A Conversation With Bill Clinton on America’s Future

[Music] there's no such thing as a perfect person nobody has run a perfect life and people are determined to keep score do I think Character Matters I do but I bet my definition wouldn't be the same as a lot of other people this is Andrew rorin with the New York Times and you're listening to interviews from our annual dealbook Summit live event recorded on December 4th in New York City 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton is here thank you so very very much for being with us today um the man again none of

these none of these guests need introductions uh but his legacy uh is something that I think we all know was a booming economy he brought uh his party to the center uh last month he published a new book it is titled citizen uh my life after the White House reflecting uh on his past two decades as a private citizen will talk about it uh during the 24 election as you know uh he was campaigning on behalf of the Harris Waltz ticket and I just would say um there is no better person uh I would say

right now in this country uh than former President Bill Clinton to discuss uh what is happening to our nation to our world uh to the Democratic party uh and where we all go from here so just thank you so so much for being here thank you Andrew um do there's a lot to get to uh and I want to understand what you think happened during this past election uh and and where where we are going but I actually want to ask you the the elephant in the room question because I think you'll it's in the

headlines everybody's crazed about it and so I just want to go straight to it if you'd indulge me uh which is I want to know what you actually think of the pardon of of Biden's pardon for his son this was not on my my my plan originally but I I thought you know what everybody we were out in the hallway they were all talking about that and I said I'm going to ask I'm going to ask the president first well I think that the president did have reason to believe that the nature of the offenses

involved were likely to produce far stronger adverse consequences for his son than they would for any normal person under the same circumstances and but I would urge all of you to just look at the facts before you make a judgment and see what they're talking about what the context is because I'm still reading somebody said well this is just like when Bill Clinton pardoned his brother well it's not my brother did 14 months in the federal prison for something he did when he was 20 and I supported it and he testified told the truth about

what he' done when he had a drug problem and helped to bring down a larger Enterprise and they sentenced him and and he served 14 months and he got out it was the real question was would he ever be able to vote again would he ever be able to have normal citizenship responsibilities and I've been sort of upset that there's been almost no discussion about the larger problem which is does the pardon system we have work right now you can say well it's all up to the president but the truth is the way it works

now is if uh if let's say you and I had childhood marijuana convictions or whatever you apply for a pardon if you're a normal person and they send it to to a division of the justice department which is supposed to do research and make you a recommendation and most of the time any president doesn't give a second thought to pardons for most of the week in any given week and when it got down sort of toward the end of the my term I looked around and I was absolutely stunned that there were these this massive

backlog of applications that had been sent to the justice department and there had been no action why because you never get in trouble for saying no if you recommend it so so all I'm saying is you got to see this in a larger context I think uh Hakeem Jeffrey said the other day he understood why the president had done this but there were lots of deserving people who had gotten excessive sentences that's the broader piece but let me ask you this this is what Politico just wrote they said this is a rich gift to those

who want to blow up the justice system as we know it who claim the government is a self-dealing club for hypocritical Elites it's a promise breaking act that subjects Biden's allies right this is the hard part to yet another humiliation in a year packed with Biden inflicted injuries what what does it do to the Democratic party to to all those folks who were out there saying no rule of law this rule of law that he said he would never do this yes and we had a lot better record than the Republicans did didn't we and

what good did it do us I mean that nobody believes anybody anymore isn't that the problem but and but this this didn't make it any better though that didn't make that any better my view of this is that specific thing that you mentioned should be explained in Greater detail that is I I personally believe that the president is almost certainly right that his son received completely different treatment than he would have if he hadn't been the president's son in this kind of case but like I said I I don't think people I think there's a

lot of people who understand that as a parent no question I think the bigger question is about what was said for so many months the last six months ahead of it you have to ask them that I don't know I've never talked to but did when you heard it did you say Okay this this this frustrates me this upsets does it upset you at all does it not upset you well in the hierarchy of things that there are to be upset about today this is not one of them no no I do but but it's

not way high on there I mean look I have been you got to understand I've been through all this and you you act like this is new this is not new we had six people six in different cases when I was president who were being prosecuted by Ken star's people told me they were screaming at him right wait wait you started this told me they were screaming at him when they were being interviewed you are trying to get me to commit perjury six people and all of them said some version of what do you care

if you tell us what we want to hear we'll take care of you if we don't we'll make you light if you don't we'll make your life a living hell six people told me that and it was never in the Press nobody ever expressed any outrage and a hell of a lot of people knew what was going on so you can't take the politics out of these pardon decisions if the president's in any way involved so I wish he hadn't said he wasn't going to do it I would I think it does weaken his case

and it makes people Freer to J on him but there's also a reason the founding fathers gave this part power to the president because all kinds of things are always happening that you can't reconcile in terms of this that and the other thing and you can't figure out how to solve it let me try a different one out on you then Senator Mansion actually made a very interesting comment the other day uh where he said why don't you go ahead and that Biden should pardon president-elect Trump he says why don't you go ahead and pardon

Donald Trump for all his charges and make it you know it would have gone down as balanced this way it's off the table for the next four years years just cleans the Slate you think Biden should be pardoning Trump and by the way there some people think that Trump should be pardoning Biden well I do think we should stop trying to criminalize politics but on the other I I think we should both of us because well because obviously and the people don't like it and they're not going along with it from right to left on

the other hand you have to ask yourself if you do this blanket thing is there anything a president could do that he would or she someday would get in trouble for I mean there's this is a no wi deal that's why the power of the pardon was given to the presence and the people who wrote the Constitution knew what they were doing because they had imagined all these kind of things happening in the context of the 18th century but I mean they they'd imagin this and maybe there's a better way maybe there's we should have

a system where everybody should be reviewed for at least restoring all their voting rights and civil rights I'm telling you an enormous percentage of the pardons that you never think about people file for them because they want to vote again they want to feel like they're citizens again um let me ask you a totally different question I want to go back to this this past election um clearing the Democrats lost you know across the board um and there's a lot of soul searching inside the party about what happened and what went wrong and I want

to read you what Nancy Pelosi said and how you react to it she said that the anticipation was that if the president were to step aside this is when Biden was running that there would be an Open Primary she said that didn't happen and then she said because the president this is Biden endorsed kamla Harris who about the way was here last year immediately that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time do you was the plan always to have an Open Primary even a rushed Open primary because if you remember

what happened was very quickly he came out and endorsed her by the way you ended up I believe you and and Hillary endorsed uh her too very quickly after that and if you remember President Obama actually seemed to take a little bit of time before you saw his endorsement what was happening behind the scenes then well first of all there was no plan by anybody nobody had a plan because nobody knew what was going to happen so when people started calling me about it I said look President Biden won these primaries and as a matter

of law they're his delegates now so he's the only one that can give it up then and he's a stubborn old Irishman I know about stubborn old Irishman I am one now and he's going to have to make a decision here and everybody you know W to be the first person to get their name in the paper on television for dumping on him they not going to have a lot of luck people that he trust need to go to him and make a case that it would be better for the country and for his legacy

if he stepped aside So eventually that's what happened and by the time it happened it was only what 107 days of the election there was no time for a primary we couldn't have organized a primary that would have had a meaningful impact and it would have been total chaos and then same people that say we should have had a primary with saying they can't organize their way out of a paper bag this is total chaos they've turned the country into raggy tag and then the same critics would have said what would work there it was

too late for a primary I thought the best we could do then was to try to unite and make the best campaign we could now I'm not sure it was ever going to be winable you think and you don't think it was about her candidacy herself versus could you think anybody in that spot now I suppose you could have had somebody who was secretly plotting for all this to happen and therefore could know from the day one you can answer clearly here's what's going to be different here's what's going you know can answer all those

questions but look the fundamental problem was that once we had all this inflation the average person had not really liveed through something something like this for 40 years since the 70s and most people are kind of loosely connected to the political process all the stuff all of you know and think about all the time most people could care less until you get a lot closer to the election day I remember just as an example I went through a year of a very tough primary and it was brutal and the White House was heavily involved in

my Democratic primary and told me in advance they were going to be I got a call from a friend of mine on White House said you're the only one can beat us I said I'm running fifth in the polls he said don't give me that yours can beat us and the Press has to have somebody out every election we're given them you you will never recover from it you will never know what hits you you should not run and in four years you can walk into the White House so that's how my campaign began in

1992 and I said you know you can't let somebody say that to you so anyway here's the point that happened so i' going to New York to the convention and we did a stateof play survey and more than half the people did not know Hillary and I had a child that's after I was out there for a year and we'd had all these charges and and forth so what happened was kamla Harris was a stranger to them it was almost impossible to think that if the president has an approval rating under 40% and all these

things are in the atmosphere and she appears that there's time enough for her to win I thought she did a on balance a good job I wish we'd you know I I didn't have anything to do with the campaign in the beginning but I think she would have been a good president and I think she would have do you think there's something you that they could have done differently and W or you think no you think oh sure if you know but you don't you don't know you know you don't know if she had known

six months before if this is some nefarious plan you know and she's going to be prepared for it she could have answered the question what's going to be different well I'm not going to renounce the infrastructure Bill I'm not going to renounce the chips Bill I'm not going to renounce the inflation reduction Act and the limits on health care cost but now we got to deal with cost of living issues and neither I nor president Trump had much to do with the current state of play so the only thing that really matters is what do

we propose to do now look at my cost of living plan look at his mine costs less than half as much as is and will help many times more people and therefore it's better that was her best argument I think but it was that didn't just come to people I'm old enough that I lived up through this last round of inflation and it ate Jimmy Carter alive in four years there were 10.8 million jobs when the country was about half size it is now in the 70s and Carter all he had was inflation nobody cared

that there were almost 11 million jobs that's what [Music] happened we'll be right back Mr President let me try this on you you recently said uh that you thought it would be easier for a Conservative Republican woman when it comes to this question of whether a woman can win the presidency it would be easier for a Conservative Republican woman to win why why why do you say that well because ideologically the people who attack the who are most likely to be against women are most likely to be conservative so when people agree with you it's

easier to be formed and if you look at other countries Margaret Thatcher you know the German Chancellor all these people that's what I think is likely to happen Hillary in 2008 when she had the close relace with President Obama I think would have sailed home because she was the first woman from New York ever on the armed services committee because she had all these connections that covered the sort of psychic space but I do I think a woman can be elected president I do I I got a different one for you because a lot of

people were talking about Josh Shapiro as a potential VP at the time and um I'm Jewish so here's a question for you I'll say that quiet part out loud do you think that a uh someone who's Jewish could become the president of the United States absolutely I think Shapiro's a great talent and he's tough without being oish you know he's a tough guy and he knows what's going on and I think he and there are several other now Jewish Democrats we have at least two more Jewish Governors that I think would be very good candidates

let me try this on for you uh Moren Dow this is her thesis on what went wrong uh and I know you probably had a complicated relationship reading Moren over the years um she writes some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke she said the party embraced a worldview of hyper political correctness condensation and cancellation and that this is what alienated half the country or more well there's something to that uh she's really good at pointing out other people's faults like most of us are you know uh but I think one

of the things that plagues the Democrats is they haven't learned how to disagree with the Press without sounding like a leftwing version of Donald Trump and we all know that his supporters don't mind what you say about the Press but the Democrats do the liberals do they at least we think they do and so I think there's something to that but the most important thing is we have to understand that some things haven't changed very much in 30 years except the mainstream media has nowhere near the influence it once did but it what influence it

retains it's mostly over Democrats and Independence and so if if you're going to disagree with them if you don't ever disagree with them they'll beat your brains out because their number one goal is to disqualify somebody in every election and now they can only disqualify us because the right has their own infrastructure so you have to be able to do it but do it in a respectful way cuz you're not interfering with the first amendment by saying I'm for their ability to say whatever they want but respectfully I dis agree with them that's what I

try to do in this book of mine well that's what I was going to ask you so this relates to the woke piece which is in your book you talk about the Clinton Global initiative and uh I've been now many times over the years and one of the things that you've done uh I think spectacularly is you've gotten companies to commit to do extraordinary things hopefully things that they wouldn't otherwise do and we are now in an interesting moment in our country where you know this whole idea of diversity Equity inclusion uh of ESG of

environmental uh social and governance and things like this there is a complete backlash to all of it you're seeing it um and I'm so curious as somebody who's been living it who's been working on that very effort how you feel about that well I think it's because we who are on the other side of that haven't talked enough about it in terms of what makes sense I mean the right loves this they say you we got corporations out there actually hiring people to prove how politically correct their Workforce is and they're in business to make

money they're in business to be profitable how dare they spend shareholders money on political correctness and they draw this cartoon and they're really good at it I give it to them they're good you know old Trump he's he's great he's the best blamer I ever saw he's good at it and there's probably some truth to it somewhere every now and then but here's what I've learned I was the longest serving governor in America I've made and then I was President for eight years and now I've run this big foundation which was Tiny when I started

and we've we've done a lot of good I think but I made a huge number of decisions therefore I've made a not insignificant number of errors and the one thing I believe is that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones and I just think and I think you could prove it I think you could fill this very famous space with all the studies that have been done showing that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous ones do and that's what Dei is to me and if you're one of the things you do is serve

consumers and there are all different kinds of people we all like it when there's somebody that looks like us there so I I think it's overblown the anti- Dei thing but I think if we want to keep it and we believe in diversity we shouldn't wuss out about it and we shouldn't I mean we shouldn't you don't have to be hateful or arrogant or all that you just have to say I'm sorry I disagree and here's why I disagree one two three and there's going to be pling room for all white guys in suits like

me and any kind of rearrangement let me ask let me ask you a different question uh about President uh president Trump and in particular I wanted to ask you about his tariffs because um you don't you touch actually a little bit me on on some of the things you think about globally as a somebody who I would argue was a a globalist almost proudly when you were president um both in the book and actually in previous books that you've written about when it comes to uh tariffs and the like you did not like tariffs you

like the opposite of tariffs I didn't you're right and so the question I think now is how you think our place in the world changes if we really do Implement tariffs we had Ken Griffin here earlier he I think doesn't think that they're either going to come to pass or that it's going to get worked out in some kind of way but how scared or not should we be is this a good thing a bad thing have you changed your view well first of all tariffs work best I mean or least needed in an environment

where competition is real and borders are open and we all live under the same set of rules when it looked like we were moving toward a democratic societies even though we defined it in different ways the argument was more compelling now we know for example if you look at what China did I supported China getting into the World Trade Organization you may think I was nuts now but Jang ximen was president of China and he was a darn good one and we didn't agree on everything we fought like C dogs about some things but he

was a good person and an honest person and he wanted us to be reconcil one the our countries right so what happened when the current president she becomes president of China he decides he wants to stay for life and I'm telling you if you have a country where the leader wants to stay for life it changes everything then their first priority has to be weakening the opposition dividing the opposition doing whatever is necessary so that you hold on that's what happened to Putin so how should our position or posture change towards China then well I

think we have to be vigorous in where I think they've been in violation of the the trade laws I think we should defend uh the countries that are affected adversely in the South China Sea and all the things we're more or less trying to do and I think we're going to be doing back and forth with the Chinese and they'll have to decide whether to risk more armed conflict and we'll have to decide how far we can go and try to meet them halfway I want to ask you about uh the relationship between the White

House and the business community and I think there's a lot of people who've been we've been talking about Elon Musk a bunch of times this morning and I'm ious as somebody who's sat in your seat what your reaction was for example when you heard that you know president Trump is making phone calls for example to uh folks like zalinsky and others and somebody like an Elon Musk is on the phone with them you know I didn't have the same reaction a lot of people did I mean you know that this is inappropriate because Trump's whole

stick is that all these rules and systems don't amount to anything they don't have any real legitimacy they trap us into uh too many narrow options I don't necessarily agree with that by the way but I think belon being on the phone call for Trump is being the richest by on Earth is far more important than anything else that you could be to him so he's by definition qualified to do anything he he could preside over his funeral service I mean you know because that's what he values it's no big deal do you think by

the way wow um do you think by the way that Biden should have embraced him meaning musk the reason I ask is there's sort of a way to revise history but if you go back in time he was a a effectively a Biden supporter he was somebody who cared deeply about the climate and he was pushed as you you remember away in in oddly enough because Biden had these EV Summits at his at the White House and didn't invite him and sort of thumbed his nose at him maybe on behalf of the unions unclear but

you know I sort of have this idea in my head it was all about that I think he was trying to reset the relationship President Biden was between the unions and the federal government and he didn't want to be a union bust and he was very proud of what he' done to help ordinary working people in the circumstances where the Unions would do well and prove that they could be good for for the free enterprise system that's what I think happened and I remember actually at the time having a conversation with somebody saying suggesting that

it might be worth taking a little heat from the unions to keep because I thought the I think the Tesla is one of the most significant contributions to you told himation yeah you told the president this no I didn't I I told the people who talked to me about it but I did tell some people in the white house that I thought you know not because I thought he would do what he did which is to get on the Trump Carousel but because I just thought he'd I think this whole thing that uh in America

our biggest emitter emissions source is still transportation and I think that the Tesla is a great car and I think those that are wantan to be Tesla are good I think we're going to have to get used to it and go through a transition period but I I I believed that it would be helpful if they were working together one of the other big issues that we've all been uh confronted with um and we had BB nanyu here actually two years ago and then the president of Israel as well uh just last year after October

7th is the future of the Middle East uh I think you were the last president to ever go to Gaza there's obviously a ceasefire or at least hopefully a ceasefire with Hezbollah I'm not sure that's still the case given what's just even happened the last week do you have any hope for what happens in the Middle East at this point and how long do you think the BB Netanyahu remains in his role well he's been there longer than I thought he would be already but once the attacks occurred in Gaza from hisbah I mean from

Hamas it was a Lifeline to be in the beginning it hurt him because clearly the IDF was not ready the all the fights that were going on within Israel about the rule of law and all the issues there made them more vulnerable but he was in office and he had a narrow parliamentary majority and an otherwise very fragile political Coalition got stronger because of what happened on October the 6th and he was a commanderin-chief if you will you know and he fought it back and look I think what's happened there in the last 25 years

is one of the great tragedies of the 21st century and when I tell the young people for example who are in America let's say they're super sympathetic with the Palestinians well they've been killed a lot of those Palestinians have and they had all they know is that a lot more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis and I tell them what Arafat walked away from and they like can't believe it I said oh yeah he walked away from a palen Indian state with a capital in East Jerusalem 96% of the West Bank 4% of Israel to

make up for the 4% that the settler was occupy that were beyond the borders in the 67 war and I go through all the stuff that was in the deal and they they like it's not on their radar radar screen they can't even imagine that that happen and I tell them you know the first and most famous victim of an attempt to give the Palestinians estate was prime minister rabine whom I I think loved as much I ever loved another man and so RAB then he dies and then Shimon Perez is defeated in the election

and where the rest of it is history but you walk away from these once in a lifetime peace opportunities and you can't complain 25 years later when they the doors weren't all still open and all the possibilities weren't still there you can't do it it's just your voice just cracked when you said that yeah I'm an old guy I have my regrets that's one of them Mr President we are going to run out of time and there's so much I wanted to talk to you about the book which is called Citizen and is is a

very worthy read I want to ask you a final question it's a complicated question uh it's not an easy one I don't think there's a right answer it may even be marginally uncomfortable but I think that there's value in the answer which is this it's actually about character it's about the character of our leaders in this country today and I think a lot of people have questions about the character and how much Character Matters or doesn't matter anymore uh we look at our president-elect who's a convicted felon we're reading about things with Pete Heth uh

Charles Kushner is going to go off and and be the ambassador to France and you have talked about your own moral failings and so I'm very curious how you think about character and the character of the country but the character of our leaders and how much we should be focused on that well I think that there depends on how you like everything in life it depends on how you keep score so do I think it matters yes if you're running for office and you say I'm going to do one two three you should try to

do it and by the way there is an enormous correlation throughout history and what American Presidents say they will try to do in the campaign and what they actually try to do so much so that when they don't we know it like we know that Franklin Roosevelt did not balance the budget and we're grateful to him because we know that the rules are different when there's a depression we know that Abraham Lincoln did not maintain slavery in the territory is where it existed when the Constitution was born and we're grateful to him but by and

large these guys try to do what they say they're going to do and so is that good character or a bad character it sort of depends on what people think is good and bad but that's I think a question we all I think sit and we read about people who have had moral failings uh and and we'll put them in that category if you want but how we're supposed to think about the moral failing in regard to their ability to be a leader well it depends on what they are and depends on how much people

know would we disqualify Eisenhower now would we disqualify Roosevelt now would we still let Harding run so I think that in ways that matter character stuff does matter but the voters have a deep seed suspicion of letting anybody including members of the press tell them how to define character and what matters because there's no such thing as a perfect person nobody has run a perfect life and people are determined to keep score do I think character matters I do but I bet my definition wouldn't be the same as a lot of other people and then

what really matters is whether in this moment this happened I'll give you an idea where I'm an outlier apparently I was very friendly with President Trump for years and he was very nice to me when I got out of the White House he called me one day and he said I think the way the president treated you is disgraceful and I want you to to come play at my golf course and we had a you know good relationship for years even after he announced that he was going to run and he and Hillary were going

to run against each other I didn't take my golf clubs out of the golf course but when he called the Mexicans rapist and murderers and I knew how many Latino caddies he had and what kind of people they were I got my golf clubs and left I didn't think I was a better person than him I didn't look down on him but I knew I couldn't live with that because I think America is a great country in part because there's somebody here from everywhere and we have to learn to live with that I I regret

that we haven't had enough serious conversations about this whole immigration thing I mean we haven't and you and I don't have enough time to resolve it now but but but this is a big deal if you if you don't want anybody here from anywhere else anymore you need to think seriously about that because we can't continue to have 4% plus of the world's population and 20% of the world's GDP and grow like crazy unless we allow immigrant to come here and replenish the talent pool and unless we get along with other countries who want to

do business with us so does that mean we should be suckers no does that mean we shouldn't fix the Border no but it means we ought to do it with a lot more respect and understanding and being on the level there's a lot of this that the Border politics is just just that just cheap politics but denying that it's a problem is not an option and that got the Democrats in trouble because they were afraid so many of the Democrats were afraid it was Politically Incorrect to stand up for control borders people hate chaos and

keep in mind when I say these things remember any political statement you make is relevant if you're talking about somebody else's race it's relevant only if it might have changed the outcome but I think showing that we cared about an orderly border was a totally legitimate issue and would affect the outcome Mr President uh unfortunately we are out of time we could talk for a lot more and I hope we have an opportunity to do it again and I want to thank you uh so so much for uh speaking to us about all of these

different issues thank you very very much you know President Bill Clinton Bill Clinton everybody thank you thank you thank you you know wait wait wait oh goodness when when this guy was 12 years old or something he he he went to work for the New York Times before he went to college right this is true and then he wrote a book about the crash called too small to fail too big to fail too small to fail is one of our foundation initiatives anyway two big to fail today it's worth reading again because it was the

beginning I think of a lot of the conflicted feelings of resentment against successful establishments in general in the finance sector in particular it's really and he did it a long time ago well Mr President thank you thank you for being here thank you for that kind comment thank you so much thank you thank you dealbook Summit is a production of the New York Times this episode was produced by Evan Roberts and edited by Sarah Kesler mixing by Kelly Pico original music by Daniel Powell the rest of the dealbook events team includes Julie Zan Hillary cun

Angela Austin Haley hes Dana porowski Matt Kaiser and yenu Leu special thanks to Sam dolnick nle lassam Ravi matu Beth Weinstein Kate Carrington and Melissa Tripoli thanks for listening talk to you next time