Hillary Clinton called President Donald Trump's inauguration really "difficult" to attend, and also seemed to corroborate reports former president George W. Bush said Trump's speech was "some weird s—t," her comments revealed in a wide-ranging interview with New York Magazine published Saturday.
"Oh," said Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee. "It was hard. It was really . . . difficult."
But "at the time, we hoped that there would be a different agenda for governing than there had been for running."
"It was a really painful cry to his hard-core supporters that he wasn't changing," she said. "The 'carnage' in our country? It was a very disturbing moment. I caught Michelle Obama's eye, like, What is going on here? I was sitting next to George and Laura Bush, and we have our political differences, but this was beyond any experience any of us had ever had."
Of Bush's alleged thoughts on the speech, Clinton replied "put it in your article."
"They tried to walk back from it, but . . ."
When asked whether Clinton heard Bush make the comments, she raised her eyebrows and grinned.
Clinton in the piece dished on James Comey's dismissal – she's "less surprised than" she is worried – and also identified herself as a member of the resistance.
"There's always been this rearguard movement against expanding the circle of opportunity," she said. "And I believe that a lot of what's happening now is a resurgence of the anxiety, the fear, the bias that still affects people who are worried that change is coming even faster, that it will have even more consequences." The unwillingness to acknowledge this backlash, Clinton said, is "part of the reason we are, if not going backward, certainly stalled."
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