0:00

Everyone, John Heilemann and welcome to Helen

0:02

High Water in my podcast about politics and culture

0:04

on the edge of Armageddon. It's

0:06

determined if dubious committed

0:09

if Kukui for cocoa puffs often

0:11

wrong, but rarely in doubt exercise in

0:14

elevated gas baggery. Than

0:16

neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom

0:18

of night nor the toxic

0:20

rantings of the not house right, a

0:22

president attempting to invalidate a legitimate

0:24

election and stage in auto coup complete

0:26

with an armed disruption of the United States capital,

0:29

nor more broadly and arguably

0:31

even more disturbingly. The capture

0:33

of a decent sized chunk of our political, social,

0:35

and civic spheres by a cadre of

0:37

incoherent, insidious, conspiracy

0:40

addled, autocracy craving, authoritarian

0:43

worshiping lunatics, hustlers, grookerters,

0:45

nihilists, and nint camp boops. None of it.

0:47

None of it. Has kept us from

0:49

our duly sworn duty and obligations,

0:52

giving you, our listeners, a fresh

0:54

episode of this podcast week after week

0:56

after week after week Maybe

0:58

not without fail because,

1:01

you know, hashtag epic fail

1:03

is one of our many models around here,

1:05

but certainly without a pause. We're

1:08

doing that for more than two years.

1:10

Haven't had a break. All of

1:12

which is to say that I

1:14

am plumb shagged

1:17

out and desperately in need of

1:19

some R and R. And with the midterm

1:21

election now comfortably in the rear

1:23

view mirror, in our democracy amazingly,

1:26

if I will admit a little unexpectedly, still

1:29

intact. It seems like a suitable

1:32

time for the Heilemann High Water home

1:34

office to give itself a fucking

1:36

break. And so for the next few weeks,

1:38

that is exactly what we are gonna do.

1:41

And we'll see you back here on the other side of the holidays.

1:43

Tanned, rested, refreshed, revitalized, and

1:46

raring to go. Ready to

1:48

get back to cranking out more,

1:50

tasty content. In the meantime,

1:53

don't despair. We're not leaving

1:55

you entirely in the lurch for these

1:57

weeks. To the contrary. Every

1:59

Tuesday morning, per usual, you

2:01

will find a hopefully unfamiliar

2:04

episode of the podcast doing

2:06

the backstroke in your feed drop

2:08

there by the Abel AI fact totems

2:11

who'll be mining the store while we're away.

2:13

And while these episodes come

2:15

over the next few weeks, may not be fresh,

2:17

or strictly speaking new,

2:20

they will be piping hot, a carefully

2:22

curated series of hot and hot water golden

2:24

oldies, which those of

2:26

you who've been around from the start may remember,

2:29

I hope fondly. And those of you

2:31

who came along sometime later may never have

2:33

encountered at all. Given

2:35

our focus on politics these past few months

2:37

and our desire not to take a dump on

2:39

your mood of holiday inspired good cheer, we've

2:42

decided these encore presentations will avoid

2:44

that topic like the plague. And focuses

2:46

dead on culture, entertainment, technology, and such

2:48

with a run of some of our most favorite guests in

2:50

those realms over the past two years, including

2:53

this beauty right here, which

2:55

whether or not you've heard it before, you

2:57

will not want to miss. And so with

2:59

that, we leave it to it with a

3:01

hearty and heartfelt Nalaste. Hey,

3:18

everyone, John Heilemann here, and welcome to Helen

3:20

High are my podcast for the recount with

3:22

big ups to my pal rizah, the presiding genius

3:24

over the sound of Wootenkann and producer

3:26

of our dope theme music. There have been

3:28

a lot of books this year dealing

3:31

with Donald Trump in his final

3:33

days, months, really his final year

3:35

in the White House and all Kaos,

3:37

calamity, near cataclysm that resulted.

3:40

You got Mike book. There's Phil

3:42

Rucker and Carol Leneig, and of course

3:44

Bob Woodward and Bob Costa. At

3:46

one word title that says it all. Harold,

3:48

all these books talking about Trump and

3:51

the threat to democracy to be posed and still

3:53

poses, all books you should read

3:55

for sure if you wanna understand where

3:57

we've been and where we're going. But none

3:59

of these books or more telling

4:02

or more compelling about

4:04

Trump and the threat that he posed and poses,

4:06

then a new tone just came

4:09

out an insider account

4:11

that illuminates an

4:13

earlier phase in the Trump administration book

4:16

that deals with Donald Trump as

4:18

a foreign policy president, Donald

4:21

Trump's adventures and misadventures on the

4:23

world stage, and the Ukraine

4:25

scandal that led to Trump's first

4:27

impeachment and was a vivid

4:29

omen of what we would see just a couple years later

4:31

when Trump attempted flagrantly to

4:34

subvert American democracy twenty

4:36

twenty election and in its aftermath leading

4:38

up to the intersection on January sixth.

4:40

The name of this book is there is

4:42

nothing for you here, finding opportunity

4:44

in the twenty first

4:44

century. And I'm pleased to have with us on the show

4:47

today. It's author, the one and only,

4:49

Fiona Hill. The state of our union is

4:51

contested. We're one of those junctures

4:53

where action is necessary.

4:56

And if we stand by and just watch

4:58

the way things are unfolding, it'll

5:00

be too late to do anything about it as we see

5:02

our democracy slip away.

5:09

From the moment that Pionna Hill grab

5:11

the world's attention by

5:13

appearing as a whistleblower in

5:15

the house impeachment hearings against Donald

5:18

Trump around that Ukraine scandal. Everyone

5:20

could tell on the basis of her bearing,

5:22

her accent, her obvious extraordinary

5:24

intelligence that this was a woman

5:27

who was quite remarkable and probably

5:29

had a pretty remarkable tale to tell

5:31

about her life. She told part of it

5:33

in the opening statement that she did that day,

5:35

but after watching her testify, you

5:37

couldn't help but want to know more. And that

5:39

is a big part of the story that Hill tells in her

5:41

book. There's nothing for you here. Horizon's

5:43

from deep deep in the English working

5:45

class in northeast England with

5:48

no strings to pull, no chits to cash in,

5:50

no family connections and very little money.

5:52

Extraordinary rise, unlikely.

5:55

And it's just kind of mind blowing in a lot of

5:57

ways. If you know anything about Britain in the

5:59

late seventies and early eighties, She

6:01

rises that the commanding heights of academia

6:03

in America at Harvard University

6:05

at the Kennedy School of Government. After she leaves there,

6:07

she sends into the

6:10

elite ranks of the American foreign policy establishment.

6:12

She runs a bunch of stuff related

6:14

to US and Russia. At the

6:16

Kennedy School. She goes on from there, becomes

6:18

the director of strategic planning for the Eurasia

6:20

Foundation, goes on to the Brookeings

6:22

Institute, and then she makes her way directly into

6:24

government becomes the National Intelligence Officer for

6:26

Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council,

6:28

working for the Director of National Intelligence from two

6:30

thousand six to two thousand nine under George w

6:32

Bush, goes back, does some stuff outside

6:35

government for a little while, and then and

6:37

then crucially, at the beginning of twenty

6:39

seventeen, she joins the Trump administration, becomes

6:41

deputy assistant, to president Trump and senior

6:43

director for European and Russian affairs on the

6:45

national security council as Donald

6:47

Trump comes into office. Now, Fiona

6:49

Hill knew that in Donald

6:51

Trump we had a very untested, potentially

6:54

unpredictable, likely tempestuous,

6:58

almost certainly destabilizing and

7:00

potentially dangerous president

7:02

of the United States on the world stage. So

7:04

she joins the administration kind of self consciously

7:06

intending to be a guardrail someone who

7:08

could be stabilizing force. Someone who knows what they're doing.

7:10

And with a lot of other people who came into that

7:12

administration thinking, oh, we'll see what we get from

7:14

Trump. How bad could it really be?

7:16

What Fiona Hill's book tells us and what she talks

7:18

to us about on the program today is that it was worse

7:20

than she could have possibly imagined And

7:23

she gets to see up close and

7:25

learn about elements of Donald Trump's

7:27

character, his worship of Vladimir Putin,

7:29

and other strongmen around the world, his

7:31

disrespect for and contempt

7:33

for democratic values and norms

7:35

that not only led to the Ukraine scandal in

7:37

Trump's first impeachment, but led to the coup

7:39

that Trump and his competitors attempted between

7:41

election day and November of twenty twenty and

7:43

January sixth of twenty twenty one.

7:45

It also makes clear why it is no exaggeration to

7:48

say that Trump is setting the stage for

7:50

another attempt to subvert American democracy in

7:52

twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four. If he runs again,

7:54

which everyone now thinks he will, This

7:56

time though, Trump is trying to make sure

7:58

that the impediments that kept his coup

8:00

from working are eliminated

8:03

so that if he has to stage a second coup, this

8:05

time it will work. Theo Hill was one of the

8:07

first people who used the word coup to

8:09

describe what happened on January

8:10

sixth. She called it an auto coup

8:12

A lot of people at the time thought she was being hysterical

8:14

and exaggerating now that we know what was going on inside the

8:16

White House, not just on Capitol Hill on January

8:18

sixth. What was happening inside the Trump

8:20

administration? We know that it was even worse

8:23

than we saw and that what happened

8:25

at the capital was just the sort of

8:27

public manifestation of a deep an

8:29

insidious private attempt to

8:32

steal the twenty twenty election and keep

8:34

Donald Trump in office even

8:35

though the people of America decided to vote him

8:38

out. I wanted to talk to Fiona Hill

8:40

about how it felt to be right about the fact

8:42

that what we saw in twenty twenty was in fact an

8:44

auto coup and she called it. I also wanna

8:46

talk to her about her experiences with Trump and

8:48

why the things that she saw, the

8:50

things that she learned were so illuminating

8:52

of his character and his tendencies and

8:54

why those things or guidepost

8:56

to what we might see the next time around. But

8:58

I also wanted to talk to Fiona Hill about the

9:01

extraordinary biographical tale that she lays

9:03

out. And there is nothing for you here.

9:05

It's a remarkable story

9:07

and unlikely story and a

9:09

truly and profoundly inspiring

9:10

story. And so without further ado,

9:13

let's take a

9:13

listen to my conversation with

9:16

Fiona Hill a woman who has faced

9:19

and overcome

9:20

way more than her share of Helen High

9:23

Water.

9:28

President Trump. You first.

9:31

Just now, president Putin denied having

9:33

anything to do with the election interference in

9:35

twenty sixteen. Every US intelligence agency

9:37

has concluded that Russia did.

9:40

What who my first question for

9:42

you, sir, is who do you believe?

9:44

My people came to me,

9:46

Dan Coats came to me, and some

9:48

others, they said they think it's Russia.

9:50

I have president

9:53

Putin. He just said it's

9:55

not Russia. I will say this. I

9:57

don't see any reason why it would

9:59

be. But I really do want to see the

10:01

server. But I have

10:03

I have confidence in both

10:05

parties. I have great confidence

10:07

in my intelligence people,

10:10

but I will tell

10:12

you that president Putin was

10:14

extremely strong and powerful in

10:16

his denial

10:17

today. So that's a

10:19

famous, rather infamous moment

10:21

in our recent history, and we're here on Helen High

10:23

Water with Fiona Hill, author of a fantastic

10:26

must read new book called, there is nothing for

10:28

you here, finding opportunity in the twenty

10:30

first

10:30

century, Fianna. Thank you for doing this show. Thanks

10:32

so much, John. At the moment that that happens, you

10:34

are deputy assistant to president Trump, senior director

10:36

for European and Russian affairs on the

10:38

NSC. For a lot of us as we watch

10:40

that, it was a horrifying,

10:43

humiliating moment of, like,

10:46

oh, everything we feared about Trump and

10:48

Putin is is right, all

10:50

of it. And I'm curious what

10:52

you thought. As you sat there in your

10:54

White House job watching

10:56

that with responsibility for this, for

10:58

this area of policy, what your reaction

11:00

was in the moment, and what your reaction is, so you

11:02

think about it

11:02

now. Well, my reaction was very

11:05

similar to other people watching although my

11:07

assessment of why it had

11:09

transpired was somewhat different. I

11:11

mean, I was also horrified humiliated

11:13

he was a writing the book, and I've said previously

11:15

in interviews, I actually just wanted to

11:17

end the whole press conference there, and then I'd never

11:20

actually wanted the press conference to take place,

11:22

but was not my decision to make,

11:24

and president Trump always loved a good

11:26

show and a good press conference. It was never one that

11:28

he would let up. And, you

11:30

know, I actually contemplated faking a

11:32

medical emergency during it and falling

11:34

back into the violence of photographers

11:36

and journalists behind me. Jonathan, let me

11:38

host us. The question is know, right behind at

11:40

that juncture. And I was, you know, kind of a row

11:42

back in from the national security

11:44

adviser. US ambassador

11:46

to Russia, the secretary of state, they

11:48

all stiffened. I mean, nobody thought

11:50

that that was a that's a good

11:52

response. Let's put it that way. But, I

11:54

mean, it was really the sum of

11:56

different kinds of fears and perhaps what people

11:59

were watching this were

12:01

quantum blurring. What this

12:03

was was an example of

12:05

Trump's just incredible fidelity

12:08

of his ego, his sort of

12:10

vulnerability of character.

12:12

And there's an important line in there when

12:14

he talked about Putin being very

12:17

strong and powerful. He said that I have

12:19

Vladimir Putin in front of me today. He's

12:21

was very strong and powerful

12:23

in his Heilemann

12:25

for Trump, everything was about looking

12:27

strong and powerful. Yeah. And for

12:29

him, when he gayzed Putin,

12:31

Putin was what he wanted to be.

12:33

It wasn't about doing anything for Putin or

12:35

being in the thrall of Russia or the

12:37

Russian security services. But he

12:40

wasn't aware in the thrall of autocrat

12:42

envy. For him, Putin

12:44

epitomized everything that he thought a

12:46

strong man leader, which is what

12:48

he thought of himself as president of the United

12:50

States, should be he should be doing

12:52

he was for him, someone

12:54

who this is Putin for Trump, super

12:57

powerful, no checks and balances within his

12:59

system. Right. Garnered respect

13:01

internally in Russia and could pretty much do anything

13:03

that he wanted, strutted

13:05

around the world stage with all eyes on him and

13:07

everybody thinking of him really

13:09

as a global celebrity.

13:11

Trump also thought he was fabulous rich

13:13

in running the country as his own business,

13:16

which is sort of actually fairly

13:17

accurate. Kind of assessment. Yeah. But this is because what

13:20

Trump wanted. Yeah.

13:21

And the other thing is that Trump had these deep

13:23

insecurities about the twenty sixteen election, which,

13:25

of course, was intended as a result

13:27

of the Russian intervention and interference there

13:29

and influence operation. They wanted to weather was

13:32

president who came out of twenty sixteen, to

13:34

have questions raised about their legitimacy, to feel

13:36

insecure, to be incapable of

13:38

mounting any kind of collective action

13:40

against Russia, and

13:42

Trump at the back of his mind was

13:44

incredibly fearful of Vladimir

13:47

Putin saying to him of Vladimir

13:49

Putin revealing something on the eyes of,

13:51

yeah, hey, We did interfere with action. Yeah.

13:53

And we did do it on your behalf.

13:55

And guess what? We elect to

13:56

do. I mean, this was the worst possible

13:59

outcome for him. Right.

13:59

And it was a celebrity things going on. He was

14:02

looking at Putin. He didn't wanna be shown up in, you

14:04

know, besides his fellow strong man, He

14:06

did not want to hear that kind of answer.

14:08

He wanted to deflect against it.

14:10

And he also, of course,

14:12

wanted to always put the spotlight back on

14:14

his enemies that the media in the United States

14:16

or Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, he

14:18

was just trying to turn himself his engine

14:20

into a pretzel. Trying to get out

14:22

of that uncomfortable moment. And

14:24

everybody who worked with him knew that this would be a

14:26

disaster because as soon as he was

14:28

asked that, question about twenty sixteen that he would react

14:30

in some, you know, very unfortunate

14:32

way that would reveal all of his

14:34

insecurities and his

14:35

vulnerabilities, and that's exactly what happened.

14:38

Your analysis about the Russia

14:40

question is obviously interesting, and it's

14:42

partly interesting because you've been clear,

14:44

like, you take that face value, the notion that

14:46

Russia interferes in the twenty sixteen election as you interfered

14:48

on behalf of Donald Trump, tried to install him

14:50

as president, did things in an active way. All the stuff

14:52

the intelligence community had

14:54

unanimous assessment on And yet, you also

14:57

didn't think that there was some kind of active

14:59

collusion going on really between the

15:01

campaign and and certainly not as you just

15:03

suggested active collusion between Trump and Russia

15:05

while he was in office. I guess I wanna ask this question

15:07

before we talk about that a little bit more, which is,

15:09

you know, you decided to join the administration and

15:11

you tell the story in the book of meeting

15:13

KT McFarland and getting kind of drawn

15:16

in. Given your background, your expertise in

15:18

Russia, all the work you've done in and out of

15:20

government prior to Donald Trump

15:22

becoming president, And I know you just

15:24

talk about this in the book, but it raises the kind of the

15:26

question. Russia just interfered with the American

15:28

election. You know, the intelligence assessment

15:30

that happened already. He's now president of

15:32

the United States. And you're

15:33

thinking, I wanna go and work for this

15:35

man. Why?

15:36

Well, the

15:37

point is I didn't want to go and work for this man, and this

15:39

is part of our problem with American democracy

15:41

that over time, The presidency has

15:43

morphed from the executive branch

15:45

and as a separate part of

15:47

the government into a fixation on

15:49

one person. Heilemann,

15:51

if we think back, you know, for previous

15:54

presidents, we could probably trace

15:56

this personalization of the presidency,

15:58

certainly, back into the twentieth century.

16:00

But it's become hyper personalized of late and

16:03

certainly did under Donald Trump. So

16:05

the whole idea that you can

16:07

enter into an administration to government

16:09

is a non partisan person focused

16:12

on public service and serving the country seems

16:14

to have sort of disappeared. And I guess,

16:16

you know, because of the particular attributes

16:18

of Trump, that's made it doing a much

16:20

harder for others to

16:22

contemplate that because, of course, he's somebody

16:24

who demands extreme

16:27

loyalty and we all remember those early

16:29

cabinet meetings in which he forced the

16:31

cabinet members to go through these

16:33

obsequaced displays of kind of

16:35

Right. Praising him, General Mattis never did.

16:37

I mean, there were many people who went into

16:39

the the government with a similar mindset

16:41

of we're really in trouble here. Not

16:43

just because of Trump's election as

16:45

many people are thinking, but because of what the Russians

16:47

have done. And because of all these other vulnerabilities,

16:50

it's a in a highly dangerous international

16:52

environment, not to mention what was going on in

16:54

the domestic politics. And as someone

16:56

who'd been the National Intelligence Officer who

16:58

had worked under both the Bush

17:00

and the Obama administrations as

17:02

the person who's bringing all the all source information

17:04

and analysis together in order

17:06

to basically brief the president and other principals in

17:09

the US government on the Russian challenge,

17:11

I was pretty acutely aware of all

17:13

of the dangers. And it

17:15

was also apparent in watching the campaigns that

17:18

not just Trump but many others

17:20

were counterintelligence risk.

17:22

Yeah. Because the Russians were trying to insult

17:24

her to the campaigns as well. This hasn't come out

17:26

in discussion even though I've mentioned it many times and

17:28

many people aware of it. They were trying to find out if they

17:30

could get people into the Hilary Glum campaign.

17:32

They were trying to reach out in the

17:34

early parts of the primaries before Trump

17:37

got selected as the main candidate to

17:39

Marc Rubio, Jab Bush, and

17:41

many others. I witnessed some of this myself and, you

17:43

know, was calling alarms. I didn't

17:45

know the full details. Obviously, if what

17:47

the Russians are up I actually got into the position. But I

17:49

knew enough to know that we were in a

17:51

very dangerous position. And it was

17:53

also obvious that the Trump campaign

17:56

We're playing dirty as many other campaigns were as well, and

17:58

we're willing to take, in their case, however,

18:00

information from any quarter whatsoever,

18:02

if it helped him pushing Trump's

18:05

candidates forward, including from Russians. It

18:07

didn't mean they were directly colluding, but it

18:09

certainly meant that they were acting in parallel and

18:11

that they were leaving doors open on

18:13

every front. To basically be

18:15

manipulated. As soon as Paul Manafort ended up on the

18:17

campaign, I mean, that also got

18:19

my attention because I was very well

18:21

aware of what he'd been doing.

18:23

You

18:23

know, in his consulting as I have to say many

18:25

Americans have been doing in

18:27

these consulting

18:28

positions. Yes. So that was the motivation to

18:30

try to do something.

18:32

I mean, I thought I would be giving some advice on the

18:35

outside and maybe commenting this, you know, behind the

18:37

scenes. I was surprised I was actually

18:39

asked to physically come in. But, you

18:41

know, after a lot of consultation and

18:43

consideration, I felt that I had actually, to be

18:45

honest, no choice. I mean, if I wanted to

18:47

do my duty, And

18:49

also given my background and everything I'd

18:51

done, I thought I could at least do

18:53

something. I was

18:55

perhaps I would say naive about

18:58

how possible it was to do something

19:00

given all the swirl, the

19:02

machinations, and the people,

19:04

you know, involved in some cases

19:06

in and around the White

19:07

House. Yeah. But I thought and I still think that it was really

19:09

worth a try. As you

19:10

point out, obviously, it is the case that the

19:12

presidency has become a fetishized thing

19:15

and it's harder and harder I'd say in any administration

19:17

to go in and sort of serve

19:19

the office rather than serving the

19:22

individual. You had to know that

19:24

given Trump's demonstrated propensities

19:26

for monomania and ego

19:29

mania and narcissism, that those

19:31

things were not secret by the end of twenty

19:33

sixteen. And you had to know that that secular

19:35

trend towards the fixation on the

19:37

man, not the office, was going to be

19:39

accelerated, and it was gonna be exaggerated

19:41

under Trump. And yet the kind of

19:43

decision you made, it seems like, you know,

19:45

we talk a lot about the people who turn out to be

19:47

guardrails within the four

19:49

years of Trump, people inside the administration

19:51

who proved to be guardrails. It sounds like you

19:53

basically entered with very much like a

19:55

guardrail

19:55

mindset. Like, I understand this is gonna

19:58

be Harry.

19:58

Probably you underestimated how Harry it was gonna be, but

20:00

that guardrails are gonna be necessary in

20:02

this situation and I feel a sense of

20:04

duty to go in in b one. It wasn't like

20:06

you sort of realized that once you were there. It was

20:08

like the decision to go in, it sounds like,

20:11

was I understand this is gonna

20:13

be a very tricky situation, but we need these

20:15

guardrails and I'm willing to be one in

20:17

this moment because it's that

20:18

important. Yeah. That's exactly it. I mean, I had a

20:20

slightly different image. I thought the house was on fire. And,

20:22

you know, if I was standing around and the house

20:24

was on

20:24

fire. Right. An Airbus house, my own house, I

20:27

would go in and try to do something.

20:28

Yeah. Right. I mean, some colleagues, a

20:30

couple have still not spoken to me ever since

20:32

I did that. They made it very clear that

20:35

there's a disastrous decision I'd be aiding

20:37

and abetting a criminal enterprise and

20:39

that I, you know, I'd be forever tempted by,

20:41

but I thought, well, so be

20:43

it. Because, you know, it was one of those moments

20:45

where you have to kind of stand up and try to

20:47

do

20:47

something. And at that point, I was

20:50

focused on the threats to US

20:52

democracy from Russia.

20:53

Yeah. Right. And it's, you know, as we've

20:55

talked around this and, you know, by Helsinki, it

20:57

was quite obvious that a lot of the threats were

20:59

coming from inside. Because Trump himself

21:02

was just so vulnerable.

21:04

He was actually much worse than I

21:06

anticipated, to be frank. Because I was

21:08

somewhat agnostic on the fact

21:10

of whether This was always the real hymn

21:12

during the

21:12

campaign. Yeah. And then, of course, as

21:14

soon as I got inside, I saw that in fact, the

21:16

private and public Trump were pretty much one

21:18

of the same. And that, you know, he didn't

21:20

become more presidential as he said he would be

21:22

-- Right. -- in that kind of sense once he was in

21:24

office. What as many people hoped

21:27

and prayed that he would be. I mean, the office

21:29

really has changed. There's never been a person who's gone

21:31

into the presidency in my thirty years of covering

21:33

this, and in all the reading I've ever done about it,

21:35

which pretty much covers every president ever sat

21:37

in that office, there's never been one that hasn't

21:39

been changed by the office. That was just an assumption that

21:41

even if you thought Trump was dangerous and

21:44

racist, and even if he thought he was a budding

21:46

autocrat at the extreme end of that, at the

21:48

end of twenty sixteen, now to remember where people's

21:50

heads were, there was still discussion, could he just

21:52

be a a kind of non partisan dealmaker. He had kind

21:54

of bucked Republican orthodoxy. He might go in and

21:56

maybe this guy would just be a businessman and

21:58

people were praying that that would

22:00

be true. But everyone assumed

22:02

that the office would change him at least on the

22:04

margins because the responsibilities of gray, the

22:06

pressure is so much, no one's ever

22:08

been unchanged by the office. And

22:10

you're basically

22:11

saying, nope. But all of a sudden, no effect

22:13

on him whatsoever. Yeah. I mean, I had

22:15

those thoughts as well, and I know that, you know, I've talked to an

22:17

awful lot of people who had who had voted for him because they

22:19

thought he was a businessman because he was a

22:21

pragmatic dealmaker that were fed up with the

22:24

establishment. Yep. They wanted somebody to

22:26

make change you

22:28

know, some of my un relatives voted twice

22:30

for Obama and then for

22:32

Trump because in the same idea that there

22:34

would be hope, there would be change He

22:36

wasn't off the party. He was not a

22:38

Republican. He wasn't bogged down in all

22:40

these kind of party politics or

22:42

previous experiences of government would come

22:44

in with a fresh look. Well,

22:46

he did come in with a fresh look, but his the

22:48

look was from the vantage point of somebody running

22:50

their own private business. And,

22:52

you know, my observations he very much seemed

22:54

to be someone who thought he'd acquired the

22:57

United States, acquired the White House in the

22:59

Oval Office, you know, of another

23:01

of the properties. Or another of the businesses and

23:03

was gonna run it according to

23:05

the way that he ran things

23:07

previously. Yeah. And this wasn't from running

23:09

a government and he didn't understand

23:11

what the government institutions

23:13

did. He wasn't interested in them. You

23:15

know, he thought, for example, that the hold of the National

23:17

Security Council was a

23:19

a large secretariat, you know, kind of a big office building to

23:21

push money around. I think he took the

23:23

title, secretary of state, and secretary

23:25

of defense, literally. These

23:27

people were in fact, for centuries of

23:29

some description. Yeah. And, you know, the

23:31

best thing is once everybody started

23:33

to work You know, cabinet, they

23:35

became his stuff. Everybody was his

23:37

stuff. And his view of the presidency was it

23:39

was one man above everyone else. And he

23:41

articulated that very clearly public

23:43

sphere as well, but as I said, he changed

23:45

the idea of the presidency as

23:47

much as anything

23:47

else. It's an incredible thing, and I guess I'm

23:50

curious about the kind of personal

23:52

element of this here, you know, which is in the first few

23:54

months of twenty seventeen, you're

23:56

very quickly confronted with

23:59

the reality of what this guy is like, and you tell these

24:01

stories in the book, in particular, the way he

24:03

treated you, you were talking about how he basically

24:05

treated Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson as if they

24:07

were secretaries in some way. Both of them were

24:09

older white men. You were not an older

24:11

white man, and you were treated in in

24:13

some pretty horrifying ways I'd love for you

24:15

just to tell a couple of those stories to give people a sense of what

24:17

it was like, and we'll talk a little bit more about your

24:20

history in the next part of the podcast. But, you know, you

24:22

had a very incredible intellectual pedigree

24:24

inside outside

24:25

government, and you walked in there and he treated you as

24:27

if you were hired help, basically. Right? So

24:29

talk about that. Yeah. Well, I I

24:30

was nobody. I mean, it wasn't even, you know, perhaps

24:33

even a walk on pass it was

24:35

basically like being the back

24:37

office. As far as Trump was

24:39

concerned, even with the senior

24:41

cabinet officials, everybody was

24:43

the staff in one of his properties. There was sort of a

24:45

hierarchy. And people that he

24:47

didn't know, we're gonna may as well have been,

24:49

if you think of property, you know, the kind of

24:51

cleaning stuff or somebody with a walk

24:53

on path that he might otherwise not have

24:55

noticed. So from the

24:57

very beginning, He

24:59

paid no attention to me whatsoever from the

25:01

very first encounters. The first time when

25:03

I came into the into the Oval Office didn't

25:05

even look up. I was introduced, but it wasn't like

25:07

he registered. On the second effort

25:10

where Katie McFarlane, who had actually asked

25:12

me to come on board, And

25:14

it was deputy National Security Advisors. Somebody'd been out of his campaign

25:16

and somebody else, you know, who knew him

25:19

fairly well. We came

25:21

into a meeting money.

25:23

The cabinet was sitting there in front of the Oval Office,

25:25

in front of the Resolute desk, including the

25:27

secretary of state, and a number of other people,

25:30

Katie brings me up to the desk and says, mister President,

25:32

this is Fiona Hill, doctor Fiona

25:34

Hill. She's the unused senior

25:37

director for Russia, she's written the most

25:39

fabulous book on Vladimir Putin. She's

25:41

the expert, and he sort

25:43

of flocks up, looks at

25:45

me, looks butt down again, and he says, Rex is

25:47

doing Russia. Rex

25:49

being secretary Tellison. He was kind of sitting

25:51

and looking at me. And of course, I met Secretary

25:53

Tellison when he was CEO of on mobile -- a

25:55

very different

25:56

capacity. Yeah. And he kinda

25:57

gave me a sort of faint Heilemann, you

25:59

know, when we met eyes and then that was

26:01

that. And I said, okay. But is

26:03

doing Russia. But it was also fairly dismissive

26:06

of REX at the same time. Yes. But it was

26:08

clear that I was not, you know, in the

26:10

same category, and it just went on from there. And

26:12

then on another occasion, very

26:14

soon thereafter. He thought I was

26:16

part of the executive secretary, you know, to

26:18

type up some of the meeting. One

26:20

of the jobs offered that a national security official as

26:22

senior directors, in fact, to take notes and to

26:24

do quite a lot of secretarial work at us,

26:26

to be said. But again, it

26:28

was clear he had no idea who I was and

26:30

nobody reintroduced me and it just went on

26:32

from there. And so for the entire

26:34

two and a half years that I'm

26:36

there, I'm pretty convinced that Trump had no idea

26:38

who I was in spite of the fact that I was

26:40

in meeting after meeting after meeting and something that just

26:42

kind of proved this is recently when

26:44

I've been out and about with a new book.

26:46

Yeah. He actually issued a statement --

26:48

Yeah. -- it was kind of a very belated

26:50

job performance review starting off

26:52

here. If you're on a hill, it was dreadful as a job, a terrible as a

26:54

job. Mhmm.

26:55

And then, actually, in fact, underscoring everything

26:57

that I'd said that he had no idea who I was even

26:59

happy in pictures. Not of these readings.

27:02

Yeah. And then at the very end, then he called me a

27:04

deep stick stiff with a nice accent.

27:06

Right. So, yeah, there was an upside to this,

27:08

but it just proved the very point. That for

27:10

the most of the time, the man has no

27:12

idea who is around in what their functions

27:14

are and he doesn't care and he doesn't

27:16

think he needs to

27:17

care. I

27:17

would say deep state stiff with nice accent would be a pretty decent

27:19

epitaph. Like, that's not a horrible thing. Yeah. Not

27:21

a horrible thing. No. I have it on a t shirt now.

27:23

Thanks to my husband. I thought it was pretty

27:25

funny for Halloween. He was oh, it's it's quite good. I

27:27

just like the fact that according to the book, there's

27:29

a moment where in one of the stories you tell

27:31

where he

27:32

says, hey, Darwin, are you listening?

27:34

Are you paying attention?

27:35

Donald was hearing the secretarial moment was I

27:38

didn't realize he was actually speaking to me because

27:40

it didn't, you know, kind of in the

27:41

context, didn't make sense? Yeah. I mean,

27:43

it wouldn't have made sense. Right? I mean, I

27:46

imagine in all your time in the White House, you'd never been called

27:48

Darling before. And although I've never worked

27:50

in the White House, Even the press office, I've never

27:52

been called Darling strangely enough. I

27:54

mean, so that would have been a first

27:56

for you. It would have been a first for I would gather I

27:58

would guess a lot of women certainly in the twenty

28:00

first century. Anyway, kind of amazing. Look,

28:02

we, you know, we started talking about

28:04

Trump's fetish with Putin and

28:06

autocrats and strong men around the world. And I

28:08

wanna discuss your analysis of the twenty sixteen story

28:10

for a moment. As it still proves kind

28:12

of applicable. Right? I mean, George

28:14

Stefanopoulos does the first major television

28:16

interview with Christopher Steele out last

28:18

week. Steele, of course, is the

28:21

former MI six British intelligence

28:23

officer, spy, who famously

28:25

put together the called Steel dossier that laid

28:27

out a bunch of kind of

28:29

uncorroborated but damning intel

28:31

that suggested that Trump's campaign

28:34

had conspired with the Russians to influence

28:36

the result of of the presidential election against

28:38

Hillary Clinton back then. The dossier obviously been

28:40

a matter of enormous controversy

28:42

and speculation since it became public in

28:44

early twenty

28:45

seventeen. I wanna play now a

28:47

little clip of Christopher Steele, whose voice we have

28:49

long wanted to hear, talks about the the

28:51

Steel dossier a little bit and how it relates to a larger set

28:53

of issues about Trump's relationship with Russia and

28:55

about really

28:56

about Russia in general. So let's listen to that.

28:58

Most of the world first heard your name

29:01

about five years ago, but you stayed

29:03

silent up until now. Why speak

29:05

out now? Think there are several

29:07

reasons. I think the first and most

29:09

important is that the problems we

29:11

identified back in twenty

29:13

sixteen haven't gone away and arguably

29:15

have actually got

29:16

worse, and I thought it was important to

29:18

come and set the record straight. So,

29:20

you know, this documentary that George that is

29:22

on Hulu now. I have not actually watched the whole thing, but I've seen some

29:24

of the clips that they put

29:25

out. That's one of

29:26

them. And it raises two

29:29

questions. One, the large question

29:31

of the Steel dossier itself, and I'm curious

29:33

about your experience of it. When

29:35

you first heard of it, how the

29:37

White House reacted to it, how Trump talked

29:39

about it internally, And what do we think of it

29:41

now? Because, you know, there are people, including

29:44

Cristille who says, to George, he still

29:46

stands by Dazier. He still thinks there was

29:48

a p tape from the Ritz in Moscow.

29:50

He still thinks Michael Cohen went to

29:52

Prague. He basically still says, yeah,

29:54

I'll admit that maybe there are some things in the dossier

29:56

that are false, but I stand by most of it. It was

29:58

done professionally, and I think most of

30:00

it's right. And Chris Steele's serious person. You know? I

30:02

mean, we would have said Chris Steele's a serious person. The only

30:04

reason why this dossier ever became a big

30:06

subject in our public debate because Chris Steele

30:08

is a serious person and was taken

30:10

seriously in the world of intelligence before this. So I

30:12

just am curious what your thoughts are

30:14

about all of it related to the steel

30:16

dossier, but it also connects to the

30:18

larger question. About what

30:20

we all should take away historically about

30:22

the Trump campaign in Russia.

30:25

And do you think in the end that the

30:27

collusion narrative is fully collapsed.

30:29

That there's lots of bad things to say about Trump in Russia

30:31

and the way that Trump looked at Russia, looked at

30:33

Putin, etcetera, etcetera, and things that Russia did

30:35

in our democracy. But we can

30:37

now kind of conclusively say that collusion is a

30:39

dead

30:39

deal. Right. Well, there's very different layers to

30:42

this. Yes. I know. Well, Chris Steele

30:44

is a serious person and

30:46

he was very good officer when he was at

30:48

MI six and he was my counterpart for

30:50

some of the period. But it

30:52

operates differently in the UK than in

30:54

the US. was in charge of

30:56

analysis and he was a collector, you know,

30:58

so somebody who's actually collecting information,

31:00

raw information and part of Israel

31:02

was led on an analysis it's sort of like

31:04

a different role. The second thing is

31:06

that the Russians, the Soviets, and,

31:09

you know, people like Putin who joined the

31:11

KGB in the nineteen seventies have been

31:13

collecting information on any westerner, any

31:15

westerner who looked like they

31:17

might reach any prominence on any time that they

31:19

visited Russia and the

31:21

Soviet Union. I was a student in nineteen eighty seven and nineteen

31:23

eighty eight in Russia. Yeah. The Soviet Union, it was

31:25

full surveillance state. Our

31:27

telephone calls were monitored. Occasionally, people

31:29

would break in until off for

31:31

telling our parents that was no food in the stores

31:33

or food in the cafeterias and threaten us

31:35

that wouldn't get front cause our parents. We were

31:37

followed at all times. There was a lady on our corridor

31:39

and also in our institute, a guy in

31:41

charge of us who would make a record of

31:43

every single thing that we did, who we did it

31:45

with, where we were, they would vengeful through

31:47

our rooms. So I had first time

31:49

to experience that the very first moment that

31:51

I sat down on there. So anybody who

31:53

goes to Russia, the Soviet Union has

31:55

got a file somewhere particularly

31:57

if they think that they're going to be of

31:59

prominence. Strobes tell that my old boss at

32:01

Brockings tells a story about the very first time

32:03

he meets with Putin at the end of the

32:05

Clinton administration and Putin immediately, you know, kind

32:07

of dropped some things from the dossier because

32:09

Stuart spent a lot of time there as a graduate

32:11

student and written a book on cruise ship.

32:12

Yeah. So

32:13

let's just make a baseline. Berley

32:15

Saunders, Bill Clinton, anybody else who

32:17

had been, you know, in the midst Hillary Clinton because

32:20

presumably she's been to Russia several

32:22

times and it was also a candidate. Whoever was

32:24

a candidate the Russians would have

32:26

something. So let's just

32:28

put it out there. Sometimes they say

32:30

they have things and they don't have things.

32:32

Yeah. Putin said about himself, for example,

32:34

that there are tips on him, and

32:36

people go tips on Putin, you know. So

32:38

part of it is the idea that

32:40

People are gonna run out there and get very distracted by

32:43

all of this stuff, and then not

32:45

be paying attention to what else is happening. So I'd

32:47

have said that the dossier was a massive distraction,

32:49

a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole as a distraction for

32:51

people to run down. Yeah.

32:53

Because it started to make everybody think

32:55

that this was all just about Trump when the Russians

32:57

were trying to attack our

32:59

entire presidential campaign.

33:01

Yep. Absolutely, one hundred

33:03

percent Trump was a massive counterintelligence

33:05

problem. But so, frankly, will be anybody

33:07

else who has set foot in Russia has done things that

33:09

they wouldn't like everybody else to know about. But

33:11

the other thing about Trump is Trump's done an awful

33:13

lot of things all over the place that

33:15

we know scandalous and outrageous and we

33:17

have some tips, access Hollywood tips, that

33:20

we actually know are there anywhere. We've heard them

33:22

and people have talked about them.

33:24

We also know that he hid his tax returns,

33:26

and it's taken his niece who's now being sued

33:28

by him to reveal all of those. It wasn't

33:30

the Russians who revealed his IRS

33:33

returns. There are so many things we could

33:35

go on and on about Trump, women who have

33:37

come forward and said that he sexually assaulted

33:39

them. Yep. I mean, there were so many cases

33:41

going on here. That Heilemann,

33:43

probably for the Russians, it would be a question of gosh.

33:45

What have we got that isn't out there anywhere that

33:47

if people are all over the

33:48

place? Right.

33:49

And again, if Hillary Clinton had

33:51

been the president, You can be sure that there would be all kinds of things

33:53

coming out because they'd already hacked and released her

33:56

emails to embarrass her in

33:58

front of you

33:59

know, basically whole world. Yeah. So my point

34:02

is this became a massive distraction

34:04

and

34:04

it sucked

34:05

up an awful lot of in the media

34:07

and elsewhere? This is Didosio. Yes. Didosio. Just

34:09

like the emails as well because if we could pod

34:11

all of the content of

34:14

emails. Right. Rather than thinking hang on a second, what the Russians doing here and

34:16

why they're doing it. So it became

34:18

about individuals rather than this full

34:20

frontal on

34:22

our democracy, on our election system, and

34:24

on that particular presidential campaign, and

34:26

we were uniquely vulnerable to that.

34:29

And what effect that the dossier had was

34:32

that president Trump then

34:34

decided the intel community was

34:36

his enemy. Because that

34:38

dossier was scoured over by the

34:40

FBI. It was also kind of

34:42

basically brief to him and told him

34:44

by John Brennan as the head of

34:46

the CIA. And, you know, if

34:48

just some of those elements were not true, and

34:50

then he immediately started to feel from his

34:52

point, he would know, right, as and then

34:54

everybody was out to get him, everyone was

34:56

spying on And it made it impossible

34:58

then for the credibility and the trust to be built up with him,

35:00

with the intel community. It was gonna be difficult

35:02

anywhere, very hard task for people like

35:06

a Gina hospital or any of his other, more Pompeo, initially

35:08

-- Yeah. -- and if his intel people to

35:10

be able to brief him. So he becomes

35:14

convinced and he's paranoid to start with that the

35:16

intel community as a whole are all up to

35:18

get him. So there's that

35:20

dimension of

35:21

It the whole talking to him about Russia

35:24

one thousand times worse -- Yeah. --

35:26

than it would

35:27

have been initially. So, you

35:29

know, it's fair enough to have all

35:31

this discussion about all of the elements in there, but I would suspect that a

35:33

similar dossier could be brought

35:36

together on a whole host of

35:38

other major

35:40

US presidential candidates. And the way that the Russians because

35:42

the point is that the Russians look for anything, the

35:44

Russian security service to manipulate people

35:46

with, and to distract Heilemann

35:50

Putin in the intelligence services are thrilled to bits,

35:52

basically, that they have been given

35:55

credit for electing a US

35:58

president. Right. And one of my most

36:00

memorable moments is when the Russian ambassador

36:02

to the United States locked me in the eyes and

36:04

said so. Are you telling

36:06

me that the United States has become a

36:08

banana republic and you

36:10

think that we really elected

36:12

your president? I mean, I could

36:14

go on about this. That's true. The the larger point is that this whole thing has become an absolute massive tragedy

36:16

and also a distraction

36:19

of tragedy because instead of

36:22

really looking about what the Russians were doing, why they

36:24

were doing it, who they were doing it too. And then

36:26

one of that did eventually come out in the

36:28

Mueller report and in other -- Yeah.

36:30

-- reporting. We started fixating on pee tapes and, you know,

36:32

where other elements of that

36:34

particular dossier were from.

36:36

We fixated on, like, just being an

36:38

attack to

36:40

use Trump rather than a full attack by the Russians. And

36:42

then we also became distracted about the

36:44

reasons for why Trump

36:46

was elected. Yeah. Because

36:48

I don't believe that you can

36:50

really show that the seventy thousand

36:52

votes in several counties in

36:54

three states that, you know, Bob Smith who went

36:56

out and voted Trump was swayed by

36:59

someone from the GRU from

37:01

the Russian intelligence

37:02

services. Yes.

37:02

I mean,

37:03

I think you can say that the Russians certainly had an influence. They're messed about in all of

37:05

this. Yeah. But there were deeper

37:07

currents and deeper problems

37:09

in United States' policy in

37:12

society and economy that the

37:14

Russians had exploited and taken advantage

37:15

of, but they were there and were driving

37:17

the twenty six stain election.

37:20

And for

37:20

four plus years, we just thought about what Putin

37:22

might have done and not done with Trump or

37:24

what Trump might have done

37:25

with Putin. It does strike me though having read the Mueller report and cover that

37:28

the notion that Trump drove this

37:30

message in the

37:31

end, which was no obstruction, no collusion.

37:33

Right? Then the report didn't

37:35

really say either one of those things that listened to a bunch of places

37:37

where we obstructed

37:38

justice. Exactly. And it also kind of said collusion

37:40

isn't really the issue. Yes. We

37:42

don't have enough evidence. Bob Mueller said,

37:44

to prove a criminal conspiracy. But we have a lot of evidence of things that Russia did

37:47

and we have a lot of obvious openness of

37:49

your campaign, Trump's campaign.

37:52

To accepting that. As you pointed out earlier in our discussion, Trump has

37:54

managed to simplify this too. No collusion. And

37:56

Mueller sort of helped him in some ways

37:59

by doing that But it seems to me

38:01

that the broader point still stands, which is

38:04

that Russia was engaged in the way that it was

38:06

engaged. We all accept that. And that

38:08

there was an unusual, I would by the Sanders,

38:10

many presidential campaign I've ever heard of or

38:12

covered. There was an unusual degree of

38:14

receptivity on the part of people

38:16

around Trump in that campaign to that

38:17

help. So that thing

38:19

that I really can't be and I know of in the past if they had

38:21

been offered dirt in the way that the curb can't be. What

38:23

would not have accepted? It would have reported at the

38:25

FBI. I think it's kinda missing a forest for the

38:27

trees to get up too much on the

38:30

the course of those years you were there,

38:32

that the fact that Trump was not

38:34

acting on behalf of orders from

38:36

Vladimir Putin

38:37

was doing didn't help Vladimir Putin? That's

38:40

exactly the point. You've laid it out

38:42

perfectly, John. That's exactly the issue. And the

38:44

thing is we got all hung up. That's what I meant by the

38:46

dossier

38:47

being a rabbit poned and, you know, source of

38:49

destruction because people so hell bent on

38:51

trying to prove or disprove

38:53

elements of it. Rather than looking at exactly the points

38:55

that you said, so if the Mueller report has started from a premise not

38:57

of being driven by the dossier or the

39:00

noise about the dossier,

39:02

for example, all looking just

39:04

at the issue of collusion in that kind

39:06

of narrow sense, but looked about what the Russians

39:08

had done and started from

39:10

that premise. I think we'd have got

39:12

to exactly where you sit. And it's no doubt whatsoever that Trump was a massive

39:14

counterintelligence risk. No doubt whatsoever.

39:18

And I think what we should have been doing was looking for ways in which we

39:20

can avert that problem in the past. Make

39:22

it very clear that campaign shouldn't be

39:25

open to accepting dirt from foreign

39:27

sauces. Yeah. Although the super packs are a

39:28

problem too because there's so much I mean, that

39:31

dossier was paid for, you know, just to

39:33

buy opposition research and we

39:35

should be having some soul searching and public

39:38

discussion about the state of

39:40

our political campaigns because it's

39:42

very easy for the Russians to which

39:44

is what they did draft in behind. It's like one of those palletons

39:46

in the two different fronts and they're kinda like coming

39:48

in behind the guy and, you know, the yellow

39:50

vest and drafting in this

39:52

is on a take advantage. And we needed to

39:55

get them out of our campaigns, but we opened

39:57

the door. So let them in there

39:59

as

39:59

well. And Trump was a hole in

40:01

the door open. He's like, come on come

40:04

on.

40:04

With some of those air traffic controller wands going

40:06

get in the door. Come on. Exactly. I mean,

40:08

the infamous where are those emails? Russia, I'd love

40:10

to see them about those emails. I mean, from

40:12

his perspective, that he even said it publicly. He

40:15

didn't see any problem with playing dirty.

40:17

Right? Yeah. And again, that's the nature and

40:19

the state of our

40:20

politics, and that's what's undermining our

40:22

democracy, and the Russians just take advantage of that.

40:24

Well, we

40:25

will come back to that discussion a little later on the podcast, but I wanna take a break

40:27

right now and we get back on the other side of this. I wanna

40:29

talk a little bit more about

40:31

your kind of amazing, extraordinary and somewhat inspiring

40:34

background, which takes up a lot of the book. It's

40:36

not just a story about your time in government, it's a time

40:38

about your story of how you got from where

40:40

you started. A that would

40:42

not have necessarily been a

40:44

natural starting point for the journey

40:46

that led you to the highest levels of the

40:48

American government when

40:50

you birth born raised in north of England. I wanna talk about the Fiona

40:52

Hill bio. When we come back at

40:54

the end of this break, here on Helen High Water with

40:56

Fiona Hill author

40:56

of, there is nothing for you here.

40:59

Finding opportunity in the twenty first century.

41:01

We'll be right back.

41:06

And we

41:13

are back. As promised with Fiona Hill, author of there is nothing

41:16

for you here finding opportunity in the twenty first

41:18

century, which, you know, you're doing a lot

41:20

of interviews. People are asking you

41:22

questions like I just was about Trump and Russia

41:24

and state of America democracy. But the book is

41:26

also about your story, and I wanna ask you about

41:28

this. I'm play a little sound, and then I'm gonna ask

41:30

you about it was that made you think, hey,

41:32

you know what? I'm gonna write a memoir, which is really what the book is, among other things. So

41:34

let's play this sound. This is Fiona Hill kind

41:36

of introducing yourself to the world on television.

41:39

At the first Trump impeachment hearings in

41:42

November of twenty nineteen. I'm an

41:44

American by choice having become a

41:46

citizen in two thousand

41:48

and two. I was born in Northeast of England in the same

41:50

region that George Washington's ancestors

41:52

came from. Both my

41:54

region and my family have deep ties to the

41:56

United

41:57

States. When

41:58

the last

41:59

of the local mines closed in the nineteen sixties, my father wanted to

42:01

emigrate to the United States, to work in

42:03

the coal

42:03

mines in West Virginia

42:06

and Pennsylvania. But his mother,

42:07

my grandmother, had been crippled from hard

42:10

labor, and my father couldn't

42:12

leave. So he stayed

42:12

in Northern England until he died

42:15

in twenty twelve. My mother still lives in

42:17

my hometown today. While

42:18

his dream of immigrating

42:19

to America was slaughtered, my father lived

42:21

America, its culture, its history, and its

42:24

role as a beacon of hope the

42:25

world. He always

42:26

wanted someone

42:27

in the family to make

42:28

it to the United States. You

42:30

know, no one knew who you were

42:32

in America until that hearing.

42:34

And I wanna talk about what fame was like for you. But start there, you've alluded to

42:36

it a little bit in the first part of the show

42:38

about growing up in North of England and eventually

42:41

getting to studying Russian and

42:44

Russia eventually getting in the United States. I wanna start on the north of England in the we

42:46

you and I are basically the same age. And

42:48

so children of the Reagan

42:50

and Thatcher eras. Right? Talk

42:53

a little bit about that because if you make an observation

42:55

in the book about how Thatcher was obviously

42:57

a revolutionary figure in Britain

43:00

and changed the society and the economy in

43:02

many ways, for the better, but in some ways planted a bunch of seeds

43:04

that have kind of led to some bitter

43:06

harvest as we sit here now in twenty twenty

43:08

one and same, I would say, in

43:10

America. You make this observation. I love you to talk about

43:12

what it was like growing up there and what you saw and

43:14

then how it kind of took us to where we are

43:16

today.

43:16

Yeah. I mean, what are you experience are two different

43:19

things. Right? Because you start off having experiences.

43:21

You're just living your life. As you said, do you

43:23

and I kind of children of the

43:25

the same era? You know, for a long

43:27

time, you're not really kind of aware that your

43:30

part is something larger than yourself.

43:32

You're just part of your family and you're kind

43:34

of trucking along in

43:36

until suddenly. Something jolts you into a realization

43:38

I actually described in the book when I was

43:40

thirteen. When I first realized that

43:42

I was

43:44

working class which sounds a bit preposterous because here I am growing up in

43:46

a mining community. All my family had

43:48

been miners. My dad had actually lost his

43:50

job quite a long time before in the mines and

43:52

had become hospital

43:54

porter in the local

43:56

hospital, really, at the very bottom of the

43:58

economic rung there is a

44:00

unskilled manual

44:02

labor. And I'd never really kind of thought about this in any particular

44:04

detail because everybody around me was pretty much the

44:06

same, and then I went on a school exchange.

44:10

To two begin in in southern Germany that was organized

44:12

by my entire region. So there were kids

44:14

from all kinds of different backgrounds and different

44:16

skills there, including private schools.

44:19

And the first kind of get to know you session

44:21

of all the kids who were going to go

44:23

to tubing and I get us these

44:26

three questions. Where you're from. I mean, obviously, it was from county Durham in

44:28

the large region, but the very specific

44:30

town and my hometown of

44:32

Bishop Oakland as

44:34

being pretty much sort of down at heel that

44:36

it had been a pretty prosperous town. But

44:38

by the time that this was like

44:40

late

44:40

seventies, all the industry was

44:42

starting to close down and this was, you know,

44:44

even just before a

44:45

market that actually came in. There was kind of

44:47

a long decline because after World

44:49

War two, in the process of trying to reconstruct the

44:51

country after the economic devastation of being

44:53

cut off from the rest of the

44:55

world for the entirety of

44:58

the war. British industry was struggling, and the private sector owners

45:00

couldn't rebuild it, so they'd been taken

45:02

over by the government. So

45:04

the coal mines at

45:06

Albe national eyes, the steelworks,

45:08

the shipyards, the railways, it was all

45:10

British steel, or British coal, or

45:12

Britishness. at

45:14

least in terms of professional managers but still run by the state? And

45:16

all of it was kind of falling apart.

45:18

The second question was, what

45:21

does your father do? And my dad

45:23

had been a miner and I was a hospital partner. I mean, he'd gone

45:25

downwardly mobile rather than lovely. And

45:27

the third question is what school did you go to and

45:29

I went to a

45:32

comprehensive school and one that kind of had a reputation for not

45:34

being very good even within the

45:35

county. And so all these three

45:37

questions, I immediately discover that people were looking

45:40

at me strangely and some of the girls

45:42

from private schools in particular would pull

45:44

back and just not want to pay attention to

45:46

me. And I realized, hey, I'm

45:48

part of this kind of blue collar

45:50

working class. And this means that I have my place that

45:52

there's all these expectations about who I am

45:54

and what I would most likely not do.

45:58

So that's kind of when you start to see things. Yeah. experienced this,

46:00

you know, it's just part of your life. And

46:02

then suddenly you start to see that things

46:04

are not quite what you've been

46:06

experiencing this different vantage points and I start

46:09

to then become really attuned to what's

46:11

happening around me because everything

46:14

was starting close. And as Margaret

46:16

Thatcher came in, in nineteen

46:18

seventy nine, under the early

46:20

eighties, she tries to privatize the

46:22

commanding heights of British industry that were already not

46:24

doing very well. But she's a revolution she

46:26

sees that this needs to be, you know, to cut

46:28

off the cancer, you know, as does not heal the

46:30

body. Because the heavy industries just dragging

46:32

the country down. Things are unprofitable. They're not really well run even though you've

46:35

got the technocratic managers. Certainly not for

46:37

a new modern era where the

46:39

economy is already changing. You've

46:41

got technology automation already starting to come

46:44

in. And Britain is just not

46:46

competitive. Yep. And so she

46:48

gets into, of course, a huge struggle with

46:50

organized labor. The North of England is

46:52

old, organized liberal, and all big industries. In

46:54

fact, the whole North of England is one big version

46:56

of the Soviet Union as I come to

46:58

see this. In terms of, you know, smart stack indices and

47:00

workers and peasants, kind of physically

47:02

being part of this state

47:04

owned enterprise, In that

47:06

whole period, moving through from

47:08

middle to high school, pretty much every

47:10

industry in my town closes down

47:12

massive employment. And by the time I

47:14

left school in nineteen eighty four, trying to think about what to do next,

47:16

the unemployment crisis is just crippling.

47:19

And ninety percent kids leave school

47:21

have nothing to go on to and might end up being

47:24

unemployed for years before they actually

47:26

find a

47:26

job. And that's the period where the title of the

47:28

book comes from. There's nothing for you here. Yeah. Because my

47:29

dad says to me one night is to be kind

47:32

of walking back. I worked in a local

47:34

pub to earn some

47:36

extra money. And my dad would come and

47:38

walk me back after closing time because

47:40

I got caught in a fight because lots of

47:42

people were drowning their sorrows and alcohol.

47:44

And my dad said, well, look, if you're gonna go on and

47:46

do something with your life, you're gonna to college. He

47:48

was hoping I would. He said, you'll have to

47:50

go somewhere else to find a job because there's

47:52

nothing for your hare pet. And it was sort of a

47:54

feeling in that period of

47:56

just lack of prospects, lack

47:58

of opportunity, and just

48:00

terminal decay and decline. All the

48:02

popular culture was infused

48:04

in it. And I mean, you would have had a similar experience depending on why you were growing

48:06

up in the United States at the same time.

48:08

Yeah. I write in the book that one of the most famous

48:10

songs of, like, nineteen eighty

48:12

one was

48:13

song by a group called the specials called

48:16

Gosedown. Yeah. And

48:16

it's actually

48:17

in the top hundreds of British songs a

48:19

couple of years ago during

48:21

kind of COVID.

48:22

Right. The

48:22

Guardian voted it number two. It's like someone was cheery

48:24

touch songs. Yes. You know, the top hundred

48:26

of UK hits. And I don't think it was quite

48:28

such a big hit in the United States, but

48:31

it was really uncapped. Business idea that everyone's

48:33

town to become like a ghost

48:33

town, all of, you know, the shops and

48:36

everything being closed down. I will say

48:38

for the

48:40

record that preference if you're gonna go down and path this town called malice by the gym,

48:42

then if we're gonna do that. And I'll tell you also,

48:44

I was thinking about this just because I know you were on

48:46

morning, Jed. The other day, it was podcasts with my friend,

48:48

Joe Scrubber, which ended up somehow devolving into a

48:50

debate that I thought you would appreciate. A debate between the

48:52

sex pistols versus Joy Division. And I

48:54

was like, do we have to really choose between these? Like,

48:56

I mean, I was wearing a

48:58

Joy Division t shirt at the time. And so I was like, I don't do I have to

49:00

choose? I don't really wanna have to reverse but I don't

49:02

know what's your

49:02

view? Joy Division versus x pistols. What was important

49:04

in your youth. And I'm asking because you talk about your doc Martens and ripped jeans in the books.

49:06

I would say die division because I was a little young

49:09

for the sex pistols. I mean, I

49:11

Heilemann, the impact they

49:13

had, but they're already splitting up by the time I really kinda

49:15

came into my music

49:18

sensibility. But look, that was all indicative. I

49:20

mean, look, the great music of the seventies

49:22

and eighties come out of massive decline. Dark. And, you know, the feeling

49:24

of a culture breaking down the sex

49:26

pistols, you know, kind of god save

49:28

the queen.

49:30

Never mind the bollocks. I mean, this is all about the whole culture

49:32

coming into these stresses and strains

49:36

from deindustrialization. Because the

49:38

communities that have grown up around all these

49:40

industries are breakdown as

49:41

well, and the hierarchy of British

49:43

society comes under strain. Well,

49:45

yes. And you think about, I mean, not to go too

49:47

far down this path, although we could. All of that

49:49

sound that comes out of Manchester, basically throughout the

49:51

entire eighties, I think Joy Division on the spawn for

49:53

all of that, but all of that is all product

49:55

at b industrialization and all of it is the sound

49:57

of the

49:58

north. Right? And it's working class. I mean, not all of it is. I

50:00

mean, you know you have the class and others who were like actually

50:02

pretty average to graphic. Yes.

50:03

Yes. Well,

50:04

the rest of it, but and

50:05

we're making that great music as well. But most of

50:07

these big bands -- Yeah. --

50:08

are a

50:09

working cast. And some of them like specials

50:11

are really revolutionary because they bring in

50:13

black and white --

50:14

Sure. -- bright sky. You know, in in the

50:16

big cities where you had immigration and

50:19

racial tensions are starting to rise as

50:21

well. The early nineteen eighties is the rise of the kind of the white supremacist groups,

50:23

the skinheads, the British national party, and

50:25

others. And you start to

50:27

get racial violence

50:29

with heavy handed policing. It was just all the things

50:31

that we've been seeing, you know, in the United

50:33

States as well. Again, I I really could do a

50:35

goal day on this because, you

50:38

know, just SCA itself in the introduction of SCA and the British

50:40

Music in that era is like what it's all

50:42

about. But so your dad says,

50:44

there's nothing here for

50:46

you. Pet And, you know, there's a lot of people who have their parents say to them, there's

50:48

nothing here for you. If you're gonna make anything yourself, you

50:50

gotta get out. And those people don't get out. They've

50:52

got the animal around their ankles. And

50:54

yet, your

50:56

off to the races. You're off in Russia. You've decided that Russia's important. You've

50:58

decided that this is what you wanna study. It's history.

51:00

It's Russia. You end up in the former Soviet Union. You

51:02

end up then across the pond at the county

51:05

of government at Harvard. On one level, it's just like, wow,

51:07

what a great story, rags to riches,

51:09

not riches, rags to rags to

51:11

very little bit prospects to

51:13

to the sky's the Let's put it that way. How do you account

51:16

for that? What's the thing that sets you

51:18

apart from, I would

51:20

say, ninety nine point

51:22

nine percent of your generational peers who were dragged

51:24

down by circumstance, by

51:26

economic determinism, by cultural determinism, by a

51:28

sense of hopelessness in the face of,

51:30

there's nothing for you here, which is

51:32

what a lot of people heard. They went, okay, fuck it.

51:34

I got heroin. You took a different path, and I'm

51:36

curious what it is that inspired you and led you

51:38

to where you are

51:39

now. I think a lot of was timing and luck, honestly, not

51:41

just hard work and all the other things

51:43

that people think is one of the

51:45

elements of success. But it

51:48

was also education and the

51:50

timing. It's not just the sort of timing of

51:52

Russia and starting to study Russian

51:54

against the backdrop of peak of the

51:56

cold war and war scares in the nineteen

51:58

eighties that were also a major feature of

52:00

that era of Reagan, Garbage off

52:02

and Thatcher. But it's also that the British educational

52:04

system had opened up in this

52:06

period, and this is something that's, I think, is

52:08

important to bear in mind

52:10

from United day. It's the kind of lot

52:12

of the same police suffered by the

52:14

bootstrap stories in the US are more

52:16

common up until the nineteen

52:18

eighties and become less common since then, and this is one of the why I wanted write the

52:20

book. Yeah. Because I do think that things in your own

52:22

life experience, the things that you

52:24

see rather than it

52:26

just got feeling and kind of

52:28

going through the motions of living

52:30

can actually put a a

52:32

much stronger light on

52:34

some of the phenomena that we're now

52:36

contending with. Because the

52:38

education system in the UK had opened

52:40

up, and it moved from being a more

52:42

selective educational system in the

52:44

sense that kids were being sorted at age eleven with an exam called the

52:46

eleven plus, which I was one of the last cohort

52:48

to take, and then sent off to either these

52:50

grammar schools where there might be only two

52:52

or three pledges places

52:54

each year for kids from the working class. And

52:56

it was a great opportunity, but it was only two or three

52:58

kids who'd get, you know, good girls and boys.

53:00

Would get sent onto these grammar schools. It was almost like being a janissary in the

53:02

Ottoman Empire, where the Ottomans used to

53:04

send around kind of people to

53:07

all the far flung provinces in the Balkans and

53:09

in in in away and a few bright kids, mostly

53:12

men. The girls would end up in the harem. The

53:14

women wouldn't be round of

53:16

brought back

53:17

and turned to be grandfizzias or something like this,

53:19

you know, eventually.

53:20

I mean, this was the kind of the British grammar school

53:22

system. No harm. Thank god. But, you know,

53:24

basically, girls and boys who would be

53:26

selected on and they might then go on to university and

53:28

a lot of the British success stories. They

53:30

kind of see that people would refer

53:32

to like Harold will and they became a Labour Party Prime

53:34

Minister from Yorkshire, they'd gone to a grammar school

53:36

and from there to one of the elite universities. Mhmm.

53:38

The grammar school system had

53:40

ended when I came along.

53:42

But

53:42

the free education principle was still there,

53:44

and I passed the eleven plus last cohort.

53:46

Done really well. I was offered to play

53:48

as a private school that they would have

53:51

paid for. But my parents couldn't even afford the

53:54

box, the clothes, the bus fare, or

53:56

anything like this, so I didn't

53:58

go. But I did then get all

54:00

this support. So

54:02

if I needed some extra tutoring

54:04

or I needed to go on a course, and then

54:06

eventually when I went to college

54:08

university, my local education authority paid

54:10

for it. that's

54:12

just impossible to contemplate now.

54:14

I graduated without any

54:16

educational debt. And when I went to Harvard, I went in a scholarship,

54:18

so I was constantly on the track of looking for a scholarship,

54:20

looking for a grant to let me get ahead. Right. And

54:22

each time I found one. And that's what

54:24

I mean about the luck because I'd have these

54:26

fortuitous encounters with people. So

54:29

there

54:29

was opportunity in the system, but you really

54:31

have to go out and look for

54:33

it. And I think that that's kind of one of the

54:35

problems that we have now, sometimes now there is no

54:37

opportunity in the system, particularly in the US. Because

54:39

people think that it's not an investment

54:42

in human Heilemann. It's not an

54:44

investment in a society as a whole

54:46

education. It's just a sort of an

54:48

individual attainment. And I think we've got our heads around that in the wrong way now because

54:50

now education is a dividing

54:53

line for class. And you're

54:56

much more likely to

54:58

conceive of yourself, you know, in a

55:00

political terms based on what your

55:02

education is, how you vote, where

55:04

you live, all tired of education, the kinds of jobs that you have now

55:06

in the United States in ways that it

55:08

wasn't, perhaps back in the

55:10

nineteen

55:10

eighties. I mentioned the docards and

55:12

the torn jeans before and, you know, you and I, not

55:14

only are the same age, but almost I think crossed past

55:16

the Kennedy

55:16

School. I was there from eighteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety,

55:19

and I think you kind of Yeah.

55:20

We did. Yeah. We crossed over at least for you. Yeah. By a little bit and I read

55:22

with interest that one of your mentors there said to

55:24

you you can't wear those doc Martens and torn

55:26

jeans or your career is gonna some

55:29

problems. They told me the same thing, but I was like, I guess, I

55:31

can't serve in government, then I stuck with the Doc Martens and the

55:33

ripped jeans, which is why I'm in this in this shade

55:35

job. I'm in now. Was like, I guess that means I'm not gonna

55:37

be working in the White House. Those suits aren't gonna work

55:39

for me. I mean, it propelled

55:41

you out. Right? You

55:43

came through all of that with all that luck and all

55:45

that ambition and all that intelligence

55:48

and had what looked like

55:50

a great career in the

55:52

track of public policy, professional,

55:54

intellectually, high minded, government service,

55:56

doing things in and out of government, whether it

55:58

was bookings or whether it was doing work

56:02

a national intelligence council eventually at NASA. Like, this is a career we we

56:04

recognize, you know. And the main feature

56:06

of it in addition to intellectual

56:08

rigor, patriotism, and high

56:11

is anonymity. Now we notice people who do these jobs,

56:14

that they're a lot. But that

56:16

changed for you. Right? And

56:18

so I just want to ask

56:20

you this question before we go to break and I wanna get to the future of

56:22

America democracy on the other side, but I

56:24

do wanna ask you this, you made a

56:26

huge decision to suddenly become

56:28

a public

56:30

person. To step out of the traditional cloaking anonymity,

56:32

and you became really famous in a

56:34

way that almost no one who's like in that

56:36

kind of job does. I'm

56:39

curious about the thought process about how you came to

56:41

the conclusion that you had to step out

56:43

of the shadows in a

56:46

way. And what it was like to go through

56:48

the process of becoming world famous,

56:50

not just like a little famous, not like somebody knows

56:52

you about people stopping in the street corners famous,

56:55

and there's, like, viral hashtags attached to your name

56:57

famous. Yeah. Well, that wasn't initially by

56:59

choice because, of course, it happened as

57:01

a result of the

57:04

impeachment of president Trump the first time around.

57:06

So when I was

57:08

subpoenaed to testify, there was just no

57:10

question I was gonna testify in

57:12

my mind. I mean, I'd taken notes

57:14

of the constitution, previously taken notes of

57:16

citizenship. So for me, public service

57:18

was pretty important. I believed

57:20

in representational government. I wasn't

57:22

parties on, but I certainly believe

57:24

in congressional oversight and

57:26

all of the things that, you know, I was

57:28

working toward. I didn't

57:30

really think actually about

57:32

what the consequences of this would be. Just it

57:34

was the right thing to do. It had to be done

57:36

There were many of my other colleagues who could step forward as well

57:38

to be fat witnesses in the first impeachment

57:40

trial and were speaking It

57:43

was only

57:43

really afterwards after the

57:46

impeachment in November of twenty nineteen,

57:48

the public hearings, and I kind of realized

57:51

the import. And part of it perhaps have been because of

57:53

my decision to open my opening statement

57:55

with this personal statement, but the reason that I'd done

57:57

that was also under

58:00

duress. Because in October of twenty nineteen,

58:02

I'd been first deposed behind

58:04

closed doors. And in all

58:06

the grilling that I was getting from

58:09

members of the Republican

58:12

Committee. It was very clear that they were trying to cast

58:14

questions on people's

58:16

integrity, credibility, Patriotism,

58:18

you know, you name it.

58:20

And also suggesting that people who

58:22

served in the US government were from these privileged

58:24

clicks that we were kind of feeding off

58:26

as unelected bureaucrats of the American people. That's alright. I'm just not having any

58:29

of this. This is just too much. And especially as an

58:31

immigrant and as somebody who's, you know,

58:33

worked so hard, to do what

58:35

I'd done, and I had very strong reasons for why

58:38

I'd wanted to serve in government to push

58:40

back against the Russians, and I was deeply disturbed

58:42

about the fact that national security is just out the window, and this was all just

58:44

private, personal, politics, and power games

58:46

that people are

58:46

playing. I thought, right, I'm just gonna lay it out there

58:48

and just say, this is who I am. And

58:51

let's just cut the crap. And I'm I'm

58:54

like, nitty gritty. Everybody else who was testifying

58:56

with me were all like this, with

58:58

immigrants, people from

59:00

humble backgrounds, we're not just

59:02

all born, bureaucrats are broking's

59:03

fellows. We all have a backstory.

59:06

Yeah.

59:06

And some of us actually might have even better back

59:08

stories than some of the members of congress. Thank you

59:10

very much. So that was kind of the

59:12

reason that I put myself in that

59:15

opening testimony just to try to shut

59:17

up this accusations against who I was

59:19

and who everybody wasn't why we were doing this. But of

59:21

course, then that took on a life, it's own. And then once I'd put

59:23

myself out there, particularly, has

59:25

we run up to all of

59:27

the events that led to the second

59:30

impeachment. As I saw things unfold in

59:32

twenty twenty, having gone through that, you know,

59:34

first experience, I felt like I had to keep

59:36

speaking

59:36

out.

59:37

I mean, it was that experience that made me want to

59:39

write the book until I even spend how we got

59:41

here and actually some of the obvious versions that I

59:43

didn't have formed over my

59:45

life, not just my career and being in the UK,

59:47

Russia, and the United States, and seeing some of these

59:49

parallels that we ought to give

59:52

us pause but also the

59:54

fact that it was very clear from the

59:56

moment that I testified that the American

59:58

democracy was in big trouble. And

1:00:00

then as an American bike choice,

1:00:02

somebody who's experience a lot

1:00:04

in, you know, maybe fifty six shortly.

1:00:06

Fifty six years, I want to

1:00:08

continue living in the United States. I don't want to be on the

1:00:10

border with Canada, you know, with millions of

1:00:12

other people. Hoping that the letters into Saskatchewan or wherever it is that

1:00:14

they might have some free space. You know, I mean,

1:00:16

this is worth fighting for. American

1:00:18

democracy's worth fighting for, and I decided that I'm

1:00:20

just gonna

1:00:22

stand up along with other people and just make my voice heard

1:00:24

because, you know, we can't just have a system

1:00:26

where the two political

1:00:28

parties and then, you know, particularly one clicker, one

1:00:30

run guy

1:00:32

are basically saying, no. Only we have the right to

1:00:34

basically speak up for the United States. And

1:00:36

one disturbing thing happened to me just

1:00:39

in the summer I was out in the west with my family and I wanted

1:00:41

to take a picture of my daughter out

1:00:44

somewhere and there was a big American flag and

1:00:46

I thought to go and stand there and

1:00:48

she said, No, ma'am. I I don't wanna go on sun by the flag. I said why

1:00:50

not? She said because it's a symbol of hair. Does it what

1:00:52

do you mean? She said, well, it's always that

1:00:54

all of these rallies

1:00:56

yelling, horrible

1:00:58

things about but I don't want to stand

1:01:00

there. I said this American flag. And I was so hurt and upset by

1:01:02

that that I thought, wow, we're really in

1:01:04

a And a steward, you know, my daughter's

1:01:06

fourteen. She's very susceptible. She's picking

1:01:08

this all up from around. I've never had a

1:01:10

conversation with her about this. And I don't think school has

1:01:12

either. This is just what she's picking up.

1:01:15

From, you know, the larger atmosphere and what

1:01:17

she's seeing. That is actually a good spot for us

1:01:19

to take a break because I do wanna talk about

1:01:21

that larger atmosphere and the challenges that our

1:01:23

democracy is facing including the aftermath of

1:01:25

January sixth. But first out, like I said, we need quick break and play some ads, so we'll come

1:01:28

back in a moment with the

1:01:30

formidable Fiona Hill here on Helen

1:01:32

Eye Water. And

1:01:42

we are back

1:01:44

with Fiona Hill here on

1:01:46

High Water. You know, Fiona, we have

1:01:49

talked about your past, including your time at the White

1:01:51

House under

1:01:51

Trump, where you acted as a guardrail within

1:01:53

the administration, self styled guardrail. And now I

1:01:55

wanna play a clip

1:01:58

of someone

1:01:58

who wasn't really that, really didn't

1:02:00

wanna be that, although he ended up, you

1:02:02

know, for various reasons, doing the right thing on

1:02:04

January sixth, and that would be former vice president

1:02:08

Mike Pence. Now in retrospect, he's singing a slightly different tune about January

1:02:09

sixth, so let's take a listen to what he said just the other

1:02:11

day. I know the media wants to distract from

1:02:14

the Biden administration's failed agenda by

1:02:16

focusing on one day in

1:02:18

January. They wanna use that one day to try

1:02:20

and demean the

1:02:22

the character and intentions of

1:02:24

seventy four million Americans who

1:02:27

believed we could be strong again and

1:02:29

prosperous again and supported our administration in

1:02:32

twenty sixteen and in twenty

1:02:33

twenty. You know, there were a lot

1:02:35

of Republicans who were incredibly harsh and

1:02:37

damning and correctly so

1:02:39

about Trump right after January

1:02:41

sixth, and then you

1:02:43

know, a few days past or a few weeks past, and then

1:02:45

they changed their tune and now they're, you know, oh, we

1:02:47

gotta have Donald Trump. He's gotta leave the party. He's a

1:02:50

great man. But Mike

1:02:52

Pence is just staggering. Right?

1:02:54

I mean, his life,

1:02:56

his family's life, on the line on January

1:02:58

sixth, people out side of the capital saying

1:03:00

hang like Pence, you know, setting

1:03:02

up a noose outside the capital, chanting.

1:03:04

They wanted to kill him. Right?

1:03:06

And Trump for a period of time was egging them on. And now, my parents is

1:03:09

out there saying, hey, you know, January six

1:03:11

was just one ordinary day

1:03:14

in January. Just to, you know, just another day in

1:03:16

January, your usual kind

1:03:18

of winter day in the capital

1:03:20

and all you media people are making

1:03:22

too

1:03:22

much. Out of this and

1:03:23

why you guys smearing the good names of millions of

1:03:26

Republicans who want a bunch of fucking bullshit.

1:03:28

Anyway, look, Fianna, you were among the first people who said

1:03:30

immediately in the wake of

1:03:32

January sixth. You came out with a peace and political, you said, this is an

1:03:34

auto coup. You put it in that story.

1:03:36

You said it was the only thing you could call it when a

1:03:38

president is trying to remain

1:03:40

in office. And, you know, trying to,

1:03:42

like, use various means and mechanisms to stay after having lost a free and fair election.

1:03:44

And now, all of a sudden,

1:03:46

the world's kinda caught up

1:03:49

to you and realized a lot of people said,

1:03:51

oh, she's exaggerating, she's hyperbolizing. Now it's

1:03:53

like everyone's like, oh, yeah. That was

1:03:55

another cool, obviously. So I

1:03:57

guess, I'm curious, hey, you know, how you feel about that.

1:03:59

But more importantly, what do you make of what Trump

1:04:01

is doing now? As you watch him maneuver and

1:04:03

watch Republicans around

1:04:06

him their way towards a future that might let

1:04:08

some of the stuff that didn't work in twenty twenty,

1:04:10

maybe work in twenty twenty four. Well,

1:04:12

that's

1:04:13

exactly it. He hasn't learned lesson that, you know, some of

1:04:15

the Republican senators thought that he would learn in

1:04:17

terms of actually ceasing and desisting what he's up

1:04:19

to. He's exactly as you're

1:04:21

suggesting that John learn lessons about what didn't work for him, and what

1:04:23

he needs to do better is to try to ensure that he's

1:04:25

back in power again. And of course, he said he's never

1:04:28

left power

1:04:30

that he's certainly not legitimately because he's still the president

1:04:32

and to stop the steel continues.

1:04:34

So, I mean, you know, what are

1:04:36

we seeing? We're seeing efforts to repress

1:04:40

voting with a rollback voting rights, make it extraordinary

1:04:42

difficult for people who may be opposed

1:04:44

to Donald Trump to vote turning everything

1:04:46

into a national referendum on him.

1:04:49

Soldiers kind of one big popularity

1:04:51

contest. Basically make it very clear that

1:04:53

congressional Republicans have to take extreme loyalty

1:04:55

tests, and otherwise they will be kicked out, and I'm sure

1:04:57

many of them are thinking, Well, I don't really

1:04:59

agree with Donald Trump, but better me than some

1:05:02

loyalist who is complete on the

1:05:04

Trump bargain, so I need to stay, and I'll do

1:05:06

whatever it takes to stay even if it looks

1:05:08

like I'm basically debasing myself or throwing my

1:05:10

principles to the windows, you know, shockingly, we're

1:05:12

seeing rather a lot of them doing.

1:05:14

Another's just simply want to be in

1:05:16

power. They can't see themselves in any other

1:05:18

position. So they're like Skalise,

1:05:20

you know, kind of turning himself into all

1:05:22

kinds of knots to try not to

1:05:24

accept and affirm that

1:05:26

Joe Biden happens to be our legitimately

1:05:28

elected president. You know,

1:05:30

the efforts to try to

1:05:32

oust the impartial,

1:05:34

independent, even if there may be, you know,

1:05:36

Republican -- Right. -- state secretaries. Everything

1:05:38

that we're seeing here is a full frontal assault

1:05:40

on US democracy. It's still that

1:05:42

slow moving in plain sight coup, and it's even more of a kuna

1:05:45

because it's coming from the outside. And there are

1:05:47

armed elements, militias, you know, January six

1:05:49

showed all of this We

1:05:52

are right there on that precipice

1:05:53

now. We can pull it back, but it also

1:05:55

will take, you know, others from standing up

1:05:57

at the very top there in Congress and the Senate

1:05:59

to do

1:06:02

so. Right. And you know, a longtime Counterintelligence

1:06:04

Professional, someone with military background, someone

1:06:06

who really knows their shit, who's been looking

1:06:08

at this

1:06:10

stuff, very carefully, said to me the other day that people

1:06:12

think January sixth was a failed coup, and and obviously

1:06:14

it was a failed coup in the sense that Donald

1:06:17

Trump left. Office on January twenty if he didn't get to hold on

1:06:19

to power. But this counterintelligence professional

1:06:21

said that in a lot of ways that January

1:06:23

six was a huge victory

1:06:26

for Trump. He's got these six hundred people been

1:06:28

arrested for what happened on

1:06:30

January sixth. And, you know, those

1:06:32

people are

1:06:34

quote unquote political prisoners that Trump can now talk about and

1:06:36

Republicans can now cite. In terms of how

1:06:38

Trump talks about what happened that day, he's recasting

1:06:41

it not as an insurrection or

1:06:44

riot, but as a moment of patriotism where the real

1:06:46

insurrection, the real stolen election was

1:06:48

what happened back in November, and these people were just

1:06:50

good people who were, like, wanting to take their

1:06:53

country back in stop Democrats from their insurrection. And, you

1:06:55

know, these Republicans are saying the people in jail are

1:06:57

political prisoners. And then on top of all of that,

1:06:59

it may be the most glaring piece

1:07:02

of rhetorical Jigitsu,

1:07:04

Trump puts out a video

1:07:06

about Ashley Babin, the woman who was

1:07:08

shot and killed, I should say, the insurrectionist who was

1:07:10

shot and killed capital. She tried to break through

1:07:12

glass in order to to try to stage this

1:07:14

coup. But this is how Trump talks about Ashley Babbitt. I

1:07:16

wanna play a little bit of the video because it

1:07:20

shows what he's doing

1:07:22

rhetoricically and politically and why it's so

1:07:23

dangerous. So let's take a listen to that.

1:07:25

It is my great honor to address each

1:07:27

of you gathered today. To

1:07:30

cherish the memory of

1:07:32

Ashley Babbot, a truly

1:07:36

incredible person. To Ashley's family and friends, please know

1:07:38

that her memory will live on

1:07:40

in our hearts for

1:07:42

all time. Together,

1:07:44

we grieve her terrible

1:07:47

loss.

1:07:47

There was no reason Ashley should

1:07:50

have lost her life

1:07:52

that day. We must all demand justice for

1:07:54

Ashley and her family.

1:07:56

So want this solemn occasion

1:07:58

as we celebrate her life

1:08:01

I offer my unwavering

1:08:04

support to Ashley's family

1:08:06

and call on the Department of

1:08:08

Justice

1:08:09

to reopen IN INVESTIGATION INTO HER

1:08:11

DEATH ON JANUARY sixth.

1:08:14

SO THAT'S BASICALLY TRUMP Casting ASHLEY

1:08:16

BABBET INSURECTIONIST as

1:08:19

hero. Mhmm. And more than hero as murder. You

1:08:21

know? It's like she died for

1:08:23

the cause. That's what that's

1:08:25

about. Right? That is a

1:08:27

move we've seen In other countries, he

1:08:29

is using it to inflame the base of his party. He's trying to cast a rally and cry around who

1:08:32

killed Ashley Bad

1:08:34

but why was she

1:08:36

killed this woman, you know, was just,

1:08:38

again, in his light, one of these kind of patriots who's up there trying to fight for America,

1:08:40

you have seen Fiona the

1:08:42

way that authoritarians work in popular

1:08:45

those movements work in highly divided societies around the world. When you look at these

1:08:47

moves by Trump, turning instructions into political prisoners, recasting

1:08:50

this woman actually badger as a

1:08:52

martyr

1:08:55

Does that ring familiar chords to you? And, you know, but

1:08:57

in the context of what you see around

1:08:59

the world and whether

1:09:02

it's correct to say that this is just a page ripped straight

1:09:04

out of the playbook of other

1:09:06

populist autocrats trying to incite their foot

1:09:08

soldiers to set the stage for something that

1:09:10

could be not just very dark but very

1:09:13

violent. Absolutely. I mean, you can see this over and over and

1:09:15

over again in every authoritarian society, the

1:09:17

kind of creation

1:09:19

of martyr myths. The Soviet

1:09:21

Union had hundreds of them. Modern Russia, you know, has kinda created them as well. And I just want to just make one

1:09:24

point here because, I mean, what you

1:09:26

said I just a hundred percent agree

1:09:28

with After

1:09:31

the summit between Biden and Putin at

1:09:33

Geneva, where they had their separate

1:09:35

press conferences, you know, learning the

1:09:37

lesson from Helsinki and the dangers

1:09:40

of having a joint press conference. Vladimir

1:09:42

Putin was asked about human rights abuses in Russia and his clump down their position. He turned it

1:09:44

right back at

1:09:47

the United States immediately. Talking

1:09:49

about Black Lives Matter movement because Russia and the Soviet

1:09:51

Union have always exploited the United States' racial divisions to

1:09:53

clusters in the harshest

1:09:56

possible light. And then

1:09:58

he also made a reference about

1:10:00

January sixth and political prisoners. So

1:10:02

exactly honing right in on this.

1:10:05

So not only is president Trump and the people

1:10:07

around him myth making and you're trying to

1:10:09

use this for on

1:10:11

the political purposes, Now we have

1:10:13

a national security dimension because others will do that too to inflame the

1:10:16

situation. So the fact that Putin honed

1:10:18

in on that just underscores exactly what you

1:10:20

said this

1:10:23

is the authoritarians prayer book, and Pug wants

1:10:25

to encourage it. All the better.

1:10:27

So if you

1:10:28

know, I wanna ask you one last question before

1:10:30

we let you go. You were recently on the

1:10:32

circuit my show and show time being interviewed

1:10:34

by my friend and colleague, Alex Wagner. And I wanna play a quick clip of that interview, although I'll

1:10:36

be honest, what

1:10:39

you said sort of spoot

1:10:40

me. But

1:10:41

it's not just because Halloween's approaching, I feel the same way. Yeah. Exactly. I mean,

1:10:43

look, I'm an optimistic guy, but, you know, there's this underlying kind

1:10:45

of sense of dread that I feel

1:10:47

kind of all time

1:10:50

right now about where we're going. And I'm not like

1:10:52

inclined to be like that. I'm not a security cat.

1:10:54

I've never been like one of those people. I've always

1:10:57

been like keep calm and carry on type. But look,

1:10:59

If you look at and see where things are headed, it's all happening here

1:11:01

in plain sight right in front of our

1:11:03

eyes. And people see it and talk about it and identify

1:11:05

it and don't really know what to do about it. And then

1:11:07

you made this point this interview

1:11:09

that did not help my impending sense of doom. You said another interview, you're like if Trump wins in twenty

1:11:11

twenty four by illegitimate means

1:11:14

democracy is dead. But with

1:11:16

Alex, You

1:11:18

said something slightly different. And as I said

1:11:21

to

1:11:21

me, much darker. So let's play that part

1:11:23

now. As someone

1:11:25

who worked inside the

1:11:27

Trump administration, What would it mean if he managed to get back into the White

1:11:29

House in twenty twenty? Well, I've democracy's done.

1:11:31

If it's not fair, the next

1:11:33

presidency of Trump will

1:11:35

be burst entirely on

1:11:37

a lie irrespective of how many

1:11:39

millions and, you

1:11:43

know, basically deceived into

1:11:45

voting for a lie. The future of America and the future of

1:11:47

democracy, at large,

1:11:50

are at stake here.

1:11:53

I mean, what I heard there was you saying,

1:11:55

if Trump runs in twenty twenty four and gets elected, even if gets elected

1:11:59

in a landslide, you didn't use

1:12:01

that word, but it seemed kind of implied to me. Your point seems to be that he

1:12:03

will have one on the basis of a lie. That

1:12:06

lie being the big lie.

1:12:09

And if he wins on the basis

1:12:11

of the big lie that even if he

1:12:14

won by a really large margin, in some

1:12:16

ways, his victory would be

1:12:18

democratically illegitimate given the nature of the big lie that's really very much the center of

1:12:21

the appeal that

1:12:24

he's making to voters and

1:12:26

to his political persona --

1:12:27

Mhmm. -- as we head towards twenty twenty four. Exactly. Because everyone have

1:12:29

taken on every lie that

1:12:31

he's ever made because that

1:12:34

will be fine. It get back to some

1:12:36

of the things that you said earlier

1:12:38

in our discussion about people giving a

1:12:41

pass on all kinds of abominations. You know,

1:12:43

threats to our democracy because they think it

1:12:45

kind of the end justifies the

1:12:47

memes. And that's exactly where

1:12:49

we will be because Many of the people who

1:12:51

are voting from believe the lie because it's

1:12:53

been given credence by him and people

1:12:56

like you said like vice

1:12:58

president Pence. Who that one day in January could use to be in

1:13:00

his lust in January, lustive all

1:13:02

of his life, for example. But

1:13:05

the fact that they are willing to throw

1:13:07

that out and to basically push forward

1:13:09

on this basis should be

1:13:11

deeply disturbing to

1:13:14

everyone. You know, the United States, as I said in my opening statement

1:13:16

for me, was it was a beacon. There's

1:13:18

a beacon for people around

1:13:21

the world. The

1:13:22

anesthesiologists will lose its international standing as well just to be very clear. Maybe that doesn't matter to a lot of people domestically,

1:13:24

but I would argue that for millions and

1:13:26

millions of people who came in as immigrants,

1:13:31

And people America immigrant in their background. They will

1:13:34

be repudiating all of the things

1:13:38

that they're un sisters, you know, the, you know, recent

1:13:40

Great Grandparents, parents all came here

1:13:42

for, people like me came

1:13:45

more recently for. This will not be the

1:13:47

land of opportunities. It will be the land of a lie.

1:13:49

That sounds

1:13:49

like a pretty good place for us to end. Fiona Hill,

1:13:52

I I swear, you know, if we had

1:13:54

more time that discussions that we would have about

1:13:56

British

1:13:56

electronica, dance music, all kinds of things.

1:13:58

We can spend a day on that

1:14:00

alone. Do that for

1:14:02

the next podcast and bring some friends. Correct. Yes.

1:14:04

But thank you for taking the time to do

1:14:06

the show today. There is nothing for you here.

1:14:08

You should have put pet in the

1:14:10

title. Well,

1:14:10

I actually I did want to do that,

1:14:12

but

1:14:12

the press. There's nothing to do with your

1:14:15

pets. Finding opportunity in the twenty first century. That's

1:14:17

the title it should've had. Fiona Hill's great book.

1:14:19

Everyone should read it. riding it. Thank you for

1:14:21

your service. Thank you for being a guardrail. Thank you for telling the truth,

1:14:23

and thank you for coming

1:14:26

on Helen Howater Day. Of his delight to meet you, and I'd like to have

1:14:28

all time together. That's like,

1:14:30

guys, John. Thanks so much. Helen

1:14:32

Hi Water is podcast from

1:14:33

the recount. Thanks again to Fiona Hill for

1:14:35

being with us. If you like this episode, please

1:14:37

subscribe to Helen Eye Water and share us and rate us and review us on whatever app you have to use to

1:14:39

basket the splendor of

1:14:43

the podcast universe. host the John Heilemann. Grace Weinstein is

1:14:45

a cocreator of Heilemann High Water. Aliyah

1:14:47

Jackson and David

1:14:50

Wilson engineer the podcast. Justin Chirmel, handles the research. Margo Grey

1:14:53

is our assistant producer

1:14:55

Stephanie Stender

1:14:58

is our Post Producer and Christian Beadell.

1:15:00

Castro Rassello is

1:15:03

our executive producer.