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Hillary Clinton says ‘sexist’ Putin would ‘manspread for effect’
‘We had some interesting, even helpful, interactions in private,’ the former secretary of state admitted
In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton claimed that although Russian President Vladimir Putin was occasionally “useful” in their private dealings, he would “manspread for effect” in front of the press.
The comments came from an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, in which Ms. Clinton discussed a variety of topics, including NATO expansion, Donald Trump’s bid for reelection in 2024, and the now-famous incident in which the Russian leader spread his legs during a photo opportunity while the US secretary of state met with her opponent in Russia in March 2010.
Ms. Clinton was asked if she found Mr. Putin to be sexist in their private interactions as much as he was in their public ones, and she didn’t mince words.
“Yes, he was very sexist towards me. We had some interesting, even helpful, interactions in private, and then the press would be invited in and he would say something insulting about America,” she told the Financial Times, before citing the infamous 2010 photo-op. “He would then manspread for effect.”
In response to criticism from the Democratic candidate for president at the time, Mr. Putin once remarked, “It’s better not to argue with ladies.”
The former secretary of state also spoke about her former rival’s reelection campaign and how Mr. Trump’s campaign would be impossibly entangled in what she believed to be the only viable strategy for the Russian leader to win in Ukraine.
“If Trump had won in 2020 he would have pulled out of Nato – I have no doubt about that,” she said, discussing the more than 70-year-old military alliance among the US, Europe, and Canada that has been cited by the Russian leader in recent months for his ongoing invasion in Ukraine.
Ms. Clinton, who lost her bid for president to the Nato-slamming former president Mr. Trump, warned at the close of the interview that Democrats need to secure the next election, otherwise “everything that everybody else cares about goes out the window”.
“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy,” she said. “The most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.”
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The interview with the Financial Times was hardly the first time that the former secretary of state has opened up and provided candid insights into her difficult relationship with the Russian leader.
In 2017, while promoting her memoir, What Happened, she openly discussed how she believed “[Putin] doesn’t like democracy” and how she thought he wanted to “destabilize our country” in an interview on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert before launching into her own personal gripes with the foreign leader.
“There’s an expression, we certainly know it in New York, called manspreading. Every time I met with him…it would be [legs sprawled out]. The whole deal,” she explained to host Stephen Colbert, before sharing an anecdote that she felt characterized his “sexism” towards her.
Elsewhere in the interview, Clinton told the outlet it’s “out of the question” that she would run for the presidency in 2024, and that she anticipates throwing her support behind President Joe Biden.