELLE UK. On a daily basis you’ll find Katie managing all digital workflow, editing site, video and newsletter content, liaising with commercial and sales teams on new partnerships and deals (eg Nike, Tiffany & Co., Cartier etc), implementing new digital strategies and compiling in-depth data traffic, SEO and ecomm reports. In addition to appearing on the radio and on TV, as well as interviewing everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Rishi Sunak PM, Katie enjoys writing about lifestyle, culture, wellness, fitness, fashion, and more.
