Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton

0:00You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side. The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. plus an industry-leading 3.8 % APY high-yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

0:43That's public.com. Paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options and bonds, and a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Backed Crypto Solutions, LLC. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. Two of the best known individuals in the United States over the last 40 years have been Bill and Hillary Clinton. Bill served as President of the United States for eight years. Hillary Clinton served as First Lady for eight years, but also as the United States Senator and Secretary of State.

1:16I had a rare chance to interview both of them together at the 92nd Street Y, and I think their insights are quite interesting for current affairs, not only about what they've done before, but what they're working on now. So, President Clinton, let's talk about some current affairs for a moment. What do you think is the likely outcome of Ukraine? Do you see any resolution of that in the near term? And obviously, Secretary Clinton, what your views are as well. I don't expect it to be resolved in the near term unless Putin has some sort of change of heart. Or unless the United States and others walk away from Ukraine.

1:57and they can't get enough arms and ammunition to continue. I mean, they've been amazing. You know, they fought and fought and fought. They haven't asked any Americans to come and fight with them. But I think we, I think they have a chance to win. I think they will win if we stay with them. What do you think is, is there any way out of this, a face-saving way out of this that you can think of? Or what is your view on how this might be resolved? Well, David, first, I think it's imperative that we continue, and I would even argue, increase our support for Ukraine, because, as Bill just said, the Russians are back to indiscriminate bombing in cities aiming at apartment buildings, hospitals, other civilian sites.

2:46they have committed war crimes. They are in the midst of committing genocide, particularly with respect of how they're kidnapping children and forcing Ukrainians into Russia. So the bottom line for me is the only potential possible end to the hostilities is either a victory by Ukraine, including them being able to take back the property, the territory seized in 2014, or pushing Russia out of what they have seized since February of last year. And so that could give us a breathing space to perhaps have some kind of opportunity to protect Ukraine's legitimate borders with the exception of what they didn't get back from 2014 and to move them forward in reconstruction and rebuilding in the face of such devastation.

3:48Are you surprised that the US-China relationship now is as bad as it's been since Tiananmen Square, it seems? And what do you think could be done about that to improve it?

3:59Well, I think it's difficult. And I think it'll get harder if we walk away from Ukraine, because I think it will increase the willingness of China to attack Taiwan. It's a real dilemma for me because I worked hard with China and I tried to build a relationship and we desperately need a cooperative relationship with them to deal with things like COVID, climate change, North Korea. There's a whole lot of things that we ought to be doing together, but they make it virtually impossible because, again, if you decide to stay for life, whether your name is Putin or Xi or Smith, your number one priority has got to be crushing all dissent, eliminating any source of alternative power in your country, and then keeping people lathered up by being angry at somebody somewhere else.

5:04And so I believe the best thing to do is to keep talking to them even while we have to disagree with them publicly. Secretary Clinton, are you worried about a possible invasion by China of Taiwan? When Xi saw that Putin's invasion, number one, didn't work as fast and smoothly as Putin apparently thought it would, and that the world literally united, with a few exceptions, to impose sanctions that are taking a toll on the Russian economy, not as fast as I would like, because I think that could change the power dynamic inside. But she saw that. And I think before the Russian invasion, there was a good chance he would have moved on Taiwan within two to three years.

5:55I think that timetable has been pushed back. So since you've left Washington, there's been an increase in what I'll call the divisiveness in Washington. I'm sure you've noticed. And what do you think accounts for this? It's much worse than it was even when you were there, and it wasn't great then. But now the Democrats and Republicans don't even want to talk to each other, let alone think about bipartisan legislation. What do you think causes this? And do you see any solution in the near term? Well, if I say it, you'll say I'm being a partisan Democrat, but I'm going to say it anyway. is because the Republicans have been rewarded for being divisive.

6:33And it's great for them because they're great branders. They're really good at it. They're better at it than we are. And they convince people that our most left-wing members, about 10 % of our caucus, represent 100 % of us, and cause people that get scared in the middle who are swing voters to forget that their most right-wing members represent over 90 % of them in the House and about 60 % in the Senate. I have a lot of Republican friends still who just pretend it's not going on or who don't like it and don't support it. But you can't blame people in politics who covet power for doing what works.

7:16And it's been working for them. So, President Clinton, today, if you were to say we should change the way the presidents are elected, obviously you were elected twice, so you're probably reasonably happy with the method, but do you think direct election of the president, popular vote, would be preferable to the Electoral College method? I do. I do. I think, first of all, we adopted the Electoral College when we were 13 states. And we had a couple of really big states and some really, really small states that had distinct differences. but it also helped to load up the electoral votes of the southern states that had slaves.

8:15And now we know that the effect of the electoral college is to give about 36 extra votes to the most culturally conservative and furthest right American states. And I have no objection to them voting. I want them all to vote. I would not, unlike some of them, I'd never try to make it harder for them to vote. I'd make it easier for them to vote. I want the votes counted, and I want them all to count, but I just don't think you can justify that today. Now, if you did it, the first question you've got to ask yourself is, would we have more three-party or four-party national elections? And if so, would we have to have a runoff?

9:06That is, should you at least require a president to have, I don't know, 40 % of the vote, 45 % of the vote? Lincoln got elected with like 39%. A lot of countries have this, by the way. You have to get a majority or you have to get something over a minimal amount. to be president. If you're not going to go to a parliamentary system, which has a lot of coalition governments, you have to have, I think, at least some sort of threshold. I assume you prefer direct election as well. Oh, I definitely prefer direct election. You're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side.

9:52The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there. Plus an industry-leading 3.8 % APY high-yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com. Paid for by public investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal.

10:32Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options and bonds, and a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by Backed Crypto Solutions, LLC. Complete disclosures available at public.com. So let me ask you, there's a famous passage in your life where you were at Yale Law School Library. and you're seeing Bill Clinton looking at you and you're looking at him and finally you go over to him and say, well, stop looking at me. Let's have a conversation or something like that. So had you not been in the same Yale Law School class or there at the same time, how do you think your life would be different?

11:07Do you think you would have been president of the United States sooner or would you have gone into public service or how do you think your life would be different if the two of you had not married? Wow. I think it would have been more boring. When you told your parents you're moving to Arkansas, what did they say? Well, you know, my father, you know, when I was growing up, my father was a very big supporter of Republicans. He loved Dwight Eisenhower. He, you know, he was, you know, a World War II vet. He really loved that. And so when I brought Bill home the first time, it wasn't so much that he was from Arkansas, it was that he was a Democrat.

11:57So Hillary came from a town, Park Ridge, Illinois, where Goldwater beat Johnson 80 to 20. And the other 20 percent thought Goldwater is too liberal. But I loved her father and her mother, who was a liberal Democrat. She was more liberal than Hillary and I were. And it was interesting how they listened to their marriage unfold in terms of raising their children and advice and everything was different. But he was a really good guy and smart. And he wound up, you know, working as a volunteer in my campaign for Congress in 1974. I ruined him. President Clinton, when you were president, three times we had a budget surplus.

12:42A surplus is when you have more money than you spend. And at one point it was thought that maybe we would run out of having any federal treasury bills because we weren't going to have any debt. Any ideas about how we can get back to that kind of situation? Well, first of all, I did have a big argument with Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan was to my left. He said, we're not going to be able to have interest. How do we set interest rates on federal securities if we have no debt? I said, Alan, that's a high class problem. Let's deal with that when you get to it. But let me say, I also supported President Obama's stimulus program, and I supported the bill President Trump passed, and I supported the bill President Obama passed.

13:33When you have zero to negative interest rates, you can't run a balanced budget, and you can't start cutting spending without making the economy worse. but when you do have interest rates, then you have to deal with your debt issue or otherwise you spend more and more of your money paying interest on the debt and you don't have anything left for education and health and all of science research. So I think first, here's what I think. First of all, I think it's nuts to make a big issue of this debt limit thing and because that says simply it's a stupid rule we have in America that Congress has to approve twice, paying for something they've already voted to spend on.

14:23I mean, a lot of these people who were opposing raising the debt ceiling voted for most of the debt that is embedded there. So bottom line, we should bring the deficit down as much as we can. but we ought to pay our debts. You can't spend money, borrow it, and then refuse to pay the people that loan it to you. Not if you want to be a great country. So you ran for the presidential nomination. Barack Obama became the nominee. And to your surprise, he offered you the position of secretary of state, and you turned that down initially. I did. Why did you turn it down? She turns everything down. She turned me down three times when I asked her to marry her.

15:09Her default answer is no. Well, there is some truth to that. But eventually, you know, I do say yes to these charming men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Mr. Kerry Clinton, there's a very famous photo of you sitting in the Situation Room looking at the Osama bin Laden effort to capture him. What were you all looking at? And everybody's mouth is open. What were you afraid it wasn't going to work? and when did you realize it actually did work? Well, yeah, we were all afraid that something would go wrong. I was part of the small group that studied all of the intelligence that had been gathered to make recommendations to the president about whether to do something and if so, what.

15:58And it was the most intense public deliberation, public service deliberation I've ever been part of. And it was also, you know, it was secret. I couldn't tell Bill. I couldn't talk to anybody because how closely held it was. But we were in that small situation room off the big one, and we were watching a screen because we had video from a drone above. We had video of what was happening as the helicopters came into land. And one of the helicopters, its tail clipped the wire on the wall surrounding a little area where animals were kept. And so once the helicopter tail hit, we knew it was disabled.

16:49And that was the moment, I think, that the picture was taken. Because we all had flashbacks to what happened when, you know, President Carter tried to rescue the hostages in Iran. it also meant that we'd have to send in another helicopter that was in waiting in hiding to get it in there quickly enough we had to do all of this literally you know within 20-30 minutes because when people were starting to wake up and we had helicopters landing you know there was obviously noise people were living in homes around the compound it was a hot night people were sleeping out on their roofs and we were you know aware that people were waking up and starting to wonder what the heck was going on.

17:30So when the helicopters landed and the Navy SEALs, SEAL Team 6, got out to go into the compound, we couldn't see that. There was no video of that. So we were all holding our breaths. So then we had to wait till we got news from inside the compound. And there was a, you know, there was a firefight. The guards and one of bin Laden's adult sons were, you know, you know, shooting and then eventually bin Laden was shot and then his body had to be taken out of the compound, loaded onto one of the helicopters because we had to be sure about identification to have credibility with the world and we had to blow up the helicopter because it was an advanced helicopter with a lot of advanced electronics that we didn't want the Pakistanis to get because we thought the Pakistanis might very well give it to either the Russians, most likely the Chinese.

18:27So all this was going on and so yeah there were I think we were all holding our breath for you know like 20 minutes. It was just so intense and thankfully you know President Obama made the right decision and it worked. When something like that's happening you can't and you know about this you can't say to your husband Bill I have a secret I I just can't tell you. You can't do that. He called me as soon as it was over. And he said, Bill, we got him. And I said, who?

19:02Because he knew how hard I tried to get him when I was president and nearly did once. So he said, Bin Laden, Hillary didn't tell you. I said, now, Mr. President, didn't you tell her not to tell anybody? He said, sure. But I said, she didn't tell anybody. Final question for both of you. We're just about out of time. So, Secretary Clinton, in your long, distinguished career, what would you say you're most proud of having accomplished? You know, I'd been senator from New York for, you know, about eight months when 9-11 happened, and it was the most devastating, horrible experience for our city and our country, but it was also a absolute mandate to act to help people who'd been directly affected to help victims families to help rebuild New York and it was so bipartisan David you started with a question about that the very beginning you know I just want to tell a little story here because you know Chuck Schumer and I literally were the only plane in the sky on September 12th because we were flown down to New York to meet with then Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani to survey what had happened.

20:19And it was just overwhelming to have seen it firsthand like that. The television could not capture it. And we spent the day in meetings talking about what we were going to do, and that night around 8, 9 o 'clock, Schumer and I were, you know, Chuck and I were in a meeting with everybody, all these state, local, federal officials, and we were each handed a note from our staffs who were with us, and the note said, the White House has just sent a budget request to deal with 9-11 for$20 billion, and there's not a penny for New York in it. So I took the last train out of Grand Central back to Washington.

21:03Then that afternoon, we go to the White House. And so it's the two senators from Virginia, Senator Allen and Senator John Warner, and Chuck and I were in with the president. And, you know, I could see on his face, I mean, this was, you know, a devastating, obviously, you know crisis that had to be dealt with and he says he says to us so you know I'm with you what do you what do you need and I said we need 20 billion dollars Mr. President and he said you got it and his staff nearly fell off their chairs and so then we were going to the cabinet room which is next to the Oval Office and we got up to leave and John Warner who was one of my favorite colleagues of all time.

21:46He stopped me and he goes, Hillary, have him make that commitment in public in this meeting. I said, okay, John. So we go in, it's all the members of Congress from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, a couple of them, but mostly New York and Virginia. And the president's talking about how, you know, we're going to, you know, protect the country and we're going to do this and all that. So he finishes talking and then I say, and I just want to thank you, Mr. President, for committing$20 billion to New York. And literally by the time Chuck and I got back to the Senate, his staff was trying to undo that and telling, you know, the Republican leaders, you know, don't put it in the appropriations bill, don't do it.

22:34And so we just kept calling the White House and Bush said I gave my word and you know I'm going to follow through that was an amazing moment for me. So, well, President Clinton you look back on your distinguished and long service to our country what are you most proud of having achieved? Well can I just add one thing to what he said? One thing I like about George W. Bush. We have fought. We have disagreed. He started out more conservative than his father. We do speeches together that are really funny now because we badmouth each other in a funny way. But he will listen. And he will listen. And if he thinks you're right, he'll switch.

23:26And if he thinks you're wrong, he'll argue. That's all you can ever ask. And I think that's what you should remember. And that's, when you asked me in the beginning, and I said the polarization was partly because the right had been rewarded, it's also because the left too easily gives up on people. We shouldn't talk down about people. We shouldn't, you know, the one thing I loved about Elijah Cummings and John Lewis was they treated people respectfully and they just kept trying they kept knocking on the door there are some other people out there that you can knock on the door no regrets about not having going into the higher calling of private equity right neither neither of you don't regret that so on behalf of everybody at the 92nd Street Y that's because you take care of all the stuff that requires real money to do you he he gives a lot of that money away don't let him don't let him play the On behalf of the 92nd Street Y, I want to thank you for coming here again.

24:24You've been here before, and you're always welcome back, and thank you for a great evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thanks for listening. To hear more of my interviews, you can subscribe and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.