December 13, 2022 • 37 mins
Huma Abedin has spent her entire career in public service, from her beginnings as an intern in First Lady Hillary Clinton’s office, to her time as senior advisor to then-Senator Clinton, as deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, vice chair of Clinton's presidential campaign, and now, as Clinton’s chief of staff. Abedin’s recent memoir, “Both/And,” details this time in government, as well as her personal struggles behind the scenes. Huma Abedin sits down with Alec to discuss the personal impact of the 2016 election, the lessons she learned from her late father, and the sliding doors that have offered her different paths in life.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. The saying used to be
behind every great man is a great woman, But considering
my guest today, perhaps that should read behind every great
woman is a great woman. Huma Aberdeen is someone who
(00:24):
has spent her entire career in public service. Her work
with Hillary Rodham Clinton began as a young aide in
the First Lady's office, then as a senior adviser to
the Senator, deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State,
and now as her chief of staff. Aberdeen's decades of
(00:46):
collaboration with Clinton bring to mind Richard Nixon's farewell speech
to his White House staff, who noted, quote, this house
has a great heart, and that heart comes from those
who serve now. Whoma Aberdeen has written an intimate and
revealing best selling memoir on her life, entitled Both And.
(01:07):
The book covers her time working in government as well
as her personal struggles, including a very public divorce from
former Congressman Anthony Weiner. With such a substantial career in politics,
I wanted to know if Aberdeen's upbringing is what set
her on the path to where she is today. My
mother is a sociologist. My father studied American civilization, which
(01:31):
that's one of the reasons he ended up at Penn.
They don't really teach it or have that course in
many universities now. Yeah, and then they they're from two
countries that were at war, and so they decided they
got asylum here and moved to Michigan and they my
dad taught at Western Michigan. My mom taught at Kalamazoo College.
How long were they living here before you were born
or had you been born? I was born here. I
was born here, and when I was to my and
(01:53):
we thought we were going to say here forever. I
I actually I have this whole thing in my life
about sliding doors. It's not maybe very healthy, but like
what if? What if? What if? And I've often thought
about what my life would have been like if I
had lived that Midwestern life, which I almost did. But
when I was to my dad was diagnosed with basically,
you know, terminal illness. He was renal failure and his
(02:14):
doctor said, you know, you have five to ten years
and get your affairs in order. How long did he
live after the diagnosis. Well, it's amazing that doctor was
exactly right. His kidneys survived ten years to the day
they failed. And it's one of the first lines I've
wrote in my book. My dad was told he was dying.
I don't know if I ever want to see that doctor.
It was amazing, I mean made, but the difference between
nineteen seventy seven in Kalamazoo, Michigan and thankfully nine years
(02:38):
later the possibility of getting on the transplant list became,
you know, something real, which only happened because my mother
was so tenacious. So he then went on dialysis. So
he lived till I was seventeen and when did you
go over there? So two months after his diagnosis that
my parents had an option to take a sabbatical and
their choice was either Italy or Saudi Arabia. And the interestingly,
(03:03):
they had always decided. They had always thought they would
go to Italy. They thought it would be this great adventure.
They'd go to Italy. And then my father gets this
diagnosis and he thought, you know, I want to teach
my children about their culture, about their faith. Were a
Muslim family, it seemed like more of an interesting and
it was like, you know, just a year. So they said,
why don't we do? Saudi was definitely the hardest choice.
My mother actually said, when you know, my father said
(03:25):
let's go to Saudi, She's like, and I was too.
She says, they even have diapers in that country. And
I think about how intrepid they where they landed. They
didn't speak the language. My mother all of a sudden
had to veil her something in Italy, Saudi Arabia Italy.
I think they decided that, you know, there they could.
It was more of a challenge, and I think they
(03:45):
liked that. My mother taught herself Arabic to teach her students.
Then after a year they actually decided to come back
and then come back, and that was, you know, forty
four years ago. They kept going to My mother taught sociology,
and my dad, you know, arted very early on. He
taught a few years, but very early on he open
to foundation. And that's actually one of the reasons. Even
(04:06):
though the foundation was based in London, but it was
a foundation that produced an academic journal that studied the
condition of Muslims who lived as minorities around the world.
And my dad's expertise was actually in Russia. Well back
then it was the USSR, the Soviet Union, and and
it was his You know, I often say this, you know,
my father was really prescient about a lot of these issues.
He basically said, look, if we don't figure out as
(04:28):
Muslims how to live in the world with the rise
of the West, we're gonna have problems. And sure enough
he predicted Bosni I predicted so much of what where
now this these convulsions that we have. And in part
his theory was, look, if you are practicing Muslim wherever
you come from in the Arab world or you know,
(04:48):
through the Muslim world, and you choose to live in
the West, you cannot go there and live in your
own little bubble. That's just not You're not. You have
to You're gonna go and live in France. You need
to become French. And also you can do exactly and
then and that was the way he thought that we
could succeed in this world. And I think he was right,
seeing certainly what's happened. So he was working specifically in
(05:11):
what during those ten years when he was over there,
just a multitude of things, a multitude of things. A
lot of his conversations were about interfaith dialogue. So we
would like. We spent one summer in Greece, living in
a monastery at a conference about you know, Islamic, Christian, Jewish,
you know, dialogue, and we'd sit at the table and
and people, a lot of Muslims and certainly Arabs and
(05:32):
people who lived in our world said why why do
you do this? Why do you go and you know?
And they say, you know, they would tease him and say,
why do you go have conversations? These provocative conversations were
even the angels fear to tread. Why do you go
have these? You know, very contentious? And is because I
want to understand and I want to know more about
(05:52):
these other faiths and beliefs and you know kind of
syst political systems. And I don't have any doubt in
my own but leafs, but I want to learn more.
And I think we probably have more in common than
we realize. Nope, For you other than when you were
maybe were moving about and you mentioned Greece, for one,
did you go to one school or did you concentrate
in just a handful of schools when you were there?
(06:13):
Where did you go to school? High school? I went
to international school based on a British curriculum that my
father and a few of the other professors of the university.
Because this was all brand new back in seven when
we moved there, and you mentioned the oil money. Sure
there was all of this new wealth, all these amazing
kind of figuring out how much wealth. They were just
(06:33):
figuring out how much wealth, and they were building universities
and building hospitals. But they didn't have the talent. That's
why so much of this talent was imported at the time,
and my parents came in as part of that important
talent exactly right. And so they helped start the school.
And so I was a British school and it was international.
It was actually one of the best things out like that,
I think, to be exposed to so many different cultures
(06:54):
and languages and people from all over the world. It
made me comfortable. Weywhere and I think that was a
big part of it, was, you know, being surrounded by
people who weren't like me. So when you I mean
for Americans today, you know, the Saudi Arabia is now
a concentration of pilots who flew from nine eleven. It's
(07:16):
opec and manipulation of oil prices, it's Kaso I'm talking
about the contemporary American view of that country. I mean,
the United States certainly has a lot of blood on
its hands for things that it's done. I'm not mentioning
that to condemn the Saudis, but the United States is
guilty of the exact same things during its history as well.
But set aside that. Back when you were there, what
(07:38):
was your Saudi Arabia? What was your experience of the
culture and the people? How do they strike you? You know?
One of the very first things that really hit home
when I moved to the United States, so I didn't
come back. So I grew up in Saudi Arabia and
I didn't live in the United States until I came
to university. One of the things I missed immediately is
this sense of community. And we call it, you know,
(07:59):
in the Muslim world, we call it the oma. And
the oma is the ever present community, which is you're
never alone. So I tell stories in the book about
how you know, you go to a party and you say,
I like your shirt, and you know, the next thing
you know, that shirt is sent to your house the
next day. This notion of there's always you know, a
seat at the table for more people, there's always food
to share, You're always in a very kind of secure environment,
(08:22):
and that is something I kind of took for granted
when I was growing up there. In fact, I tell
the story about when my father finally got his transplant
in and he had to leave immediately to go to
the United States, to New York for his transplant operation,
and one of our very very close Saudi friends called
my mother and said, should we take the girls and
me and my siblings. You know, I was, you know, nine,
My sister was e love and my younger sister was four.
(08:46):
I'm my brother, so four of us total and I
and my mother, and we were already scared of all
this change. My so our friends call and said, why
don't the girls move in with us, you know, while
you guys are in the midst of this transplant operation.
And I remember we were also scared. We said my mom, no, no, no,
we don't want to go. So on the phone she
makes up this excuse and she says, oh, you know,
the kids have their exams and their desks and their
bookcases are here, so we're okay. The next morning, there's
(09:08):
a knock on our door and it's a moving company.
And my mother's like, what are you doing here? And
they're like, oh, we're here to something about books, and
you know, bookshelves and desks were moving, and sure enough
they moved the furniture into this family friends home. We
lived with them while while my parents were in the
United States. It was probably about six weeks if I
remember correctly, maybe maybe two months. But this idea again
(09:30):
of feeling, so when you leave and you come to
the United States, and if you had a British centric
or British fabric in the educational thing over there, but
why did you come back to the U S. Could
you say, I'm an American and I want to be educated,
why don't you go to England to go to school?
Well I had that choice. Actually, my older brother and
(09:51):
sister chose England. And I always wanted to come to
the United States. You know, back when I was growing
up in Saudi, everything that was sort of aspiration, everything
that was considered the best was American. You know that
that is you know, back then America did seem like
it and it was the sole super power in the world.
(10:11):
Absolutely felt like it was a paradise. And so we'd
come here for the summers we would stock up on
all the latest magazines. We would have these bootleg movies
that we would take back, all the Tom Cruise movies
and you know, like Beverly Hills Night number one everywhere.
He was certainly number one, you know back then, and
Ralph Macchio and the Karate Kid. I'm thinking of like
(10:33):
all of these, you know, and everything and I and
I write about this. You know, my parents always raised
us and look, you're American and your Muslim, and in
part because they came from two countries that were at war,
so they didn't try to put the burden of that
identity that you have to choose whether you're Indian or
Pakistani or even Saudi, you know, given the fact that
we lived there and you know, felt a deep connection
(10:53):
to it. You're an American and you're a Muslim. And
so I remember, we would go all over the world.
And that was one of the great beauties of having
parents who are academics at Summer's off was one of
the also the great advantages of being a university professor
there because my parents, in the early years, in fact,
I don't think I'd ever shared this, they would get
four first class tickets every summer to go wherever, and
(11:14):
so we would, you know, take these tickets and we
would go to Europe and Asia, and in part because
my father was sick and he wanted to explore the world.
He and he didn't know how much time there's benefits
to having been These were secrets from us. We did
not know how ill he was. You know, I tell
this story about you know, my father was barely a
hundred pounds, and to me, he was a superhero. You know,
(11:35):
he was the greatest, strongest man on the planet. But
he would every spring you would say, Okay, where do
you want to go this year? And he was like, okay,
let's do Asia. And he said, okay. We'd pull out
a map and we'd have to call the airlines back
then wherever he wherever, wherever, you know, wherever, and we
would be wherever we voted on and then we'd have
to help planet. And my mom did all the schlopping
(11:55):
and all the lifting, and you know, my father would
be wheeled around in a wheelchair. But it was having
Number one, it was a way for us to spend
time together. And number two, it was a way to
explore the world. And I remember my mother tells the
story of how we would land in the middle of
nowhere sometimes in Shannon, Ireland, you know, on our way
to you know, re feel somewhere and I would get
up and turn to my mother and say, is it
America yet? And I have a whole chapter in my book.
(12:17):
I mean that is what, you know, the excitement, the
feeling that you know, ice cream running down my hands.
You know, when we visited our family and Elmhurst Queen's,
it was paradise. It was heaven. You could go anywhere
in the world, and landing in JFK was the highlights.
So when you came to the US, t when you
return to the US to go to college, you go
and you go into politics, but you study journalism as
(12:40):
a major and policize the minor. Did you most people,
I know? My point is that they go to g
W for one thing only. They don't go there to
play the violin. They don't there to get a scholarship
for some sport they play. They go there they got
politics in their blood. Was that, you know I was.
I went to g W to become Christian. I'm on poor.
The journalism was the goal. It was And you know,
(13:03):
I say this all the time now when I especially
when I meet younger women. I was sitting on the
floor of our house and watch this brand new thing
in Saudi Arabia and then this is the you know,
Operation Desert Storm, Persian Gulf War, and turn on this
brand new thing called CNN International, and I see this
woman and she was brilliant, and she was fearless. I
(13:25):
mean it was I looked at her and she looked
like me. She looked like she came from my part
of the world, and she gave this amorphous you know,
I went from everything I think when I was younger.
You know, my dad, I think always thought I was
going to be a writer. He would, you know, say
that to me, look right, right right. I was a
voracious reader. I went through a prad where I thought
I wanted to be a lawyer. I was really very dramatic.
(13:45):
People would come to our house and I would say,
do you want to listen to my new poem? And
my siblings would roll their eyes. Like I was a
performer growing up, had a lot of sort of confidence.
I loved to perform, So I think I went through
the period of like I want to be an actor.
I want to be a singer. I want to be
out there and I wanted to be a ballerie. How
you ended up, but we're gonna get there. I went
through all these different phases, but then and I must
have been no. I was fifteen. I saw her and
(14:06):
I said that said, that is who I want to be.
And I was singularly focused on being her. And that
is why I applied to g W and I journalism,
and I got my degree in journalists graduate degree. I
did not get a graduate of one of my regrets,
but I did not get a graduated. When you end,
when you do the four years at g W, and
you get a degree in journalism. His journalism still the
(14:26):
goal of because my junior year, my friend Ronnie th
Timbert came to me and said, listen, I've got this
great internship at the White House. I'm interning from Mike McCurry,
who was then the White House Press secretary. And she
actually said to me, says, you know, when you watch
anybody giving a you know, a statement from that podium
in the in the press room, our office is right behind.
And I thought, oh my god, how better to become
(14:48):
Christ than being behind that wall. But you know, chance
you know, fate, luck, whatever it was. I got accepted.
So my friend Ronnie picks up the internship application for me,
I think basically filled it out for me. I gave
them my you know, the essays that I used to
apply to g W sent it in. Was accepted, but
I wasn't put in the press office. I was put
(15:10):
in the first Ladies policy office. Where did you first
lay eyes on hillerby Clinton? And you actually talked to
her and shook her hand? And so she doesn't she
doesn't remember this. There's no reason she'd remember this. But
the first time I laid eyes on her and shook
her hand was the night of Bill Clinton's re election.
(15:30):
So I was a White House intern and they, you know,
the d n C had made accommodations that if interns
wanted to go on this charter plane at the last minute,
too little Rock Arkansas for election night talk about politics
on steroids. I had now alec. I wasn't registered to vote.
I had never. I mean, I grew up in a
country that was a monarchy. Obviously there was no so
(15:51):
you know, I went from zero to a thousand, and
so I get on this plane with a bunch of
interns we had to pay, you know, right, a check
for I think two or fifty dollars for our ticket
Land and Little Rock. We're wandering around outside and I'm
just kind of just in awe. I look up and
there's Wolf Blitzer. I look up. There's intoxicating So I
you know, my plan had a little Rock. The elections
(16:14):
called for Bill Clinton and the Energy and the Electricity,
and they come out on stage and then they come
down to work a rope line, and I was four
or five people deep in and I remember leaning forward
through the crowd and shaking her hand, and she looked
right at me and she said thank you. And I
and I have to tell you, I can't even count
the number of rope lines I have walked with Hillary
(16:34):
Clinton since then. But I remember that moment. I remember
how it felt, I remember how important it felt. I
remember that I felt like I made this connection. And
so every time somebody wouldn't say to me, I just
want to say a lot, I want to shake her hand.
I got it because I remember that first moment, and
when for some people it's a one, it really is
a once in a lifetime to meet a president or
a first lady. Was really exciting Whoma Abodeen. If you
(16:59):
enjoy conversations with accomplished women in politics, check out my
episode with United States Congresswoman Katie Porter. You know, I
think there is an attitude that you know, sort of
people are entitled to have Republican representation. Here. What they're
entitled to is good representation, right, people who listen to them,
people who fight for them, people who are not corrupt,
(17:22):
and that can come in your Democratic or Republican forms.
To hear more of my conversation with Katie Porter, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Whoma
Aberdeen shares the tremendous impact of Hillary Clinton's two thousand
and sixteen election. Lass. Hi'm Alec Baldwin, and you were
(17:55):
listening to Here's the Thing. Whoma Aberdeen is fiercely intelligent, warm,
and impeccably credentialed. While surely anyone would be lucky to
employ her, I was curious why she stayed in the
Clinton camp for twenty six years. You know, I'm getting
emotional because I'm sitting at this table. She sat where
you're sitting right now to do my first podcast interview
(18:18):
after the book came out, and she's one of the
people who really encouraged me to write my story that wound,
to some degree does not go away. I think it
is such a travesty and a loss for this century tragedy.
I agree with you that she was not president in
two thousand and sixteen, and how different our country and
the world would have been, and it is their loss.
(18:38):
And to see how politics has descended into this sort
of really a cult of personality. I was having this
conversation with a friend the other day and he was like,
it's almost like you need to be a celebrity, to
even a rich celebrity, to even you know, run for
office and take all that apart. You know, you actually
have asked me something no one's ever asked me. I
(18:59):
kind of fell into politics to write. I mean, I
wanted to be generalist, fell into politics. But why. It's
because when I started being in the orbit of Bill
and Hillary Clinton, forget who they were, that he was
the most you know, the leader of the free world.
She was the most powerful woman in the world. For them,
it was all about the mission and the service and
how do I make I know it sounds cliche and
it sounds cheesy, but there are people who get up
(19:21):
every single day and say, how do I make other
people's lives better? And I think of all the things
that I have done, there's not a space I have been,
a place I have been. There isn't a person I
haven't met that I want to meet. And it still
does not feel the way it feels when you're out
on a campaign, when you're in government and feel and
know that you can make somebody's life better than you
(19:41):
can do something and doing the right thing, and that
is something I learned from her, and to see her
do it part of her thing. As you well know,
She's never really thought it was about her. And I
think a lot of politicians and maybe even people in
your line of work, they get into it. There's some
degree of whether it's narcissism or some degree of you know,
trying to prove one his own value. But she just
she just wants to do the work. And I always said,
(20:04):
the day I got up and she wasn't doing something interesting,
or I didn't want to go to work, or I
didn't want to talk to her, I would quit. And
and the thing that is so insane to me is
that after that election which broke us, I mean I
write about it in and there are days that it
comes back and you know, it haunts me. It hurts
like it hurts like physically. I was around her this summer,
Liz Robbins, we went to that dinner with listen, this
(20:26):
is my friend for our listeners who she has a
dinner and Bill is there a couple of summers ago.
Bill is lecturing us on North Korea. And he's talking
about now when the President of the United States is
telling you what he wants you to know, like a
little digest, a little synopsis about North Korean policy, you
are I don't need to eat forget about dinner. And
Liz Robbins is behind his back. She's behind built that
(20:50):
going like this and cutting her throat like this, going
you gotta tum to stop. Dinner is ready, and I'm
looking at like a yeah, I'm gonna tell Bill to
stop talking about North Korea. And when you're with him,
you get a civics lesson. You had a political history lesson,
and we did with her the same thing. But she's
just I don't know what this inefftable thing in my
business was. She just she's like Spencer Tracy. She's just
(21:12):
so decent. She has a few radical empathy number one,
number two, she has this she has like she says,
this problem solving, Jean, you know, I think so much
of it, and you know, people, and she's motivated really
by not anything else. I don't think she cares about
being rich and famous. I don't think she's ever cared
about that. But I think knowing about her own mother's
(21:32):
her own mother had a very very difficult childhood, was
basically abandoned by her parents. And you know, her victory
speech in two thousand sixteen, she was going to end
with this story about She tells the story about her
mother who was put on a train cross country. Her
parents didn't want her and her little sister, So these
two little girls under ten put on a train to
go cross country to move in with her their grandparents,
(21:55):
who also didn't really want them. And she said, you know,
she imagined being on the train, sitting next to her
mother and saying, it's going to be okay. You're gonna
be okay, and you're gonna grow up and you're gonna
have a daughter, and she will be the first woman
president United States. And in the end, and to remind people,
(22:23):
I also like to remind people when people say, why
couldn't you guys, why didn't you guys have the energy
and sort of why didn't you have all this energy
behind you? And I'd like to remind people that three
million people more than her opponent voted for her, that
she did have the energy and enthusiasm and you know
the forces. I do believe she writ one in two
thousand and sixteen, and she did win in two You know,
(22:43):
one of the things that you and she have in common,
you were both people who your husband let you down.
That's my way of putting it. Your husband's let you down.
And in your case, you overcome that. You deal with
that in your way, and you're very honest about it
in the book, and you keep going. Crisis management has
(23:05):
been a fundamental pillar of your career. You've worked with
people who have been in crisis, and Hilary Clinton is
someone who has been attacked in a way that is
as ugly and so with you professionally with the Clintons
for many years. In your personal life, a lot of
crisis management for you. What prepared you for that? I
(23:25):
think my childhood. I think the way I was raised,
the people who raised me, the you know, whether it
was conscious or subconscious. I mean this idea that I
had a mother who is a superhero, you know who.
My father was throwing up after his dialysis sessions and
she was in the bathroom cleaning him up, and you know,
propping him up and putting him at the very real
I mean, these were very and you know, living in
(23:46):
Saudi Arabia, living in a different cultures, living you know,
sometimes in very frustrating moments, and always thinking all right,
tomorrow is gonna be better. Tomorrow is gonna be better.
And then obviously dealing with my father's death that was hard.
You know, I was in denial for a while. It
took two years from me to actually say out loud
to people my father's dad. I was basically just you know.
So I think that to some extent, there was crisis
(24:08):
all around me kind of growing up, and I figured
out how to live and dan and not only live
through it, my mother tells, and move on. I mean,
my my mother says, my father's favorite memory from my
childhood is when I would come out of school. I
would skip out of school and he would call me
his gazelle. It's one of the reasons I share in
the book this story about the first time I staff
Hillary and her speech has forgotten in the car and
(24:29):
she calls me on to stage and I'm kid, I'm
barely twenty one, don't have the speech. And that was
the moment, the moment where you basically either fall apart
or say I got it. I can fix this. And
I fixed it in that moment. That was twenty six
years ago, and I have always figured it out, and
I actually think I have figured out that I'm pretty
good at it. And I don't know if that's like
a marketable skill anywhere outside of politics. I'm working on
(24:51):
that right now, but it's experience. Whose idea was the book?
The book was Anna Winter's idea. No, yes, yes. It
was ten days after the election. I didn't want to
get out of bed, and she says, let's go to dinner,
and we go to the theater and then go to dinner.
And I was it was at the public and it
was Cheryl Strait's Tiny Beautiful Things, and and cried and cried,
(25:16):
and then we go to dinner and she says, I
know what you should do. You should write your story.
It's a great story. And I said, no, it's not
I'm not going to do it. And the next day
I go to Hillary and tell Hillary and I said,
She's like, brilliant idea, you should do. It's a good story.
I was really in denial. It was only when I
went to lunch with a man getting advice on what
to do next to my life, and told him most
some people think I should write my book. And he
was like, why would you do that? And I told
(25:37):
people have suggested shielding. What what does he do for
a living? He's also a crisis management consultant and to
an extent, I mean, you know, he's in sort of
the business of you know, politics and communications and um.
And he says, listen, I just don't think you could
ever fully explain why Hillary lost. And I don't think
anyone wants to read any more about all that scandal.
(25:59):
And it was when he used that word scandal. I
walked out of that restaurant and I was writing the book.
It was somebody telling me the story was unworthy. That
made me right. And when I when I started right,
it just poured, it poured out of me. I loved, loved,
loved the writing process. And you know, and look, because
you asked about Anthony and my ex husband letting me down,
which he did. He was on this podcast. He was
(26:21):
on this podcast. Yeah, that's right, he was. And you
know when the first husband and wife, a couple of
people have I should have brought him along. We're we're
not talking about doing some interviews together because people cannot.
Are still in shock. And I get stopped on the
street all the time saying, I'm sure you rue the
day that you met that man. In fact, somebody said
that to me, you know when I launched the paperback
to a couple of weeks, was like, I'm sure you
(26:42):
rue the day you met that man. And I stopped
this person and I said, you know, actually this man
gave me the greatest gift in my life, and that
is my son, my minion, And so no, and I
and I think part of it is people didn't understand
what was happening. And you know, I only now years
later and we have a much greater appreciation for mental
(27:03):
health and addiction, and and you know, back then, only
certain like I felt like our friends kind of in
the creative world in Hollywood really understood what was happening.
And you know, but in politics, I mean to have
the first what I argue was sort of twitter sex scandal.
It was unheard of back then. People don't know what
to do. And so we think also with him, if
I made dis interjected with him that the thing is
(27:24):
that we have so few people now in my estimation,
who are really really special in politics, and your former
husband was somebody who people have a lot of belief
in him. He was you know, at one point, the
chapter about Anthony was called Icarus because he was I mean,
he really was really smart, really and as you said,
you know, he was unique. He was a unicorn in
(27:46):
a way that he was progressive, he was feisty, he
was smart, he understood the policy, but more than that,
he had solutions. And you know, until he ran for
mayor in two thousand and thirteen and obviously lost. He'd
never lost an election before two to that point. And
so to not then understand the behavior, which I did not,
alt like I'm being very on, I did not as
somebody who grew up so disciplined and with such moderation,
(28:09):
you know, so you know, I just knock off this
behavior and not understanding that he had really fallen into
and you know, his all of this compulsiveness is really
kind of triggered by Facebook and Twitter that all had
just started last a couple of years and then just
just fall it. Really, it's a you know, talk about
another tragic I think he let down a lot of people,
not just you. He had people who really believed in
(28:31):
him because in the Democratic Party we just don't have
enough tough people. Now, you've been dealing with the political
press your entire professional career, and some of them have been,
you know, remarkably brutal and unfair. Who in your life
from the conservative media when you dealt with them, did
you respect and you're like that they covered her fairly? Wow?
(28:53):
That is a questions, as said, say that I don't
know the answer to. I'm not sure I could give
you a name off the top of my head. Isn't
that hard coming from But we lived I mean, but
we lived in a different you know how you've stumped me?
I mean, honestly, I can't. I think we were always
on guard. And to the point that you just made
(29:13):
about fake news versus you know, this notion of your
entitled to your you know, your own opinion, but not
your own facts. That's out the door now now, it's
sort of you know what is fact what is fiction?
And I struggle to come up with a single name
of somebody who I thought was very Look, we had
challenges with the New York Times, where there were stories
that were just filled with in accuracies. Whoma Aberdeen, if
(29:39):
you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure
to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back.
Whoma Abodeen ponders whether a political candidacy is in her future.
(30:10):
I'm Autlec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Whoma Aberdeen was vice chair of Hillary Clinton's two thousand
sixteen presidential campaign. After such an unexpected and painful loss,
I was curious what she thought it would take for
the United States to finally elect a female president. I
(30:31):
think this is a generational thing. I mean, I'm raising
a son, and I am raising my son not just
to respect women, but not fear their power. And I
think it's conscious and subconscious, this notion of when you
close your eyes and you see somebody who's in charge,
do you ever see it as a woman? No, you
see it as a man, and how do we change that?
And I think you and I are you know of
(30:51):
a generation that that's it's going to be very hard
to change. And it's proven an election over and over again.
I mean, look at this battle of Kafie Hokele going
through right now in New York. I mean it is
I guarantee you if she was not a woman, I'm
not sure she would it would be as neck and neck.
But it's women, and it's and this notion of ambition,
you know, the idea that people always look at us
(31:13):
whenever we are the victim, when we were in service
of I mean Hillary was always most popular when you know,
during impeachment in her husband's administration, and then when she
served Obama. In the minute she says I'm in her
approval numbers just go down significantly. In that thing. It
is the minute a woman is seen as being ambitious
for power or being in charge, that all of a sudden,
(31:37):
something subconsciously and this is not just men, this is
men and women subconsciously off in her head saying no, no, no, no,
that can happen women who still support the patriarchy. I
find that mesmerizing women who are enemies of candidacies like
Hillo bas and stuff with that. We would knock on
doors early on the primary, and women you know in
Iowa would say, I'm gonna caucus for Hillary. I'm gonna
caucus for Hillary. Wink wink, but you know, making sure
(32:00):
their husbands didn't here, and then sure enough on caucus
day they just did what their husbands were doing or
told them to do. Whatever it is. It's just it is.
It is a generational thing that we have to change.
Are you going to run? You know? Part of it, Well,
I haven't really what I people that's demographic idolize. Well.
(32:24):
I so this is my year of saying yes, I'm
doing all kinds of crazy things this year that I
would have never said yes to two years ago. For example,
I mean this, I'm doing interviews, I'm giving speeches, I'm
you know, I'm just exploring the world. I'm seeing things
and meeting people. I'm just doing things I would have
in the olden days. I don't have time for this.
(32:44):
I don't have time for social life. I don't have time.
You know, it's always about work, and now I'm just
you know, finding more time to all those things. So
I hate when I say, Okay, I'm definitely not running
for office. I don't see a path. I don't see
that I would. But I'm in this never say never,
but just I don't. I don't see it. I'm also
agnostic about You've never seen the path? Have you? The
(33:05):
woman that wanted to be Christian? I'm on poor one
that's in the Sliding Doors biography of Homopoty. You've never
seen the path? You were like me in the sense
of my whole life has been people who go a
B or C and also then go, which do I
really want a B or C? And the answer is
d something that wasn't even on the table eighteen months
(33:28):
And that's the train I got on. Well, that's the cliff.
You know, the book was originally the prolog was originally
called the cliff. I'm kind of standing on the precipice
of that cliff, and I chose to jump. And I
always envisioned that it was going to be really bad.
Jumping just meant hitting the ground, and how much pain
was that going to be? And it's an opportunity as well.
And this is just my opinion. I mean, I'm not
(33:49):
trying to give you advice here. I'm not trying to
concourage you to run for office, but the point is
is that it's an opportunity. Even if you lose, you
don't go into a think here to It's a chance
for you to put on the record what you believe
about this guy and this government. So two more quick things.
One is you're developing a television series based on your
memoir and you went ahead, and I can't believe you
wouldn't cast the unspeakably unattractive and untalented Frieda Pinto to
(34:11):
play you. I mean, what the hell are you thinking?
Freda Pinto is going to play you in the TV show.
I was stunned that she wanted to do it. You know,
I'm a big admirer of hers, But more than that,
I was and I met I met with a lot
of people, and I didn't know where. I had never
met her in all these years. But she got the book,
she got the story, she got the character. And I think,
while I'm gratified a lot of people have read the book,
(34:33):
I think a lot more people watch it on screen
and this if there is some sort of service or
interest in the book. I mean, I'm just beyond thrilled
that she's doing and I can't wait for so Now,
if we're going to end, I want you to read
that this is a letter. Tell tell us about this letter.
Where is this this? This is a note I found
(34:54):
just buried in my dad's papers years after he died.
And I thought it was a message, you know, from
the and and I think it was just something. You know,
he would scribble these notes down. And he had a
folder called Random Reflections, and this was from his random
reflections folder. And it's titled thought for the Day. As
an American, a Muslim, and as a member of a
(35:16):
fairly decent family, a commitment should be a commitment, whatever
the provocation. It should not influence you to act in
an unbecoming manner. You have to be fair, honest, and direct.
If you can't stand the heat, then, as Truman said,
get out of the kitchen. But your exit should be graceful, decent,
(35:38):
and above board. Let others do what they will. You
are responsible in the first instance, to yourself, your principles
and values, and ultimately to God. Yeahweh Allah, your loving father.
And I feel as though this was a note that
(35:58):
he left for us to remind us what's important about
how to walk through this earth. And you've lived that.
I've tried to you live that, and I want you
to know. See, the thing about you is I'm gonna
end with the blessing and the curse, the sweet and
the sour, and that is you are a very special
and gifted person. But of course with that comes tremendous
(36:18):
burdens as well, and tremendous demands. It's a blessing and
a curse. You have a lot of burdens on you.
This is choking me up here, and you have and
when it comes a burden. But we hope we're going
to see more of this woman that's in this book.
I want to see. I can't wait to see what
she's going to do well. From your lips to God's ears,
(36:40):
I just I'm so I'm excited, thrilled, terrified, all those things.
But I'm continuing why you're saying, s Huma Aberdeen. This
episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen so Zach McNeice and Maureen Hoban.
(37:03):
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from my Heart Radio. The saying used to be
behind every great man is a great woman, But considering
my guest today, perhaps that should read behind every great
woman is a great woman. Huma Aberdeen is someone who
(00:24):
has spent her entire career in public service. Her work
with Hillary Rodham Clinton began as a young aide in
the First Lady's office, then as a senior adviser to
the Senator, deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State,
and now as her chief of staff. Aberdeen's decades of
(00:46):
collaboration with Clinton bring to mind Richard Nixon's farewell speech
to his White House staff, who noted, quote, this house
has a great heart, and that heart comes from those
who serve now. Whoma Aberdeen has written an intimate and
revealing best selling memoir on her life, entitled Both And.
(01:07):
The book covers her time working in government as well
as her personal struggles, including a very public divorce from
former Congressman Anthony Weiner. With such a substantial career in politics,
I wanted to know if Aberdeen's upbringing is what set
her on the path to where she is today. My
mother is a sociologist. My father studied American civilization, which
(01:31):
that's one of the reasons he ended up at Penn.
They don't really teach it or have that course in
many universities now. Yeah, and then they they're from two
countries that were at war, and so they decided they
got asylum here and moved to Michigan and they my
dad taught at Western Michigan. My mom taught at Kalamazoo College.
How long were they living here before you were born
or had you been born? I was born here. I
was born here, and when I was to my and
(01:53):
we thought we were going to say here forever. I
I actually I have this whole thing in my life
about sliding doors. It's not maybe very healthy, but like
what if? What if? What if? And I've often thought
about what my life would have been like if I
had lived that Midwestern life, which I almost did. But
when I was to my dad was diagnosed with basically,
you know, terminal illness. He was renal failure and his
(02:14):
doctor said, you know, you have five to ten years
and get your affairs in order. How long did he
live after the diagnosis. Well, it's amazing that doctor was
exactly right. His kidneys survived ten years to the day
they failed. And it's one of the first lines I've
wrote in my book. My dad was told he was dying.
I don't know if I ever want to see that doctor.
It was amazing, I mean made, but the difference between
nineteen seventy seven in Kalamazoo, Michigan and thankfully nine years
(02:38):
later the possibility of getting on the transplant list became,
you know, something real, which only happened because my mother
was so tenacious. So he then went on dialysis. So
he lived till I was seventeen and when did you
go over there? So two months after his diagnosis that
my parents had an option to take a sabbatical and
their choice was either Italy or Saudi Arabia. And the interestingly,
(03:03):
they had always decided. They had always thought they would
go to Italy. They thought it would be this great adventure.
They'd go to Italy. And then my father gets this
diagnosis and he thought, you know, I want to teach
my children about their culture, about their faith. Were a
Muslim family, it seemed like more of an interesting and
it was like, you know, just a year. So they said,
why don't we do? Saudi was definitely the hardest choice.
My mother actually said, when you know, my father said
(03:25):
let's go to Saudi, She's like, and I was too.
She says, they even have diapers in that country. And
I think about how intrepid they where they landed. They
didn't speak the language. My mother all of a sudden
had to veil her something in Italy, Saudi Arabia Italy.
I think they decided that, you know, there they could.
It was more of a challenge, and I think they
(03:45):
liked that. My mother taught herself Arabic to teach her students.
Then after a year they actually decided to come back
and then come back, and that was, you know, forty
four years ago. They kept going to My mother taught sociology,
and my dad, you know, arted very early on. He
taught a few years, but very early on he open
to foundation. And that's actually one of the reasons. Even
(04:06):
though the foundation was based in London, but it was
a foundation that produced an academic journal that studied the
condition of Muslims who lived as minorities around the world.
And my dad's expertise was actually in Russia. Well back
then it was the USSR, the Soviet Union, and and
it was his You know, I often say this, you know,
my father was really prescient about a lot of these issues.
He basically said, look, if we don't figure out as
(04:28):
Muslims how to live in the world with the rise
of the West, we're gonna have problems. And sure enough
he predicted Bosni I predicted so much of what where
now this these convulsions that we have. And in part
his theory was, look, if you are practicing Muslim wherever
you come from in the Arab world or you know,
(04:48):
through the Muslim world, and you choose to live in
the West, you cannot go there and live in your
own little bubble. That's just not You're not. You have
to You're gonna go and live in France. You need
to become French. And also you can do exactly and
then and that was the way he thought that we
could succeed in this world. And I think he was right,
seeing certainly what's happened. So he was working specifically in
(05:11):
what during those ten years when he was over there,
just a multitude of things, a multitude of things. A
lot of his conversations were about interfaith dialogue. So we
would like. We spent one summer in Greece, living in
a monastery at a conference about you know, Islamic, Christian, Jewish,
you know, dialogue, and we'd sit at the table and
and people, a lot of Muslims and certainly Arabs and
(05:32):
people who lived in our world said why why do
you do this? Why do you go and you know?
And they say, you know, they would tease him and say,
why do you go have conversations? These provocative conversations were
even the angels fear to tread. Why do you go
have these? You know, very contentious? And is because I
want to understand and I want to know more about
(05:52):
these other faiths and beliefs and you know kind of
syst political systems. And I don't have any doubt in
my own but leafs, but I want to learn more.
And I think we probably have more in common than
we realize. Nope, For you other than when you were
maybe were moving about and you mentioned Greece, for one,
did you go to one school or did you concentrate
in just a handful of schools when you were there?
(06:13):
Where did you go to school? High school? I went
to international school based on a British curriculum that my
father and a few of the other professors of the university.
Because this was all brand new back in seven when
we moved there, and you mentioned the oil money. Sure
there was all of this new wealth, all these amazing
kind of figuring out how much wealth. They were just
(06:33):
figuring out how much wealth, and they were building universities
and building hospitals. But they didn't have the talent. That's
why so much of this talent was imported at the time,
and my parents came in as part of that important
talent exactly right. And so they helped start the school.
And so I was a British school and it was international.
It was actually one of the best things out like that,
I think, to be exposed to so many different cultures
(06:54):
and languages and people from all over the world. It
made me comfortable. Weywhere and I think that was a
big part of it, was, you know, being surrounded by
people who weren't like me. So when you I mean
for Americans today, you know, the Saudi Arabia is now
a concentration of pilots who flew from nine eleven. It's
(07:16):
opec and manipulation of oil prices, it's Kaso I'm talking
about the contemporary American view of that country. I mean,
the United States certainly has a lot of blood on
its hands for things that it's done. I'm not mentioning
that to condemn the Saudis, but the United States is
guilty of the exact same things during its history as well.
But set aside that. Back when you were there, what
(07:38):
was your Saudi Arabia? What was your experience of the
culture and the people? How do they strike you? You know?
One of the very first things that really hit home
when I moved to the United States, so I didn't
come back. So I grew up in Saudi Arabia and
I didn't live in the United States until I came
to university. One of the things I missed immediately is
this sense of community. And we call it, you know,
(07:59):
in the Muslim world, we call it the oma. And
the oma is the ever present community, which is you're
never alone. So I tell stories in the book about
how you know, you go to a party and you say,
I like your shirt, and you know, the next thing
you know, that shirt is sent to your house the
next day. This notion of there's always you know, a
seat at the table for more people, there's always food
to share, You're always in a very kind of secure environment,
(08:22):
and that is something I kind of took for granted
when I was growing up there. In fact, I tell
the story about when my father finally got his transplant
in and he had to leave immediately to go to
the United States, to New York for his transplant operation,
and one of our very very close Saudi friends called
my mother and said, should we take the girls and
me and my siblings. You know, I was, you know, nine,
My sister was e love and my younger sister was four.
(08:46):
I'm my brother, so four of us total and I
and my mother, and we were already scared of all
this change. My so our friends call and said, why
don't the girls move in with us, you know, while
you guys are in the midst of this transplant operation.
And I remember we were also scared. We said my mom, no, no, no,
we don't want to go. So on the phone she
makes up this excuse and she says, oh, you know,
the kids have their exams and their desks and their
bookcases are here, so we're okay. The next morning, there's
(09:08):
a knock on our door and it's a moving company.
And my mother's like, what are you doing here? And
they're like, oh, we're here to something about books, and
you know, bookshelves and desks were moving, and sure enough
they moved the furniture into this family friends home. We
lived with them while while my parents were in the
United States. It was probably about six weeks if I
remember correctly, maybe maybe two months. But this idea again
(09:30):
of feeling, so when you leave and you come to
the United States, and if you had a British centric
or British fabric in the educational thing over there, but
why did you come back to the U S. Could
you say, I'm an American and I want to be educated,
why don't you go to England to go to school?
Well I had that choice. Actually, my older brother and
(09:51):
sister chose England. And I always wanted to come to
the United States. You know, back when I was growing
up in Saudi, everything that was sort of aspiration, everything
that was considered the best was American. You know that
that is you know, back then America did seem like
it and it was the sole super power in the world.
(10:11):
Absolutely felt like it was a paradise. And so we'd
come here for the summers we would stock up on
all the latest magazines. We would have these bootleg movies
that we would take back, all the Tom Cruise movies
and you know, like Beverly Hills Night number one everywhere.
He was certainly number one, you know back then, and
Ralph Macchio and the Karate Kid. I'm thinking of like
(10:33):
all of these, you know, and everything and I and
I write about this. You know, my parents always raised
us and look, you're American and your Muslim, and in
part because they came from two countries that were at war,
so they didn't try to put the burden of that
identity that you have to choose whether you're Indian or
Pakistani or even Saudi, you know, given the fact that
we lived there and you know, felt a deep connection
(10:53):
to it. You're an American and you're a Muslim. And
so I remember, we would go all over the world.
And that was one of the great beauties of having
parents who are academics at Summer's off was one of
the also the great advantages of being a university professor
there because my parents, in the early years, in fact,
I don't think I'd ever shared this, they would get
four first class tickets every summer to go wherever, and
(11:14):
so we would, you know, take these tickets and we
would go to Europe and Asia, and in part because
my father was sick and he wanted to explore the world.
He and he didn't know how much time there's benefits
to having been These were secrets from us. We did
not know how ill he was. You know, I tell
this story about you know, my father was barely a
hundred pounds, and to me, he was a superhero. You know,
(11:35):
he was the greatest, strongest man on the planet. But
he would every spring you would say, Okay, where do
you want to go this year? And he was like, okay,
let's do Asia. And he said, okay. We'd pull out
a map and we'd have to call the airlines back
then wherever he wherever, wherever, you know, wherever, and we
would be wherever we voted on and then we'd have
to help planet. And my mom did all the schlopping
(11:55):
and all the lifting, and you know, my father would
be wheeled around in a wheelchair. But it was having
Number one, it was a way for us to spend
time together. And number two, it was a way to
explore the world. And I remember my mother tells the
story of how we would land in the middle of
nowhere sometimes in Shannon, Ireland, you know, on our way
to you know, re feel somewhere and I would get
up and turn to my mother and say, is it
America yet? And I have a whole chapter in my book.
(12:17):
I mean that is what, you know, the excitement, the
feeling that you know, ice cream running down my hands.
You know, when we visited our family and Elmhurst Queen's,
it was paradise. It was heaven. You could go anywhere
in the world, and landing in JFK was the highlights.
So when you came to the US, t when you
return to the US to go to college, you go
and you go into politics, but you study journalism as
(12:40):
a major and policize the minor. Did you most people,
I know? My point is that they go to g
W for one thing only. They don't go there to
play the violin. They don't there to get a scholarship
for some sport they play. They go there they got
politics in their blood. Was that, you know I was.
I went to g W to become Christian. I'm on poor.
The journalism was the goal. It was And you know,
(13:03):
I say this all the time now when I especially
when I meet younger women. I was sitting on the
floor of our house and watch this brand new thing
in Saudi Arabia and then this is the you know,
Operation Desert Storm, Persian Gulf War, and turn on this
brand new thing called CNN International, and I see this
woman and she was brilliant, and she was fearless. I
(13:25):
mean it was I looked at her and she looked
like me. She looked like she came from my part
of the world, and she gave this amorphous you know,
I went from everything I think when I was younger.
You know, my dad, I think always thought I was
going to be a writer. He would, you know, say
that to me, look right, right right. I was a
voracious reader. I went through a prad where I thought
I wanted to be a lawyer. I was really very dramatic.
(13:45):
People would come to our house and I would say,
do you want to listen to my new poem? And
my siblings would roll their eyes. Like I was a
performer growing up, had a lot of sort of confidence.
I loved to perform, So I think I went through
the period of like I want to be an actor.
I want to be a singer. I want to be
out there and I wanted to be a ballerie. How
you ended up, but we're gonna get there. I went
through all these different phases, but then and I must
have been no. I was fifteen. I saw her and
(14:06):
I said that said, that is who I want to be.
And I was singularly focused on being her. And that
is why I applied to g W and I journalism,
and I got my degree in journalists graduate degree. I
did not get a graduate of one of my regrets,
but I did not get a graduated. When you end,
when you do the four years at g W, and
you get a degree in journalism. His journalism still the
(14:26):
goal of because my junior year, my friend Ronnie th
Timbert came to me and said, listen, I've got this
great internship at the White House. I'm interning from Mike McCurry,
who was then the White House Press secretary. And she
actually said to me, says, you know, when you watch
anybody giving a you know, a statement from that podium
in the in the press room, our office is right behind.
And I thought, oh my god, how better to become
(14:48):
Christ than being behind that wall. But you know, chance
you know, fate, luck, whatever it was. I got accepted.
So my friend Ronnie picks up the internship application for me,
I think basically filled it out for me. I gave
them my you know, the essays that I used to
apply to g W sent it in. Was accepted, but
I wasn't put in the press office. I was put
(15:10):
in the first Ladies policy office. Where did you first
lay eyes on hillerby Clinton? And you actually talked to
her and shook her hand? And so she doesn't she
doesn't remember this. There's no reason she'd remember this. But
the first time I laid eyes on her and shook
her hand was the night of Bill Clinton's re election.
(15:30):
So I was a White House intern and they, you know,
the d n C had made accommodations that if interns
wanted to go on this charter plane at the last minute,
too little Rock Arkansas for election night talk about politics
on steroids. I had now alec. I wasn't registered to vote.
I had never. I mean, I grew up in a
country that was a monarchy. Obviously there was no so
(15:51):
you know, I went from zero to a thousand, and
so I get on this plane with a bunch of
interns we had to pay, you know, right, a check
for I think two or fifty dollars for our ticket
Land and Little Rock. We're wandering around outside and I'm
just kind of just in awe. I look up and
there's Wolf Blitzer. I look up. There's intoxicating So I
you know, my plan had a little Rock. The elections
(16:14):
called for Bill Clinton and the Energy and the Electricity,
and they come out on stage and then they come
down to work a rope line, and I was four
or five people deep in and I remember leaning forward
through the crowd and shaking her hand, and she looked
right at me and she said thank you. And I
and I have to tell you, I can't even count
the number of rope lines I have walked with Hillary
(16:34):
Clinton since then. But I remember that moment. I remember
how it felt, I remember how important it felt. I
remember that I felt like I made this connection. And
so every time somebody wouldn't say to me, I just
want to say a lot, I want to shake her hand.
I got it because I remember that first moment, and
when for some people it's a one, it really is
a once in a lifetime to meet a president or
a first lady. Was really exciting Whoma Abodeen. If you
(16:59):
enjoy conversations with accomplished women in politics, check out my
episode with United States Congresswoman Katie Porter. You know, I
think there is an attitude that you know, sort of
people are entitled to have Republican representation. Here. What they're
entitled to is good representation, right, people who listen to them,
people who fight for them, people who are not corrupt,
(17:22):
and that can come in your Democratic or Republican forms.
To hear more of my conversation with Katie Porter, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Whoma
Aberdeen shares the tremendous impact of Hillary Clinton's two thousand
and sixteen election. Lass. Hi'm Alec Baldwin, and you were
(17:55):
listening to Here's the Thing. Whoma Aberdeen is fiercely intelligent, warm,
and impeccably credentialed. While surely anyone would be lucky to
employ her, I was curious why she stayed in the
Clinton camp for twenty six years. You know, I'm getting
emotional because I'm sitting at this table. She sat where
you're sitting right now to do my first podcast interview
(18:18):
after the book came out, and she's one of the
people who really encouraged me to write my story that wound,
to some degree does not go away. I think it
is such a travesty and a loss for this century tragedy.
I agree with you that she was not president in
two thousand and sixteen, and how different our country and
the world would have been, and it is their loss.
(18:38):
And to see how politics has descended into this sort
of really a cult of personality. I was having this
conversation with a friend the other day and he was like,
it's almost like you need to be a celebrity, to
even a rich celebrity, to even you know, run for
office and take all that apart. You know, you actually
have asked me something no one's ever asked me. I
(18:59):
kind of fell into politics to write. I mean, I
wanted to be generalist, fell into politics. But why. It's
because when I started being in the orbit of Bill
and Hillary Clinton, forget who they were, that he was
the most you know, the leader of the free world.
She was the most powerful woman in the world. For them,
it was all about the mission and the service and
how do I make I know it sounds cliche and
it sounds cheesy, but there are people who get up
(19:21):
every single day and say, how do I make other
people's lives better? And I think of all the things
that I have done, there's not a space I have been,
a place I have been. There isn't a person I
haven't met that I want to meet. And it still
does not feel the way it feels when you're out
on a campaign, when you're in government and feel and
know that you can make somebody's life better than you
(19:41):
can do something and doing the right thing, and that
is something I learned from her, and to see her
do it part of her thing. As you well know,
She's never really thought it was about her. And I
think a lot of politicians and maybe even people in
your line of work, they get into it. There's some
degree of whether it's narcissism or some degree of you know,
trying to prove one his own value. But she just
she just wants to do the work. And I always said,
(20:04):
the day I got up and she wasn't doing something interesting,
or I didn't want to go to work, or I
didn't want to talk to her, I would quit. And
and the thing that is so insane to me is
that after that election which broke us, I mean I
write about it in and there are days that it
comes back and you know, it haunts me. It hurts
like it hurts like physically. I was around her this summer,
Liz Robbins, we went to that dinner with listen, this
(20:26):
is my friend for our listeners who she has a
dinner and Bill is there a couple of summers ago.
Bill is lecturing us on North Korea. And he's talking
about now when the President of the United States is
telling you what he wants you to know, like a
little digest, a little synopsis about North Korean policy, you
are I don't need to eat forget about dinner. And
Liz Robbins is behind his back. She's behind built that
(20:50):
going like this and cutting her throat like this, going
you gotta tum to stop. Dinner is ready, and I'm
looking at like a yeah, I'm gonna tell Bill to
stop talking about North Korea. And when you're with him,
you get a civics lesson. You had a political history lesson,
and we did with her the same thing. But she's
just I don't know what this inefftable thing in my
business was. She just she's like Spencer Tracy. She's just
(21:12):
so decent. She has a few radical empathy number one,
number two, she has this she has like she says,
this problem solving, Jean, you know, I think so much
of it, and you know, people, and she's motivated really
by not anything else. I don't think she cares about
being rich and famous. I don't think she's ever cared
about that. But I think knowing about her own mother's
(21:32):
her own mother had a very very difficult childhood, was
basically abandoned by her parents. And you know, her victory
speech in two thousand sixteen, she was going to end
with this story about She tells the story about her
mother who was put on a train cross country. Her
parents didn't want her and her little sister, So these
two little girls under ten put on a train to
go cross country to move in with her their grandparents,
(21:55):
who also didn't really want them. And she said, you know,
she imagined being on the train, sitting next to her
mother and saying, it's going to be okay. You're gonna
be okay, and you're gonna grow up and you're gonna
have a daughter, and she will be the first woman
president United States. And in the end, and to remind people,
(22:23):
I also like to remind people when people say, why
couldn't you guys, why didn't you guys have the energy
and sort of why didn't you have all this energy
behind you? And I'd like to remind people that three
million people more than her opponent voted for her, that
she did have the energy and enthusiasm and you know
the forces. I do believe she writ one in two
thousand and sixteen, and she did win in two You know,
(22:43):
one of the things that you and she have in common,
you were both people who your husband let you down.
That's my way of putting it. Your husband's let you down.
And in your case, you overcome that. You deal with
that in your way, and you're very honest about it
in the book, and you keep going. Crisis management has
(23:05):
been a fundamental pillar of your career. You've worked with
people who have been in crisis, and Hilary Clinton is
someone who has been attacked in a way that is
as ugly and so with you professionally with the Clintons
for many years. In your personal life, a lot of
crisis management for you. What prepared you for that? I
(23:25):
think my childhood. I think the way I was raised,
the people who raised me, the you know, whether it
was conscious or subconscious. I mean this idea that I
had a mother who is a superhero, you know who.
My father was throwing up after his dialysis sessions and
she was in the bathroom cleaning him up, and you know,
propping him up and putting him at the very real
I mean, these were very and you know, living in
(23:46):
Saudi Arabia, living in a different cultures, living you know,
sometimes in very frustrating moments, and always thinking all right,
tomorrow is gonna be better. Tomorrow is gonna be better.
And then obviously dealing with my father's death that was hard.
You know, I was in denial for a while. It
took two years from me to actually say out loud
to people my father's dad. I was basically just you know.
So I think that to some extent, there was crisis
(24:08):
all around me kind of growing up, and I figured
out how to live and dan and not only live
through it, my mother tells, and move on. I mean,
my my mother says, my father's favorite memory from my
childhood is when I would come out of school. I
would skip out of school and he would call me
his gazelle. It's one of the reasons I share in
the book this story about the first time I staff
Hillary and her speech has forgotten in the car and
(24:29):
she calls me on to stage and I'm kid, I'm
barely twenty one, don't have the speech. And that was
the moment, the moment where you basically either fall apart
or say I got it. I can fix this. And
I fixed it in that moment. That was twenty six
years ago, and I have always figured it out, and
I actually think I have figured out that I'm pretty
good at it. And I don't know if that's like
a marketable skill anywhere outside of politics. I'm working on
(24:51):
that right now, but it's experience. Whose idea was the book?
The book was Anna Winter's idea. No, yes, yes. It
was ten days after the election. I didn't want to
get out of bed, and she says, let's go to dinner,
and we go to the theater and then go to dinner.
And I was it was at the public and it
was Cheryl Strait's Tiny Beautiful Things, and and cried and cried,
(25:16):
and then we go to dinner and she says, I
know what you should do. You should write your story.
It's a great story. And I said, no, it's not
I'm not going to do it. And the next day
I go to Hillary and tell Hillary and I said,
She's like, brilliant idea, you should do. It's a good story.
I was really in denial. It was only when I
went to lunch with a man getting advice on what
to do next to my life, and told him most
some people think I should write my book. And he
was like, why would you do that? And I told
(25:37):
people have suggested shielding. What what does he do for
a living? He's also a crisis management consultant and to
an extent, I mean, you know, he's in sort of
the business of you know, politics and communications and um.
And he says, listen, I just don't think you could
ever fully explain why Hillary lost. And I don't think
anyone wants to read any more about all that scandal.
(25:59):
And it was when he used that word scandal. I
walked out of that restaurant and I was writing the book.
It was somebody telling me the story was unworthy. That
made me right. And when I when I started right,
it just poured, it poured out of me. I loved, loved,
loved the writing process. And you know, and look, because
you asked about Anthony and my ex husband letting me down,
which he did. He was on this podcast. He was
(26:21):
on this podcast. Yeah, that's right, he was. And you
know when the first husband and wife, a couple of
people have I should have brought him along. We're we're
not talking about doing some interviews together because people cannot.
Are still in shock. And I get stopped on the
street all the time saying, I'm sure you rue the
day that you met that man. In fact, somebody said
that to me, you know when I launched the paperback
to a couple of weeks, was like, I'm sure you
(26:42):
rue the day you met that man. And I stopped
this person and I said, you know, actually this man
gave me the greatest gift in my life, and that
is my son, my minion, And so no, and I
and I think part of it is people didn't understand
what was happening. And you know, I only now years
later and we have a much greater appreciation for mental
(27:03):
health and addiction, and and you know, back then, only
certain like I felt like our friends kind of in
the creative world in Hollywood really understood what was happening.
And you know, but in politics, I mean to have
the first what I argue was sort of twitter sex scandal.
It was unheard of back then. People don't know what
to do. And so we think also with him, if
I made dis interjected with him that the thing is
(27:24):
that we have so few people now in my estimation,
who are really really special in politics, and your former
husband was somebody who people have a lot of belief
in him. He was you know, at one point, the
chapter about Anthony was called Icarus because he was I mean,
he really was really smart, really and as you said,
you know, he was unique. He was a unicorn in
(27:46):
a way that he was progressive, he was feisty, he
was smart, he understood the policy, but more than that,
he had solutions. And you know, until he ran for
mayor in two thousand and thirteen and obviously lost. He'd
never lost an election before two to that point. And
so to not then understand the behavior, which I did not,
alt like I'm being very on, I did not as
somebody who grew up so disciplined and with such moderation,
(28:09):
you know, so you know, I just knock off this
behavior and not understanding that he had really fallen into
and you know, his all of this compulsiveness is really
kind of triggered by Facebook and Twitter that all had
just started last a couple of years and then just
just fall it. Really, it's a you know, talk about
another tragic I think he let down a lot of people,
not just you. He had people who really believed in
(28:31):
him because in the Democratic Party we just don't have
enough tough people. Now, you've been dealing with the political
press your entire professional career, and some of them have been,
you know, remarkably brutal and unfair. Who in your life
from the conservative media when you dealt with them, did
you respect and you're like that they covered her fairly? Wow?
(28:53):
That is a questions, as said, say that I don't
know the answer to. I'm not sure I could give
you a name off the top of my head. Isn't
that hard coming from But we lived I mean, but
we lived in a different you know how you've stumped me?
I mean, honestly, I can't. I think we were always
on guard. And to the point that you just made
(29:13):
about fake news versus you know, this notion of your
entitled to your you know, your own opinion, but not
your own facts. That's out the door now now, it's
sort of you know what is fact what is fiction?
And I struggle to come up with a single name
of somebody who I thought was very Look, we had
challenges with the New York Times, where there were stories
that were just filled with in accuracies. Whoma Aberdeen, if
(29:39):
you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure
to follow Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app,
Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back.
Whoma Abodeen ponders whether a political candidacy is in her future.
(30:10):
I'm Autlec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Whoma Aberdeen was vice chair of Hillary Clinton's two thousand
sixteen presidential campaign. After such an unexpected and painful loss,
I was curious what she thought it would take for
the United States to finally elect a female president. I
(30:31):
think this is a generational thing. I mean, I'm raising
a son, and I am raising my son not just
to respect women, but not fear their power. And I
think it's conscious and subconscious, this notion of when you
close your eyes and you see somebody who's in charge,
do you ever see it as a woman? No, you
see it as a man, and how do we change that?
And I think you and I are you know of
(30:51):
a generation that that's it's going to be very hard
to change. And it's proven an election over and over again.
I mean, look at this battle of Kafie Hokele going
through right now in New York. I mean it is
I guarantee you if she was not a woman, I'm
not sure she would it would be as neck and neck.
But it's women, and it's and this notion of ambition,
you know, the idea that people always look at us
(31:13):
whenever we are the victim, when we were in service
of I mean Hillary was always most popular when you know,
during impeachment in her husband's administration, and then when she
served Obama. In the minute she says I'm in her
approval numbers just go down significantly. In that thing. It
is the minute a woman is seen as being ambitious
for power or being in charge, that all of a sudden,
(31:37):
something subconsciously and this is not just men, this is
men and women subconsciously off in her head saying no, no, no, no,
that can happen women who still support the patriarchy. I
find that mesmerizing women who are enemies of candidacies like
Hillo bas and stuff with that. We would knock on
doors early on the primary, and women you know in
Iowa would say, I'm gonna caucus for Hillary. I'm gonna
caucus for Hillary. Wink wink, but you know, making sure
(32:00):
their husbands didn't here, and then sure enough on caucus
day they just did what their husbands were doing or
told them to do. Whatever it is. It's just it is.
It is a generational thing that we have to change.
Are you going to run? You know? Part of it, Well,
I haven't really what I people that's demographic idolize. Well.
(32:24):
I so this is my year of saying yes, I'm
doing all kinds of crazy things this year that I
would have never said yes to two years ago. For example,
I mean this, I'm doing interviews, I'm giving speeches, I'm
you know, I'm just exploring the world. I'm seeing things
and meeting people. I'm just doing things I would have
in the olden days. I don't have time for this.
(32:44):
I don't have time for social life. I don't have time.
You know, it's always about work, and now I'm just
you know, finding more time to all those things. So
I hate when I say, Okay, I'm definitely not running
for office. I don't see a path. I don't see
that I would. But I'm in this never say never,
but just I don't. I don't see it. I'm also
agnostic about You've never seen the path? Have you? The
(33:05):
woman that wanted to be Christian? I'm on poor one
that's in the Sliding Doors biography of Homopoty. You've never
seen the path? You were like me in the sense
of my whole life has been people who go a
B or C and also then go, which do I
really want a B or C? And the answer is
d something that wasn't even on the table eighteen months
(33:28):
And that's the train I got on. Well, that's the cliff.
You know, the book was originally the prolog was originally
called the cliff. I'm kind of standing on the precipice
of that cliff, and I chose to jump. And I
always envisioned that it was going to be really bad.
Jumping just meant hitting the ground, and how much pain
was that going to be? And it's an opportunity as well.
And this is just my opinion. I mean, I'm not
(33:49):
trying to give you advice here. I'm not trying to
concourage you to run for office, but the point is
is that it's an opportunity. Even if you lose, you
don't go into a think here to It's a chance
for you to put on the record what you believe
about this guy and this government. So two more quick things.
One is you're developing a television series based on your
memoir and you went ahead, and I can't believe you
wouldn't cast the unspeakably unattractive and untalented Frieda Pinto to
(34:11):
play you. I mean, what the hell are you thinking?
Freda Pinto is going to play you in the TV show.
I was stunned that she wanted to do it. You know,
I'm a big admirer of hers, But more than that,
I was and I met I met with a lot
of people, and I didn't know where. I had never
met her in all these years. But she got the book,
she got the story, she got the character. And I think,
while I'm gratified a lot of people have read the book,
(34:33):
I think a lot more people watch it on screen
and this if there is some sort of service or
interest in the book. I mean, I'm just beyond thrilled
that she's doing and I can't wait for so Now,
if we're going to end, I want you to read
that this is a letter. Tell tell us about this letter.
Where is this this? This is a note I found
(34:54):
just buried in my dad's papers years after he died.
And I thought it was a message, you know, from
the and and I think it was just something. You know,
he would scribble these notes down. And he had a
folder called Random Reflections, and this was from his random
reflections folder. And it's titled thought for the Day. As
an American, a Muslim, and as a member of a
(35:16):
fairly decent family, a commitment should be a commitment, whatever
the provocation. It should not influence you to act in
an unbecoming manner. You have to be fair, honest, and direct.
If you can't stand the heat, then, as Truman said,
get out of the kitchen. But your exit should be graceful, decent,
(35:38):
and above board. Let others do what they will. You
are responsible in the first instance, to yourself, your principles
and values, and ultimately to God. Yeahweh Allah, your loving father.
And I feel as though this was a note that
(35:58):
he left for us to remind us what's important about
how to walk through this earth. And you've lived that.
I've tried to you live that, and I want you
to know. See, the thing about you is I'm gonna
end with the blessing and the curse, the sweet and
the sour, and that is you are a very special
and gifted person. But of course with that comes tremendous
(36:18):
burdens as well, and tremendous demands. It's a blessing and
a curse. You have a lot of burdens on you.
This is choking me up here, and you have and
when it comes a burden. But we hope we're going
to see more of this woman that's in this book.
I want to see. I can't wait to see what
she's going to do well. From your lips to God's ears,
(36:40):
I just I'm so I'm excited, thrilled, terrified, all those things.
But I'm continuing why you're saying, s Huma Aberdeen. This
episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
We're produced by Kathleen so Zach McNeice and Maureen Hoban.
(37:03):
Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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