Thank you very much. Good evening. I am bradley coowner politics and prose. [applause] along with my wife. And be half of the entire staff, welcome and thank you for coming. [applause] what a marvelous crown what a great space for a book event. Thank you to the warner theater for making this spacious place available. As much as we enjoy hosting our authors that are store on connecticut avenue northwest, we had a feeling that a somewhat larger venue would be needed for this one. In fact, this is the largest author talk that we have ever sponsored. Tickets sold out in a matter of minutes. So congratulations, you are the lucky ones. Since its release one week ago, what happened, Hillary Clintons new book about the 2016 election has landed on the bestseller list and generated nonstop commentary and conversation. Some things never change. Hillary has given a number of interviews about the book but tonight she is with us in person for what is the first on the 15 city tour that will take her across United States and canada. [applause] in the days and weeks following the election hillary took long walks in the woods with her dog, consumed more than a few glasses of chardonnay and tried to regain her variance. Ten months later, she is back with renewed strength and fresh purpose. And with a thoughtful and personal account of why she lost in the lessons that can be learned about what was a deeply confounding and disturbing race. Many of course are familiar with hillarys long and storied career. From lawyer in africa for children to first lady of arkansas, first lady of the United States, u. S. Senator from new york, u. S. Secretary of state, and the democratic partys president ial candidate. [applause] she is the daughter of you and dorothy, wife of bill, mother of chelsea, and grandmother charlotte made in. Along the way, hillary has managed to write books. In fact, this is her six. Reviewer seven so far seem to agree on one thing. In these pages, she is less guarded than ever before, more revealing, blunt, and authentic. She said she didnt intend the book to be a comprehensive recap of the campaign, and it isnt. But it does convey with roy motion, humor, and insight how it felt to run for president as the first woman nominated by the first Major Political party. [applause] and how it has felt to deal with the aftermath of a shocking defeat. One other thing comes through loud and clear in what happened, hillary intends to remain active and speak out hillary will be in conversation with my wife, the two go back a long way. At various times of the best to an decades she is looked with hillary as a chief speechwriter, communication book collaborator and Campaign Advisor including several stints helping in the 2016 campaign. Currently she is writing her own book about her experiences as part of hillary land, the small group of staffers, mostly women who started with hillary 25 years ago in the white house and have remained in her orbit sense. To take moments recognize that in the audience this evening member of members of hillarys 2000 campaign staff. Theyre out there somewhere. They toiled mightily for months to help their candidate are nearly 3 million more votes than the republican nominee. And now, the stream in welcoming the woman who one more than 65,800,000 votes in the last election, Hillary Rodham clinton. [applause] [applause] [applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] thank you all for coming, you so make 65,008,000 people. Thats great it is such a great crowd, thank you for being here. Thank you for being here. I feel like we just did this. That was three years ago. We did for your class book, hard choices. There were back for what happened. Its not what happened , its not what happened. Ellipsis. Its just what happened. Congratulations, book number six. By the way, produced in record time i might have. Its a very personal book which im sure those of you who read it now and if you watch the interviews and her you know, i just want to say one thing its about the 2016 election and because Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton, it delves deeply into very broad range of important issues from the erosion of our Democratic Institutions, their growing signs of totalitarianism creeping into aspects of our lives, thrilling backup putting rights, healthcare, environmental protections, and of course ongoing daily if not hourly moreover examples of sexism and racism across our country. What i wanted to say is if you dont have it yet, so pick your book up on the way out. In washington you look in the index and you pick and choose what you read. No. , start at the beginning read all 469 pages because she has a lot to say and a lot to say about important challenges facing this country. If you read from start to finish youll learn a lot. Its fascinating. And really important stuff. Thank you for that. Tonight well try to keep it more personal if thats okay. I want to start with how the book came about. You and i had a conversation in the winter and he mentioned to me that youre thinking of writing a book about the election and then we had several more conversations about this over the next weeks and months. Each time i said to her, emphatically, you are nuts, thats a crazy idea, why would you do that. Its way too soon. Youre still processing everything. I dont know about the rest of you but everybody i know was experiencing where things like insomnia, anxiety, gastrointestinal disorders, in fact a friend of mine who is a dr. Said its an election related syndrome. So, were all going through this. I did not see how you could possibly in such a short time and so soon after the election process all of it for yourself. In the central actor in it so i advise you not to write it. Of course, thankfully she did not listen. There was very wise on your part. Here we are with this wonderful book. Im wondering how did you process it so quickly, and apparently this did not involve any therapy along the way. Thats a sign of something. Actually it was my therapy to be really clear. You have been a friend of mine and colleague of mine for a long time now and is a terrific writer, a great reporter when she worked for the post and other publications. So i take what she says very seriously when it comes to writing. She did come to see me like a number of my friends who rallied around, came to support me listen to me vent, share their concerns and worries and i had after the election as you can read in the book, pretty much nothing i wanted to say to anybody. I was so devastated and it was incredibly painful. It took weeks of getting up every day, cleaning closets, going for walks in the woods, all the things i did to begin to clear my head. But other people were commenting and writing about the election and i just didnt think there was a broad enough view and comprehensive understanding of what it looks like to me in real time and what i believed happened, but i wasnt sure. I knew it would take a lot of analysis and evidence gathering. I do kind of believe in facts. So i began to talk and listen to people gather information. And i think it hit me around the inauguration people would talk to me about what he going to do and we write Something Else i was just trying to muddle through, it hit me that there are these important issues that needed to be discussed and debated start democracy and country relied upon that selfexamination and i thought well, i need to know what happened and i need to be as honest as i possibly can to figured out for myself and maybe doing it in a book would provide the discipline, and the deadline to think it through. So really, starting in february dove in and i decided i was going to write it and it was painful. I said the book i would write about something and i would have to go lie down. Because it was so hard to think about the mistakes i made, the missed opportunities. Also to come to grips with these big forces at work that i think had a determinate impact on the outcome. It ended up being cathartic for me personally. From what people are telling me is i have begun doing book signings and talking about the book, i think it does provide some catharsis and opportunity for reflection for others too. Very happy about that. Theres some really important issues we need to come to grips with. I wrote it not to say what happened but to make sure that what happened does not happen again. And thats what ill spend a lot of time on. Just to follow up on how hard it is, as i said to the central actor writing about yourself. It was a mindboggling experience. You and i share favorite author is cheryl straight. I dont know how many of you have read wilder seen the movie and you have a quote from her in the book and i may have mentioned that she once said to me, i asked how do you write about these things that are deeply personal and she says i write to get to a deeper truth. If im not going to be honest with myself why do i bother to write. But, getting to that deeper truth is hurtful, overwhelming, painful, and you have to deal with things that are intensely private. Did you censor yourself at all . Are there times and words her thoughts were just too much and he couldnt go there . What did you do to get to that next level . I ended up not censoring my thoughts i want to put into the book, i did censor some of the original like rich. [laughter] some of those early venting sessions i had a great team of people who vented with me and did research for me and help me better explain what i was renting about. But, i did not hold back at all on what i saw as my own shortcomings and deep disappointments, not just for me but for the country, so is not censored, it was really candid and it was something that did help me get to some deeper and bigger truths about me, our country, some of the really difficult forces that we have to face, the concerns i have and im sure well get into this, everything from sexism, misogyny, race, Voter Suppression, theres a lot there that i was learning as i was writing. When youre in the middle of a campaign, and another people who have been involved in campaigns and for that i think you. When youre in the middle of it youre so focused on the immediate tasks. You know the overall goal is to win and you have your strategies and tactics lined up. Every day is 18 hours of the hardest concentration and work trying to move it forward. Its hard to lift your head up and sometimes its hard to understand everything thats happening at the same time. Being able to step back and go through it, take it apart, look at it, analyze it and write about it help me. Did you learn anything about yourself that you do not know . I really believed in retrospect it was a misconception or out of sync with the time in which we are living in the candidate i ended up running against. I did have this idea based on my prior experiences and president ial campaigns going way back into the 60s and 70s that it mattered greatly if you could make clear what you wanted to achieve. You didnt have to have all the details but it was important to tell people what you wanted to do. So when you are in office they could judge you on whether or not youre fulfilling that commitment you may. So we spent a lot of time making sure that everything i said about policy and how we pay for things was bulletproof. I kept thinking that at some point its really going to matter. And for all sorts of reasons, didnt. So i think i stayed way too focused on a path that was not the direction the campaign was headed because of the pressures from outside forces, because of that reality tv candidate i was running against. I was not as adept or quick to try to figure out what is a better way for me to try to communicate this. These are things that you do the best you can and you think that youre running one kind of campaign and you realize the presses and covering the policy or putting out every day. Theyre covering an empty podium. I cap think you were stuck in a breakthrough because people do care about what kind of jobs, infrastructure and healthcare you want to do for them and their families and incomes. But there is a disconnect. I learned i wasnt as quick to make some adjustments. But you also send the book you developed a new appreciation for big simple ideas. The big simple ideas, i still believed that a big simple idea like were gonna raise taxes on the wealthy thats a big simple idea. I did have that idea centered in my campaign. But theres also an important debate about in Politics Today when we have a really intense, Quick Movement of news and its short Attention Span and social media plays a bigger part, trying to develop a relationship with voters or to engender confidence in voters that you know what youre talking about and you will deliver because you do understand the complexities may not be a significant as repeating those big ideas over and over again and leaving the details for later. Who knows, by 2020 maybe people will want to know details and policy again. You never know. [applause] shes not saying big details just not outlining every detail at a time. I thought that was an interesting observation. One more quick thing about what it feels like, you are so revealing in the book about what it feels like to be a president ial candidate. You have constant incoming, good, bad, medium youre trying to assess information from people all the time. Ms. Interesting in the book that you say in a number of places there times when you wish you had struck back when youre criticized her challenge by bernie on wall street and other things, by matt lauer and that really awful interview. By comey, and then the jaws imitation by trump on the debate stage. In each of those it sounds like also, by the way, even though you didnt say it, do you know how much it warms the hearts of americans to know that you thought about saying back up you creep. [applause] but, in those situations it was honestly such a relief to even know youre thinking about. But in the situations you werent able to do that and he felt yourself constrained and that you are in a straitjacket at times. What is it that makes it so hard to be able to do that . Im sure it has something to do with being a woman will let you answer that. I think it has a lot to do with being a woman. Its very hard to be perceived as strong as opposed to aggressive or any other word you can think of. So part of the challenge is how you present yourself in a mature, appropriate ways a woman seeking a job no other woman has had. I write a chapter on being a woman in politics. Much of what i say goes to being a woman in business, in a woman in any professor. Its not just politics. As i tried to describe my thought process on the stage, it was hard. We have practice what i would do if he invaded my space because we assumed he would, he had his own issues he was trying to push through. So we knew it, but once you there and its happening to you in realtime in front of 60 million people, you are discomforted, you are annoyed, youre frustrated that he is stocking in and staring at you. So i was going back and forth. But i have believed that its better not to show that kind of reaction in the middle of a president ial debate. As you might think back, funny gestures, facial expressions, heavy size, things really do affect viewers. I just ended up believing that in addition to the gender linked aspect of this, there is a history of people and president ial debates who had deviated in a way to show frustration, anger, dismissiveness and paid a heavy price for it. I thought whatever price they pay i would pay double or triple. So i just thought i sort of thought at the end of the day people would say we really do want somebody who is calm and composed in the oval office. So i was aware of the different crosscurrents. But i carried on in a way that i thought in a way that is what a president would want to. And you kinda say that you have to wear your composure as a suit of armor to make Everybody Knows that feeling that the next day or the middle you say oh if only i had said that. Theres always that. Is the toughest job in the world, the job that requires or at least use to require a level of curiosity, focus, and things that youd want to think somebody with that responsibility would have. I honestly believed were in a different kind of campaign, unlike any i have seen before. Ive watched people go up and down the campaigns. Is deeply involved in my husbands to campaigns. I know the up and flow of the campaign. This was really different. I dont think anybody fully grasped how it was a variation on a president ial campaign unlike any we have ever seen. Now, looking back i see different signals about that that maybe i couldve done a better job trying to figure out how to push back on or make more transparent so people would understand, mentally what the campaign of his, they have the best empty podium that anybody has ever seen. Get people to think and laugh about what was happening in the campaign. But that did not happen soon enough were quite enough places. Did you watch the emmys last night . [applause] i did. Many people may know you and your husband are big fans of Television Dramas and comedies. And if you wash, sure many of you did, you know that the handmade sale was a big winner, you and i have talked about that book in the past, wit written in 1985 the work of fiction that is now a wildly popular tv series that is about a liberal democracy slowly and definitively becoming a totalitarian state which is sadly and resonant at the moment. That idea of the normalization of the abnormal is terrifying. By the way, doesnt it buggy when people say chump this is the new normal, we should never call it normal, right . Its like the new abnormal. Not the new normal. Seriously, its terrifying and the handmade sale residents because of it. You do talk about that in your book from Voter Suppression and the manipulation of the media of fake news and just the assault on the Democratic Institutions we rely that we need to be able to track. I will get to the fake news russia stuff in a minute but. Part of the reason i was motivated to write this is because of what happened at the inauguration. I write the first chapter about what it felt like to go to the inauguration what a hard decision it was, but how i thought it was important to show continuity of our government. I was certainly hoping to hear words of reconciliation and bringing the country together after a very divisive campaign. Didnt hear that. I felt very uneasy about that inauguration. I have been to a bunch of them. It would out been there when people ive supported one and people live support of loss. But this was different. This is not a normal inauguration. He was made even more surreal with the claims about the crowd size and the introduc