Hillary Clinton: ‘Putin Made It His Mission to Deny Me the Presidency’

SCARBOROUGH: “And, finally, madam secretary, hearing Willie read your very clear-eyed view of Vladimir Putin as you were leaving your post as secretary of state in 2013 puts in sharp relief just how badly our American presidents have miscalculated regarding Vladimir Putin over the past 20 years. You have, of course, George W. Bush’s infamous phrase which, of course, was in 2001, so I think he gets a little more grace for trying to pull Russia in to the community of nations, but saying he looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. Of course seven years later Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia. Then you had that hot mic moment where Barack Obama was saying, hey, after I get elected I’m going to have a little more space and we can do some more things there. Some miscalculations during the Obama administration. And, of course, Donald Trump’s Administration speaks for itself with Helsinki. And I’m just wondering have we learned our lesson that with Vladimir Putin, as Joe Biden has said, he’s looked into his eyes, there is no soul there. And there is no trust but verify. There’s just the United States taking a constant hard line against him.”
CLINTON: “You know, Joe, it’s a constant calculation and that’s true in diplomacy generally, it’s particularly true with Putin. I remember a meeting President Obama and I had with then president but clearly front man for Putin, Medvedev, in New York and he was there with his ubiquitous Foreign Secretary Lavrov, his national security adviser and I and President Obama and our National Security Adviser at the time General Jones. It was just literally the six of us. And the purpose of the meeting was to show the Russians that we had absolutely verifiable intelligence about what Iran was doing in developing its nuclear weapons capability by building some very hard and underground facilities, one in particular, and the Russians were surprised. I remember that moment so clearly. Number one, they were surprised they didn’t know and, number two, they were surprised we did know and that we were confronting them with it. But it opened to the door to the negotiations that I was involved in in getting the U.N. Security Council to impose global sanctions on Iran. I tell that story because you have to keep talking with the Russians. The way they calculate their own interests is certainly not the same as ours, but you have to keep trying to get them to see interests as somewhat in common. And what they saw that day in that small room was, oh, my Gosh, we didn’t know that. So I think you can’t be either starry-eyed or totally turning your back. You have to walk what is an uncomfortable but necessary path. How do we calibrate, how do we get them to do something, how do we stop them from doing something? How do we impose costs if they do do forward? And I think Joe Biden has learned a lot, as we all have. And you know, remember Putin made it his mission to deny me the presidency in part because I did raise issues that were uncomfortable with him. I did speak out about the oppression and, frankly, the rigged elections in Russia, because I do think you need both an inside and an outside game. You need a public and a private approach to Putin. And that’s what Joe Biden gets. And that’s why he’s behind closed doors right now trying to get the measure of where Putin is today, not where he was 5, 10, or 20 years ago, where is he today and what are the best levers we can do to protect and defend our country and our friends around the world.”