March 18, 2025 • 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.
Originally aired December 12, 2022
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
thing from iHeart 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 has
(00:24):
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 advisor to the Senator,
deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, and
now as her chief of staff. Abdeen's decades of collaboration
(00:46):
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. Huma Aberdeen has written an intimate and revealing
best selling memoir on her life, entitled Both And. The
(01:07):
book covers her time working in government as well as
her personal struggles, including a very public divorce from former
Congressman Anthony Weener. 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.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
My mother is a sociologist. My father studied American civilization,
which that's one of the reasons he ended up in
Penn They don't really teach it or have that course
in many universities now. Yeah, and then they they are
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.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
How long were they living here before you were born
or had you been born? I was you were born here.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was born here and when I was two, and
we thought we were going to say here forever. 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 too my dad was diagnosed with basically you know,
(02:12):
terminal illness. He was renal failure and his doctor said,
you know, you have five to ten years and get
your affairs in order. How long did he live after
the diagnosed, 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 wrote in
my book. My dad was told he was dying.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So I don't know if I ever want to see
that doctor.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It was amazing, I mean amaze. But the difference between
nineteen seventy seven in Kalamazoo, Michigan and thankfully nine years 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.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Seventeen, and when did you go over there?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So two months after his diagnosis, my parents had an
option to take a sabbatical and their choice was either
Italy or Saudi Arabia. And then well, interestingly, 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
(03:12):
about their culture, about their faith. We're a Muslim family.
It seemed like more of an interesting and it was,
you know, just a year. So they said, why don't
we do Saudi. It was definitely the hardest choice. My
mother actually said, when you know, my father said 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 were. They landed, they didn't speak
(03:33):
the language. My mother all of a sudden had to
veil herself actually.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Italy, Saudi Arabia, Italy.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I think they decided that, you know, there they could.
It was more of a challenge, and I think they
liked that. My mother taught herself Arabic to teach her students,
and 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 teach. My
mother taught sociology, and my dad, you know, he arted
(04:00):
very early on. He he taught a few years been
very early on. He opened a foundation. And that's actually
one of the reasons. Even 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 it was his You know, I
(04:22):
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 Muslims how to live
in the world with the rise of the West, we're
going to have problems. And sure enough he predicted Bosni
I predicted so much of what we're now, this these
convulsions that we have. And in part his theory was, look,
(04:43):
if you are practicing Muslim wherever you come from in
the Arab world or you know, 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 going to
go and live in France. You need to become French.
And also you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Can do as the Romans do exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So he was working specifically in what during those ten
years when he was over there, just a multitude of.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Things, a multitude of things. A lot of his conversations
were about interfaith dialogue. So we would like we spend
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 people, a lot
of Muslims and certainly Arabs and people who lived in
our world said why why do you do this? Why
(05:35):
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 where even the angels fear
to tread. Why do you go have these? You know,
very contentious? And he says, because I want to understand
and I want to know more about these other faiths
and beliefs and you know kind of cis political systems.
(05:57):
And I don't have any doubt in my own butlo,
but I want to learn more. And I think we
probably have more in common than we realized now.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
For you, other than when you were maybe moving about
and you mentioned Greece, for one, did you go to
one school or did you concentrate on just a handful
of schools when you were there? Where'd you go to school?
Of high school?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I went to an 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 nineteen seventy seven when we moved there. And
you mentioned the oil money. Sure there was all of
this new wealth, all these amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Just figuring out how much wealth.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They were just 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 imported 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 ALEC that I think, to be exposed
to so many different cultures and languages and people from
(06:56):
all over the world. It made me comfortable everywhere, and
I think that was a big part of it, was,
you know, being surrounded by people who weren't like me.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So when you I mean for Americans today, you know,
Saudi Arabia is now a concentration of pilots who flew
for nine to eleven. It's opek and a manipulation of
oil prices. It's koshoji. 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
(07:28):
that it's done. I'm not mentioning that to condemn the Saudis.
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 was your Saudi Arabia? What
was your experience of the culture and the people. How
do they strike you?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You know? One of the very first things that really
hit home when I moved to the United States in
nineteen ninety three, 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 in nineteen
ninety three. One of the things I missed immediately is
this sense of community. And we call it, you know,
in the Muslim world, we call it the oma, and
the omah is the ever present community, which is you're
(08:04):
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,
and that is something I kind of took for granted
(08:25):
when I was growing up there. In fact, I tell
the story about when my father finally got his transplant
in nineteen ninety six 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 eleven, My younger sister
was four. For three of you, I'm my brother, so
(08:46):
four of us total and I and my mother, and
we were all already scared of all this change. So
that 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 to my mom, no, no,
we I 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
bookshelves and desks. We're moving, And sure enough they moved
the furniture into this family friend's home. We lived with
them while my parents were in the United States. How
long it was probably about six weeks if I remember correctly,
maybe maybe two months. But this idea again of feeling
(09:32):
ohm the omah.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
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 US? Could you say, I'm an
American and I want to be educated, why don't you
go to England to go to school?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well I had that choice. Actually, my older brother and
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
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 Hill's Night on 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
and said, look, you're an American and you're 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 in 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 were academics. They had summers off was one
of also the great advantages of being a university professor there.
Because my parents, in the early years, in fact, I
don't think I've ever shared this, they would get four
first class tickets every summer to go wherever, and so
(11:15):
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 had there's
benefits to have been. So, I mean, these were secrets
from us. We did not know how ill he was.
And I tell this story about you know, my father
was barely one hundred pounds, and to me, he was
a superhero. You know, he was the greatest, strongest man
(11:37):
on the planet. But he would every spring, you would say, okay,
where do you want to go this year? And we'd say, 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 well wherever, wherever, you know, wherever, and we would
have you voted on whoever we voted on, and then
we'd have to help plan it. And my mom did
all the schlepping and all the lifting, and you know,
my father would be wheeled around in a wheelchair. But
(11:58):
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, refeel 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. I mean that is what, you know,
the excitement, the feeling that you know, ice cream running
(12:22):
down my hands. You know, when we visited our family
in Elmhurst, Queens, it was paradise. It was heaven. You
could go anywhere in the world and landing in JFK
was the highlight.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So when you came to the US to when you
return to the US to go to college, you go
and you go into politics, but you study journalism as
a major and poly size is the minor? Did you
most people? I know? My point is that they go
to GW for one thing.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Only.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
They don't go there to play the violin. They don't
go there to get a scholarship. For some sports they play.
They go there because they got politics in their blood.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Was that you No, I was I want to gw
to become Christian.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I'm on poor.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Journalism was the goal. It was. And you know, 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
(13:22):
and she was brilliant and she was fearless. I 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 morphous 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 we you know, say that to me, right
right right. I was a voracious reader. I went through
(13:42):
a period where I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.
I was really very dramatic. 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. I 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. I wanted to be a.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Balleries how you ended up, but we're going to get that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I went through all these different phases. But then, and
I must have been no. I was fifteen. I saw
her and I said, that's it. 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 went to journalism and I got my degree in journalism,
so graduate degree. I did not get a graduates of
one of my regrets, but I did not get a graduate.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
When you end, when you do the four years at
GW and you get a degree in journalism, is journalism
still the goal is.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Because my junior year, my friend Ronnie Hibbert came to
me and said, listen, I've got this great internship at
the White House. I'm interning for Mike McCurry, who was
then the White House Press secretary. And she actually said
to me, she 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):
press 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 GW sent it in. Was accepted, but I
wasn't put in the press office. I was put in
(15:10):
the first Lady's policy office.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Where did you first lay eyes on Hillarby Clinton? And
you actually talked to her and shook her hand?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
So 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 nineteen ninety six. So I was a White House
intern and they, you know, the DNC had made accommodations
that if interns wanted to go on this charter plane
(15:38):
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 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, write a check for I think two hundred
(15:58):
and fifty dollars for our ticket. Land and Little Rock
were wandering around outside, and I'm just kind of just
in awe. I look up and there's Wolf Blitzer.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I look up.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
There's intoxicating me. So I, you know, played a little Rock.
The elections 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
(16:27):
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 ropelines I had walked with
Hillary 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 would say to me, I
just want to say a lord, I want to shake
her hand. I got it because I remember that first
(16:47):
moment and for some people it's it really is a
once in a lifetime to meet a president or a
first lady. It was really exciting.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Huma Aberdeen. If you enjoy conversations with accomplished women in politics,
check out my episode with United States Congresswoman Katie Porter.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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, and that can come in your Democratic
or Republican forms.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
To hear more of my conversation with Katie Porter, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Huma
Abdeen shares the tremendous impact of Hillary Clinton's twenty sixteen
election loss. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(17:56):
the Thing. Huma Abodeen is fiercely in intelligent, warm and
impeccably credentialed. Will Surely anyone would be lucky to employ her.
I was curious why she stayed in the Clinton camp
for twenty six years.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
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 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 country tragedy. I agree with you that she
was not president in twenty sixteen and how different our
(18:35):
country and the world would have been, and it is
their loss. 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,
(18:57):
you actually have asked me something no one's ever asked me.
I kind of fell into politics, You're right, I mean
I wanted to oviginalist 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
(19:17):
how do I make I know it sounds cliche and
it sounds cheesy, but there are people who get up
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
(19:39):
know that you can make somebody's life better than you
can do something 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
(20:01):
she just wants to do the work. And I always said,
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 the thing that is so insane to me is
that after that election which broke us. I mean, I
write about it in twenty sixty and there are days
that it comes back, and you know, it haunts me.
It hurts like it hurts like physically.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I was around her this summer, Liz Robbins, we went
to that dinner. This is my friend for our listeners
who she has at dinner and Bill is there a
couple summers ago. Bill is lecturing us on North Korea,
and he's talking about now now when the president of
the United States is telling you what he wants you
to know, a little digest, a little synopsis about North
Korean policy, you are well, I don't need to eat,
(20:45):
forget about dinner, and Liz Robbins is behind his back.
She's behind Bill's back going like this and cutting her
throat like this, going you got it, dumb to stop.
Dinner is ready, and I'm looking at her like, h yeah,
I'm gonna tell Bill to stop talking about North Korea.
And when you're with him, you get a civics lesson.
He had a political history lesson, and we did with
her the same thing. But she's just I don't know
(21:07):
what this inefvitable thing in my business where she just
she's like Spencer Tracy. Yes, she's just so decent.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
She has a few radical empathy number one, number two,
she has this she has like she says, this problem
solving gene. 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, her own
(21:33):
mother had a very very difficult childhood, was basically abandoned
by her parents. And you know, her victory speech in
twenty sixteen, she was going to end with this story
about she tells a story about her mother who is
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
(21:53):
to move in with her their grandparents, who also didn't
really want them. And she said, you know, she imagined
being on that train, sitting next to her mother and
saying it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay,
and you're going to grow up and you're going to
have a daughter, and she will be the first woman
(22:14):
president of the United States. And in the end, she was,
and she was, and I know that she waits to
remind people. I also like to remind people when people say, well,
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 he said, 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
(22:37):
and you know the forces. I do believe she ran
won in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And she did win in twenty sixteen. You know one
other things that you and she have in common. You
were both people who your husbands let you down. That's
my way of putting it. Your husband's let you down.
And in your case, you will 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
(23:05):
has been a fundamental pillar of your career. You've worked
with people who've been in crisis, and Hilary Clinton is
someone who's 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?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I 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 them.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Very very real.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean these were very and you know, living in
Saudi Arabia, living in a different cultures, living you know,
sometimes in very frustrating moments, and always thinking all right,
tomorrow is going to better, Tomorrow is going to be better.
And then obviously dealing with my father's death I was hard.
You know, I was in denial for a while. It
took two years for me to actually say out loud
to people my father's dead. I was basically just you know,
(24:05):
So I think that to some extent there was crisis
all around me kind of growing up, and I figured
out how to live and dance and not only live
through it. My mother tells, move on. I mean, 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
(24:27):
her speech is forgotten in the car and she calls
me on to stage and I'm this 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.
(24:47):
And I don't know if that's like a marketable skill
and he were outside of politics. I'm working on that
right now. But it's experience.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Which idea was the book?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
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 Strad's Tiny Beautiful Things, and cried and
cried and cried. And then we go to dinner and
she says, I know what you should do. You should
(25:18):
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 in my life and
told them most and people think I should write my book.
And he was like, why would you do that? And
I said, well, people have suggested the.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Man robis here shielding what does he do for a
living career to say?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
He's also a crisis management consultant to an extent. I mean,
you know, he's in sort of the business of, you know,
politics and communications. 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. And it was when you use that
word scandal. I walked out of that restaurant and I
(26:03):
was writing the book. It was somebody telling me the
story was unworthy. That made me write. And when I
when I started writing, 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.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
He was on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
He was on this podcast. Yeah, that's right, he was.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And you know, I my first usband and wife a
couple of.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
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, oh, I'm sure you threw 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, I was like, I'm sure you
rew the day you met that man. And I stopped
this person and I said, you know, actually, this man
(26:47):
gave me the greatest gift in my life. And that
is my son. My opinion, 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, you're
years later, we have a much greater appreciation for mental
health and addiction and and I you know, back then,
only certain like I felt like our friends kind of
(27:08):
in the creative world and 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 would.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Sacho also with him, if I may just interject you
with it with him, that the thing is 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 had a lot of belief in him.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
He was you know, at one point, the chapter about
Anthony was called Icarus because he was I mean, he
really was Markt really smart, really and as you said,
you know, he was unique. He was a unicorn in
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 twenty thirteen and obviously lost, he'd never lost
(27:57):
an election before too to that point, and so so
to not then understand the behavior, which I did not,
Alec I'm being very on. I did not as somebody
who grew up so disciplined and with such moderation, you know,
so you know, I'd just knock off this behavior and
not understanding that he'd really fallen into and you know,
his all of this compulsiveness was really kind of triggered
(28:19):
by Facebook and Twitter, that all had just started in
the last couple of years and then just just fall it. Really, it's,
you know, talk about another tragic I think he.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Let down a lot of people, not just you. Yeah,
he had people who really believed in him because in
the Democratic Party we just sort of 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
(28:48):
when you dealt with them, did you respect and you
liking that they covered her fairly? Wow?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
That is a question, is as sad, I will 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.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Isn't that hard coming from you, That's pretty damn it.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But we lived, I mean when we lived in a
different You know, 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 about fake news versus you know,
this notion of you're entitled to your you know, your
own opinion, but now 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
(29:27):
single name of somebody who I thought was Look, we
had challenges with the New York Times, where there were
stories that were just filled with inaccuracies.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Huma Aberdeen, If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend
and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the
iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When
we come back, Huma Aberdeen ponders whether a political candidacy
is in her future. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
(30:12):
to Here's the Thing. Whoma Abadeen was vice chair of
the Hillary Clinton's twenty 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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I 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, know, you
see it as a man. And how do we change that?
And I think you and I are of a generation
(30:52):
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 Kathy Hochles 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 back and neck. But
it's women, and it's and this notion of ambition, you know,
the idea that people always look at us whenever we
(31:13):
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 and the minute she says I'm in her approval
numbers just go down significantly. And that why why it
is the minute a woman as seen as being ambitious
for power or being in charge, that all of a
(31:36):
sudden something subconsciously and this is not just men, this
is men and women subconsciously. It's like off in our
head saying no, no, no, no, that can't happen.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Women who still support the patriarchy. I find that mesmerizing.
Women who are enemies of candidacies like hell.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And 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, make sure their husband's in here. And
then sure enough, on caucus day they just said 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.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Are you going to run?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
You know?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Part of.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
About it, well, I haven't really what I that's your demographic?
I well, 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
(32:40):
things and meeting people. I'm just doing things I would
have in the olden days. I don't have time for this.
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 do 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 I don't. I don't see it. I'm also agnostic
(33:02):
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You've never seen the path? Have you? The woman that
wanted to be Christian?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
And I'm on poor one.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
That's right in the Sliding Doors biography of hom you've
never seen the path. You're like me in the sense
of my whole life has been People would go A
B or C, and I 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. If
that's the train I got.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
On, well that's the cliff. You know. The book was
originally the prolog was originally called the cliff. I was
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?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
And it's an opportunity as well. Yeah, and this is
just my opinion. I mean, I'm not trying to give
you advice here. I'm not trying to encourage you to
run for office. But the point is is that it's
an opportunity. Even if you lose, you don't go into
the thing. It's a chance for you to put on
the record what you believe about this kind and this government.
So two more quick things. One is you're developing a
television series based on your memoir and you went ahead,
(34:07):
And I can't believe you wouldn't cast the unspeakably unattractive
and untalented Freeda Pinto to play you. I mean, what
the hell are you thinking? Freeda Pinto is going to
play you in the TV show.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
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'd 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,
I think a lot more people will watch it on
screen and this if there is some sort of service
(34:37):
or interest in the book. I mean, I I'm just
beyond thrill that she's doing and I can't wait for
so lucky son act.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Now, if we're going to end, I want you to
read that first. This is a letter. Tell us about
this letter? Where is this from?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
This is a note I found just buried in my
dad's papers years after he died, and I thought it
was a message, you know, from being and I think
it was just something you know, you 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,
(35:15):
and as a member of a 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, and
(35:38):
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 yahweh Allah, your loving Father. And
I feel as though this was a note that he
(35:59):
left for a to remind us what's important about how
to walk through this earth.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
And you've lived that.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I've tried to You've lived that, and.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I want you to know. See, the thing about you
is I'm going to 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 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. It's
so kind, and you have, when it comes, a burden,
(36:30):
a burden. But we hope we're going to see no
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.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Well, from your lips to God's ears, I just I'm
so I'm excited, thrilled, terrified all those things, but I'm
continuing my year of saying.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yes, Huma Aberdeen. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios
in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen so Zach
MacNeice and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our
social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's
(37:09):
the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
thing from iHeart 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 has
(00:24):
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 advisor to the Senator,
deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of State, and
now as her chief of staff. Abdeen's decades of collaboration
(00:46):
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. Huma Aberdeen has written an intimate and revealing
best selling memoir on her life, entitled Both And. The
(01:07):
book covers her time working in government as well as
her personal struggles, including a very public divorce from former
Congressman Anthony Weener. 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.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
My mother is a sociologist. My father studied American civilization,
which that's one of the reasons he ended up in
Penn They don't really teach it or have that course
in many universities now. Yeah, and then they they are
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.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
How long were they living here before you were born
or had you been born? I was you were born here.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was born here and when I was two, and
we thought we were going to say here forever. 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 too my dad was diagnosed with basically you know,
(02:12):
terminal illness. He was renal failure and his doctor said,
you know, you have five to ten years and get
your affairs in order. How long did he live after
the diagnosed, 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 wrote in
my book. My dad was told he was dying.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
So I don't know if I ever want to see
that doctor.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
It was amazing, I mean amaze. But the difference between
nineteen seventy seven in Kalamazoo, Michigan and thankfully nine years 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.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Seventeen, and when did you go over there?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So two months after his diagnosis, my parents had an
option to take a sabbatical and their choice was either
Italy or Saudi Arabia. And then well, interestingly, 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
(03:12):
about their culture, about their faith. We're a Muslim family.
It seemed like more of an interesting and it was,
you know, just a year. So they said, why don't
we do Saudi. It was definitely the hardest choice. My
mother actually said, when you know, my father said 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 were. They landed, they didn't speak
(03:33):
the language. My mother all of a sudden had to
veil herself actually.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Italy, Saudi Arabia, Italy.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I think they decided that, you know, there they could.
It was more of a challenge, and I think they
liked that. My mother taught herself Arabic to teach her students,
and 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 teach. My
mother taught sociology, and my dad, you know, he arted
(04:00):
very early on. He he taught a few years been
very early on. He opened a foundation. And that's actually
one of the reasons. Even 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 it was his You know, I
(04:22):
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 Muslims how to live
in the world with the rise of the West, we're
going to have problems. And sure enough he predicted Bosni
I predicted so much of what we're now, this these
convulsions that we have. And in part his theory was, look,
(04:43):
if you are practicing Muslim wherever you come from in
the Arab world or you know, 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 going to
go and live in France. You need to become French.
And also you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Can do as the Romans do exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So he was working specifically in what during those ten
years when he was over there, just a multitude of.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Things, a multitude of things. A lot of his conversations
were about interfaith dialogue. So we would like we spend
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 people, a lot
of Muslims and certainly Arabs and people who lived in
our world said why why do you do this? Why
(05:35):
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 where even the angels fear
to tread. Why do you go have these? You know,
very contentious? And he says, because I want to understand
and I want to know more about these other faiths
and beliefs and you know kind of cis political systems.
(05:57):
And I don't have any doubt in my own butlo,
but I want to learn more. And I think we
probably have more in common than we realized now.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
For you, other than when you were maybe moving about
and you mentioned Greece, for one, did you go to
one school or did you concentrate on just a handful
of schools when you were there? Where'd you go to school?
Of high school?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I went to an 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 nineteen seventy seven when we moved there. And
you mentioned the oil money. Sure there was all of
this new wealth, all these amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Just figuring out how much wealth.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They were just 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 imported 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 ALEC that I think, to be exposed
to so many different cultures and languages and people from
(06:56):
all over the world. It made me comfortable everywhere, and
I think that was a big part of it, was,
you know, being surrounded by people who weren't like me.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So when you I mean for Americans today, you know,
Saudi Arabia is now a concentration of pilots who flew
for nine to eleven. It's opek and a manipulation of
oil prices. It's koshoji. 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
(07:28):
that it's done. I'm not mentioning that to condemn the Saudis.
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 was your Saudi Arabia? What
was your experience of the culture and the people. How
do they strike you?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You know? One of the very first things that really
hit home when I moved to the United States in
nineteen ninety three, 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 in nineteen
ninety three. One of the things I missed immediately is
this sense of community. And we call it, you know,
in the Muslim world, we call it the oma, and
the omah is the ever present community, which is you're
(08:04):
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,
and that is something I kind of took for granted
(08:25):
when I was growing up there. In fact, I tell
the story about when my father finally got his transplant
in nineteen ninety six 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 eleven, My younger sister
was four. For three of you, I'm my brother, so
(08:46):
four of us total and I and my mother, and
we were all already scared of all this change. So
that 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 to my mom, no, no,
we I 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
bookshelves and desks. We're moving, And sure enough they moved
the furniture into this family friend's home. We lived with
them while my parents were in the United States. How
long it was probably about six weeks if I remember correctly,
maybe maybe two months. But this idea again of feeling
(09:32):
ohm the omah.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
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 US? Could you say, I'm an
American and I want to be educated, why don't you
go to England to go to school?
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well I had that choice. Actually, my older brother and
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
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 Hill's Night on 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
and said, look, you're an American and you're 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 in 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 were academics. They had summers off was one
of also the great advantages of being a university professor there.
Because my parents, in the early years, in fact, I
don't think I've ever shared this, they would get four
first class tickets every summer to go wherever, and so
(11:15):
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 had there's
benefits to have been. So, I mean, these were secrets
from us. We did not know how ill he was.
And I tell this story about you know, my father
was barely one hundred pounds, and to me, he was
a superhero. You know, he was the greatest, strongest man
(11:37):
on the planet. But he would every spring, you would say, okay,
where do you want to go this year? And we'd say, 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 well wherever, wherever, you know, wherever, and we would
have you voted on whoever we voted on, and then
we'd have to help plan it. And my mom did
all the schlepping and all the lifting, and you know,
my father would be wheeled around in a wheelchair. But
(11:58):
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, refeel 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. I mean that is what, you know,
the excitement, the feeling that you know, ice cream running
(12:22):
down my hands. You know, when we visited our family
in Elmhurst, Queens, it was paradise. It was heaven. You
could go anywhere in the world and landing in JFK
was the highlight.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So when you came to the US to when you
return to the US to go to college, you go
and you go into politics, but you study journalism as
a major and poly size is the minor? Did you
most people? I know? My point is that they go
to GW for one thing.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Only.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
They don't go there to play the violin. They don't
go there to get a scholarship. For some sports they play.
They go there because they got politics in their blood.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Was that you No, I was I want to gw
to become Christian.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I'm on poor.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Journalism was the goal. It was. And you know, 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
(13:22):
and she was brilliant and she was fearless. I 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 morphous 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 we you know, say that to me, right
right right. I was a voracious reader. I went through
(13:42):
a period where I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.
I was really very dramatic. 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. I 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. I wanted to be a.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Balleries how you ended up, but we're going to get that.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
I went through all these different phases. But then, and
I must have been no. I was fifteen. I saw
her and I said, that's it. 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 went to journalism and I got my degree in journalism,
so graduate degree. I did not get a graduates of
one of my regrets, but I did not get a graduate.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
When you end, when you do the four years at
GW and you get a degree in journalism, is journalism
still the goal is.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Because my junior year, my friend Ronnie Hibbert came to
me and said, listen, I've got this great internship at
the White House. I'm interning for Mike McCurry, who was
then the White House Press secretary. And she actually said
to me, she 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):
press 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 GW sent it in. Was accepted, but I
wasn't put in the press office. I was put in
(15:10):
the first Lady's policy office.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Where did you first lay eyes on Hillarby Clinton? And
you actually talked to her and shook her hand?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
So 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 nineteen ninety six. So I was a White House
intern and they, you know, the DNC had made accommodations
that if interns wanted to go on this charter plane
(15:38):
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 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, write a check for I think two hundred
(15:58):
and fifty dollars for our ticket. Land and Little Rock
were wandering around outside, and I'm just kind of just
in awe. I look up and there's Wolf Blitzer.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I look up.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
There's intoxicating me. So I, you know, played a little Rock.
The elections 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
(16:27):
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 ropelines I had walked with
Hillary 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 would say to me, I
just want to say a lord, I want to shake
her hand. I got it because I remember that first
(16:47):
moment and for some people it's it really is a
once in a lifetime to meet a president or a
first lady. It was really exciting.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Huma Aberdeen. If you enjoy conversations with accomplished women in politics,
check out my episode with United States Congresswoman Katie Porter.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
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, and that can come in your Democratic
or Republican forms.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
To hear more of my conversation with Katie Porter, go
to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Huma
Abdeen shares the tremendous impact of Hillary Clinton's twenty sixteen
election loss. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(17:56):
the Thing. Huma Abodeen is fiercely in intelligent, warm and
impeccably credentialed. Will Surely anyone would be lucky to employ her.
I was curious why she stayed in the Clinton camp
for twenty six years.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
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 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 country tragedy. I agree with you that she
was not president in twenty sixteen and how different our
(18:35):
country and the world would have been, and it is
their loss. 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,
(18:57):
you actually have asked me something no one's ever asked me.
I kind of fell into politics, You're right, I mean
I wanted to oviginalist 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
(19:17):
how do I make I know it sounds cliche and
it sounds cheesy, but there are people who get up
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
(19:39):
know that you can make somebody's life better than you
can do something 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
(20:01):
she just wants to do the work. And I always said,
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 the thing that is so insane to me is
that after that election which broke us. I mean, I
write about it in twenty sixty and there are days
that it comes back, and you know, it haunts me.
It hurts like it hurts like physically.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I was around her this summer, Liz Robbins, we went
to that dinner. This is my friend for our listeners
who she has at dinner and Bill is there a
couple summers ago. Bill is lecturing us on North Korea,
and he's talking about now now when the president of
the United States is telling you what he wants you
to know, a little digest, a little synopsis about North
Korean policy, you are well, I don't need to eat,
(20:45):
forget about dinner, and Liz Robbins is behind his back.
She's behind Bill's back going like this and cutting her
throat like this, going you got it, dumb to stop.
Dinner is ready, and I'm looking at her like, h yeah,
I'm gonna tell Bill to stop talking about North Korea.
And when you're with him, you get a civics lesson.
He had a political history lesson, and we did with
her the same thing. But she's just I don't know
(21:07):
what this inefvitable thing in my business where she just
she's like Spencer Tracy. Yes, she's just so decent.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
She has a few radical empathy number one, number two,
she has this she has like she says, this problem
solving gene. 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, her own
(21:33):
mother had a very very difficult childhood, was basically abandoned
by her parents. And you know, her victory speech in
twenty sixteen, she was going to end with this story
about she tells a story about her mother who is
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
(21:53):
to move in with her their grandparents, who also didn't
really want them. And she said, you know, she imagined
being on that train, sitting next to her mother and
saying it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay,
and you're going to grow up and you're going to
have a daughter, and she will be the first woman
(22:14):
president of the United States. And in the end, she was,
and she was, and I know that she waits to
remind people. I also like to remind people when people say, well,
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 he said, 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
(22:37):
and you know the forces. I do believe she ran
won in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And she did win in twenty sixteen. You know one
other things that you and she have in common. You
were both people who your husbands let you down. That's
my way of putting it. Your husband's let you down.
And in your case, you will 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
(23:05):
has been a fundamental pillar of your career. You've worked
with people who've been in crisis, and Hilary Clinton is
someone who's 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?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I 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 them.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Very very real.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I mean these were very and you know, living in
Saudi Arabia, living in a different cultures, living you know,
sometimes in very frustrating moments, and always thinking all right,
tomorrow is going to better, Tomorrow is going to be better.
And then obviously dealing with my father's death I was hard.
You know, I was in denial for a while. It
took two years for me to actually say out loud
to people my father's dead. I was basically just you know,
(24:05):
So I think that to some extent there was crisis
all around me kind of growing up, and I figured
out how to live and dance and not only live
through it. My mother tells, move on. I mean, 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
(24:27):
her speech is forgotten in the car and she calls
me on to stage and I'm this 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.
(24:47):
And I don't know if that's like a marketable skill
and he were outside of politics. I'm working on that
right now. But it's experience.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Which idea was the book?
Speaker 2 (24:57):
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 Strad's Tiny Beautiful Things, and cried and
cried and cried. And then we go to dinner and
she says, I know what you should do. You should
(25:18):
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 in my life and
told them most and people think I should write my book.
And he was like, why would you do that? And
I said, well, people have suggested the.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Man robis here shielding what does he do for a
living career to say?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
He's also a crisis management consultant to an extent. I mean,
you know, he's in sort of the business of, you know,
politics and communications. 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. And it was when you use that
word scandal. I walked out of that restaurant and I
(26:03):
was writing the book. It was somebody telling me the
story was unworthy. That made me write. And when I
when I started writing, 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.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
He was on this podcast.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
He was on this podcast. Yeah, that's right, he was.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
And you know, I my first usband and wife a
couple of.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
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, oh, I'm sure you threw 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, I was like, I'm sure you
rew the day you met that man. And I stopped
this person and I said, you know, actually, this man
(26:47):
gave me the greatest gift in my life. And that
is my son. My opinion, 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, you're
years later, we have a much greater appreciation for mental
health and addiction and and I you know, back then,
only certain like I felt like our friends kind of
(27:08):
in the creative world and 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 would.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Sacho also with him, if I may just interject you
with it with him, that the thing is 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 had a lot of belief in him.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
He was you know, at one point, the chapter about
Anthony was called Icarus because he was I mean, he
really was Markt really smart, really and as you said,
you know, he was unique. He was a unicorn in
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 twenty thirteen and obviously lost, he'd never lost
(27:57):
an election before too to that point, and so so
to not then understand the behavior, which I did not,
Alec I'm being very on. I did not as somebody
who grew up so disciplined and with such moderation, you know,
so you know, I'd just knock off this behavior and
not understanding that he'd really fallen into and you know,
his all of this compulsiveness was really kind of triggered
(28:19):
by Facebook and Twitter, that all had just started in
the last couple of years and then just just fall it. Really, it's,
you know, talk about another tragic I think he.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Let down a lot of people, not just you. Yeah,
he had people who really believed in him because in
the Democratic Party we just sort of 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
(28:48):
when you dealt with them, did you respect and you
liking that they covered her fairly? Wow?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
That is a question, is as sad, I will 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.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Isn't that hard coming from you, That's pretty damn it.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
But we lived, I mean when we lived in a
different You know, 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 about fake news versus you know,
this notion of you're entitled to your you know, your
own opinion, but now 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
(29:27):
single name of somebody who I thought was Look, we
had challenges with the New York Times, where there were
stories that were just filled with inaccuracies.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Huma Aberdeen, If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend
and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the
iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When
we come back, Huma Aberdeen ponders whether a political candidacy
is in her future. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
(30:12):
to Here's the Thing. Whoma Abadeen was vice chair of
the Hillary Clinton's twenty 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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I 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, know, you
see it as a man. And how do we change that?
And I think you and I are of a generation
(30:52):
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 Kathy Hochles 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 back and neck. But
it's women, and it's and this notion of ambition, you know,
the idea that people always look at us whenever we
(31:13):
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 and the minute she says I'm in her approval
numbers just go down significantly. And that why why it
is the minute a woman as seen as being ambitious
for power or being in charge, that all of a
(31:36):
sudden something subconsciously and this is not just men, this
is men and women subconsciously. It's like off in our
head saying no, no, no, no, that can't happen.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Women who still support the patriarchy. I find that mesmerizing.
Women who are enemies of candidacies like hell.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And 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, make sure their husband's in here. And
then sure enough, on caucus day they just said 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.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Are you going to run?
Speaker 2 (32:13):
You know?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Part of.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
About it, well, I haven't really what I that's your demographic?
I well, 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
(32:40):
things and meeting people. I'm just doing things I would
have in the olden days. I don't have time for this.
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 do 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 I don't. I don't see it. I'm also agnostic
(33:02):
about it.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
You've never seen the path? Have you? The woman that
wanted to be Christian?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
And I'm on poor one.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
That's right in the Sliding Doors biography of hom you've
never seen the path. You're like me in the sense
of my whole life has been People would go A
B or C, and I 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. If
that's the train I got.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
On, well that's the cliff. You know. The book was
originally the prolog was originally called the cliff. I was
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?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
And it's an opportunity as well. Yeah, and this is
just my opinion. I mean, I'm not trying to give
you advice here. I'm not trying to encourage you to
run for office. But the point is is that it's
an opportunity. Even if you lose, you don't go into
the thing. It's a chance for you to put on
the record what you believe about this kind and this government.
So two more quick things. One is you're developing a
television series based on your memoir and you went ahead,
(34:07):
And I can't believe you wouldn't cast the unspeakably unattractive
and untalented Freeda Pinto to play you. I mean, what
the hell are you thinking? Freeda Pinto is going to
play you in the TV show.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
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'd 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,
I think a lot more people will watch it on
screen and this if there is some sort of service
(34:37):
or interest in the book. I mean, I I'm just
beyond thrill that she's doing and I can't wait for
so lucky son act.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Now, if we're going to end, I want you to
read that first. This is a letter. Tell us about
this letter? Where is this from?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
This is a note I found just buried in my
dad's papers years after he died, and I thought it
was a message, you know, from being and I think
it was just something you know, you 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,
(35:15):
and as a member of a 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, and
(35:38):
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 yahweh Allah, your loving Father. And
I feel as though this was a note that he
(35:59):
left for a to remind us what's important about how
to walk through this earth.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
And you've lived that.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
I've tried to You've lived that, and.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I want you to know. See, the thing about you
is I'm going to 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 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. It's
so kind, and you have, when it comes, a burden,
(36:30):
a burden. But we hope we're going to see no
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.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Well, from your lips to God's ears, I just I'm
so I'm excited, thrilled, terrified all those things, but I'm
continuing my year of saying.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yes, Huma Aberdeen. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios
in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen so Zach
MacNeice and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our
social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's
(37:09):
the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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