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American Morning

Senator Hillary Clinton's Much Anticipated Memoir in Stores

Aired June 09, 2003 - 07:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Hillary Clinton's much anticipated memoir is in store for the first time today. She told Barbara Walters last night that her marriage has been "tried and tested" and she revealed her feelings when the former president told her the truth about Monica Lewinsky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I was furious. I was dumbfounded. I was, you know, just beside myself with anger and disappointment. You know, I couldn't imagine how he could have done that to me or to anyone else. And that's what I basically told him on that long ago morning now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The former first lady is on a promotional blitz for her book, titled, "Living History." She's also on the cover of "Time" magazine.

"Time" editor-at-large, Nancy Gibbs, is here to talk about her own sit down interview with Senator Clinton.

Good morning, Nancy.

Good to have you with us.

NANCY GIBBS, "TIME" MAGAZINE EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Good morning.

KAGAN: Your own general impression of having the time to sit down with Hillary Clinton.

GIBBS: Well, you know, she describes herself as a very private person. So to be in the midst of this huge publicity tour is a little peculiar. She's also a very political person. And so everything that she says, like everything that she writes, is very carefully prepared. It's very disciplined. She speaks in full paragraphs. And so if anything she says surprises you, you're surprised.

KAGAN: And you said there were a couple surprises for you.

GIBBS: There were. Actually, when we stopped talking about what was in the book, which obviously she's had a chance to prepare her answers for, and talked a little about what's in the news, is where I was surprised at how outspoken she was about what she thinks about the current domestic political scene and about President Bush's policies, which I had not heard from her before. KAGAN: Let's get right to that. We'll get to the Monica stuff in a second, because we've all kind of heard that from last week. But on President Bush, she makes some pretty strong statements, going so far as to use the word radical.

GIBBS: She did and what surprised me about it is that she has been supportive of the president on his foreign policy, on Iraq, certainly on homeland security issues, which she has taken very seriously. And so this was the first time I think she really had spoken out about domestic policies and she described them as being, as I say, as being very radical, as not just trying to turn back the clock on the Clinton years, she said, which she found understandable, if unfortunate, in her terms, but back beyond president -- the first President Bush, President Reagan to undo civil rights legislation and labor rules that go back, you know, 30 and 40 and 50 years.

She was very outspoken about this and about the direction she thinks he's taking the country. And I was interested that she decided to come out as strongly against his domestic policy as she did.

KAGAN: It kind of makes you wonder what her agenda is there.

But let's go back to basically the dirt, because if this was just any freshman senator from the State of New York, people really wouldn't care what she had to say, necessarily, across the country about this president.

I've heard that sound bite a number of times already of her interview with Barbara Walters where she talks about that she was just dumbfounded. She couldn't believe that the president had lied to her. This is not a stupid woman. This is not, she was not married to a man who did not have a history of womanizing.

What was she thinking? Of course she had to know something was going on.

GIBBS: Well, this is where I think she has made a very conscious discuss of what she will and will not talk about, because when I asked her, you know, by this time you had had to deal both publicly and privately with Gennifer Flowers in the '92 campaign, with Paula Jones. Was Monica really the first time any of this was real for you?

And she just, she will not go to the larger issue of the history of fidelity and trust in their marriage, except to say we've been married a long time and we've worked very hard to have, to stay that way.

She will talk about the revelations that we all knew about. We all lived through it together as a country that August of 1998. But she won't talk about the, as I say, the larger issue of her relationship with her husband and his behavior through their marriage.

KAGAN: I mean, as a reporter sitting across from her, don't you think that takes a certain amount of chutzpah, if nothing else? I mean you're going to be a public figure. You're running for office, potentially for president -- we'll talk about that in a second. You're putting your private life out there to make these little divisions and say I'm going to talk about this but I'm not going to talk about that, it really takes a certain amount of nerve, don't you think?

GIBBS: Well, what she does is she turns the personal question into a political question and she says, you know, what's important is that the American people made a decision during the '92 election, again in '96 and all through impeachment about whether they cared more about the private state of our marriage or the public state of the country. And so she turns it to be not about her or about her marriage, but about us. And that's the way she tends to get away from having to talk about it.

KAGAN: Just real quickly, did you ask her flat out does she have any plans to run for president?

GIBBS: I did and she gives the answer she always gives, that I have no intention of running.

KAGAN: No intention -- hey, we will watch it. It's the cover story of "Time" magazine this week.

Nancy Gibbs, thanks for stopping by.

Appreciate that.

And Hillary Clinton's first live interview about her book will be Tuesday. That's on "Larry King Live." You can see it tomorrow night right here at 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





Stores>


Aired June 9, 2003 - 07:35   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Hillary Clinton's much anticipated memoir is in store for the first time today. She told Barbara Walters last night that her marriage has been "tried and tested" and she revealed her feelings when the former president told her the truth about Monica Lewinsky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I was furious. I was dumbfounded. I was, you know, just beside myself with anger and disappointment. You know, I couldn't imagine how he could have done that to me or to anyone else. And that's what I basically told him on that long ago morning now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The former first lady is on a promotional blitz for her book, titled, "Living History." She's also on the cover of "Time" magazine.

"Time" editor-at-large, Nancy Gibbs, is here to talk about her own sit down interview with Senator Clinton.

Good morning, Nancy.

Good to have you with us.

NANCY GIBBS, "TIME" MAGAZINE EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Good morning.

KAGAN: Your own general impression of having the time to sit down with Hillary Clinton.

GIBBS: Well, you know, she describes herself as a very private person. So to be in the midst of this huge publicity tour is a little peculiar. She's also a very political person. And so everything that she says, like everything that she writes, is very carefully prepared. It's very disciplined. She speaks in full paragraphs. And so if anything she says surprises you, you're surprised.

KAGAN: And you said there were a couple surprises for you.

GIBBS: There were. Actually, when we stopped talking about what was in the book, which obviously she's had a chance to prepare her answers for, and talked a little about what's in the news, is where I was surprised at how outspoken she was about what she thinks about the current domestic political scene and about President Bush's policies, which I had not heard from her before. KAGAN: Let's get right to that. We'll get to the Monica stuff in a second, because we've all kind of heard that from last week. But on President Bush, she makes some pretty strong statements, going so far as to use the word radical.

GIBBS: She did and what surprised me about it is that she has been supportive of the president on his foreign policy, on Iraq, certainly on homeland security issues, which she has taken very seriously. And so this was the first time I think she really had spoken out about domestic policies and she described them as being, as I say, as being very radical, as not just trying to turn back the clock on the Clinton years, she said, which she found understandable, if unfortunate, in her terms, but back beyond president -- the first President Bush, President Reagan to undo civil rights legislation and labor rules that go back, you know, 30 and 40 and 50 years.

She was very outspoken about this and about the direction she thinks he's taking the country. And I was interested that she decided to come out as strongly against his domestic policy as she did.

KAGAN: It kind of makes you wonder what her agenda is there.

But let's go back to basically the dirt, because if this was just any freshman senator from the State of New York, people really wouldn't care what she had to say, necessarily, across the country about this president.

I've heard that sound bite a number of times already of her interview with Barbara Walters where she talks about that she was just dumbfounded. She couldn't believe that the president had lied to her. This is not a stupid woman. This is not, she was not married to a man who did not have a history of womanizing.

What was she thinking? Of course she had to know something was going on.

GIBBS: Well, this is where I think she has made a very conscious discuss of what she will and will not talk about, because when I asked her, you know, by this time you had had to deal both publicly and privately with Gennifer Flowers in the '92 campaign, with Paula Jones. Was Monica really the first time any of this was real for you?

And she just, she will not go to the larger issue of the history of fidelity and trust in their marriage, except to say we've been married a long time and we've worked very hard to have, to stay that way.

She will talk about the revelations that we all knew about. We all lived through it together as a country that August of 1998. But she won't talk about the, as I say, the larger issue of her relationship with her husband and his behavior through their marriage.

KAGAN: I mean, as a reporter sitting across from her, don't you think that takes a certain amount of chutzpah, if nothing else? I mean you're going to be a public figure. You're running for office, potentially for president -- we'll talk about that in a second. You're putting your private life out there to make these little divisions and say I'm going to talk about this but I'm not going to talk about that, it really takes a certain amount of nerve, don't you think?

GIBBS: Well, what she does is she turns the personal question into a political question and she says, you know, what's important is that the American people made a decision during the '92 election, again in '96 and all through impeachment about whether they cared more about the private state of our marriage or the public state of the country. And so she turns it to be not about her or about her marriage, but about us. And that's the way she tends to get away from having to talk about it.

KAGAN: Just real quickly, did you ask her flat out does she have any plans to run for president?

GIBBS: I did and she gives the answer she always gives, that I have no intention of running.

KAGAN: No intention -- hey, we will watch it. It's the cover story of "Time" magazine this week.

Nancy Gibbs, thanks for stopping by.

Appreciate that.

And Hillary Clinton's first live interview about her book will be Tuesday. That's on "Larry King Live." You can see it tomorrow night right here at 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com





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