The.Howard.Stern.Show.2019.12.04.Hillary.Clinton.Part.1.720p.WEBR...

Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 1280x720 29.97fps 3303kbps [V: Video Media Handler (h264 high L3.1, yuv420p, 1280x720, 3303 kb/s)]
Audio: AAC 48000Hz stereo 93kbps [A: Sound Media Handler (aac lc, 48000 Hz, stereo, 93 kb/s)]

Hillary Clinton didn’t win the presidency in 2016, but the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State learned quite a few lessons along the way. She made her Stern Show debut on Wednesday and opened up to Howard about a variety of subjects, from meeting Bill Clinton at Yale and encouraging President Obama to go after Osama bin Laden to the origins of the term “deep state” and what she believes awaits everyone after they die. Secretary Clinton also spoke candidly about the tribulations she endured during the last election as well as the advice she offered to every 2020 candidate who has bothered to seek her counsel.

“If you haven’t had your personal email stolen, it will be—but I bet it already has been, it’s banked somewhere—and they will use it to try and paint a picture of you that is totally untrue,” Hillary recounted telling the candidates. “Even if it’s nothing insidious, illegal, unethical … you can twist anything.”

The opposition’s dirty tricks wouldn’t end there, Clinton theorized. She warned candidates of everything from voter suppression tactics to the likely onslaught of fake news on social media.

“They’re going to lie about you repetitively on social media—particularly Facebook—and they’re going to target people who are susceptible to that,” Clinton said, explaining that after her own run she discovered many voters who cited Facebook as their primary news source had come to believe she was dying or had delivered arms to ISIS.

Hillary then sounded off on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently testified before Congress and said he wouldn’t change his platform’s policy on running misleading political ads. “For him to say, you know, ‘We’re not going to take down fake ads’ … is such an abdication of responsibility and I don’t understand what’s going through his head. I’ve heard him try to explain it. He doesn’t do a very good job,” she told Howard.

Secretary Clinton declined to endorse anyone specific in the 2020 primary but told Howard she’d have no trouble getting behind someone before next November: “I’ll support whomever the Democratic nominee is.”

“Why not support a candidate?” Howard wondered.

“I don’t want to get in the middle. It’s up to the voters to decide,” Hillary said.

The last time she let the voters decide was Nov. 8, 2016—they chose her by an overwhelming majority. Despite earning about three million more votes than Donald Trump in the general election, however, Clinton lost key battleground states like Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and was ultimately defeated.

Secretary Clinton didn’t shy away from talking to Howard about her 2016 campaign or the heartbreak she felt after losing such a hard-fought contest. She told Howard she was tested early on after several Republican colleagues she’d been friendly with in the U.S. Senate turned against as soon as she was named the Democratic nominee.

“There’s like a spectrum. You expect some of it,” she said. “Some of the Republicans I’ve served with never said a bad word about me, I’ve never said a bad word about them ... but then there are those who have fallen off the edge and have so changed their personality and, in my view, their politics.”

“Like a Lindsey Graham?” Howard asked, referring to the prominent Republican Senator from South Carolina who has emerged as one of President Trump’s staunchest defenders.

“Like a Lindsey Graham. Exactly,” she agreed.

“He was good company, he was funny, he was self-deprecating. He also believed in climate change back in those days,” she continued. “I saw him as somebody who had been working to figure out what he believed and how he could do things."

“Has he sold his soul to the devil?” Howard asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that. I think that’s a fair question, however,” Clinton said, lamenting the evolution of some of his positions in recent years. “I don’t know what happened to Lindsey Graham,” she continued, explaining he had once written her a nice tribute in Time magazine and now “it’s like he had a brain snatch.”