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The following is a transcript of an interview with the former Senior Director of the National Security Council for European and Russian Affairs, Fiona Hill, broadcast Sunday, October 10, 2021 on “Face the Nation”.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to bring in another former Trump advisor to the White House, Fiona Hill. She was a senior director on the National Security Council and a key witness to President Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019. Her new book is titled There’s Nothing For You Here: Finding An Opportunity In The 21st Century. Hello to you.
FIONA HILL: Hello, MARGARET.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So that title comes from something your father, a coal miner in the north of England, told you when you came of age. And I wonder what you would say looking at this country to someone coming of age right now, is there something going for them here?
HILL: Well, I think that’s the question everyone’s asking, isn’t it? I mean, it could even be considered a political observation. A lot of people feel somewhat removed from politics, as we’ve heard across the segments. But there are also in so many parts of the United States a lot of questions people are asking about their education and educational future, especially with COVID and all the economic issues that we see all of you have covered in all of them. segments. People are wondering how they are going to find a job. Will they be able to have a better life – a life for themselves than their difficult parents, which is always the expectation in America. I mean, I think that’s the whole premise that the country is based on, it’s the idea that your children, your grandchildren, will live better than you. And I think that’s the big issue we’re grappling with right now, is whether it’s even possible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: One of the things that I find interesting is that you were an intelligence analyst, so you can apply that eye, that critical eye to this country, just like you would with a foreign country. So when you apply it to the United States right now, you are using terms like “the politics of cultural despair”, “fertile ground for populist politics”. How dangerous is this moment?
HILL: I think it’s dangerous… the timing is incredibly dangerous. I mean, we’re in a dangerous time. People are talking about a future constitutional crisis, we are already there. I mean, I was listening very carefully to what Chris Krebs was saying, someone I worked very closely with. And when Chris had to essentially speak out against national threats to elections, in the 2020 presidential election, it should have been obvious to everyone. He was the Department of Homeland Security. His whole job was to fend off threats from outside, not against domestic actors who tried to undermine or question the integrity of the election. When he had to speak in public like he did, it should have been a wake-up call to anyone watching.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And- and you also had national security. When you look at the politics of the day, which you describe as dangerous, do you see a difference between right-wing populism and left-wing populism? Do you see them as just as potentially threatening?
HILL: Unfortunately, I see right-wing populism as the most threatening right now. Populism on the left contributes to the general atmosphere of polarization, but very unfortunately it is on the right that we see the main threats. Its players on the right, not just in Congress and the Senate, you know, places where you would expect people to keep their oath of office to the Constitution and the people. But it is the actors of this right who also fundamentally call for violence against fellow Americans and at all times denigrate the integrity of the electoral system. And of course, we just had the rally that President Trump held in Iowa, clearly preparing for his return to the presidency – one presidency says he never left because he says the election was stolen from him. In the rally’s poll, about 85% of his speech at the rally was about the election stealing. I mean, basically perpetrating a lie.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and that’s exactly why I asked that question, it was the groundwork that was asked, because that certainly seemed to be the message here. You know, in the book Peril, written by Robert Costa and Bob Woodward, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, at the end, is quoted as comparing the Capitol seat on January 6th to The Great Dress Rehearsal. You are an analyst of Russia, you know immediately what that expression is, it is what Lenin called an uprising which preceded the revolution. I read that and said, “Dear God.”
HILL: Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I mean, is he, the general, saying it’s potentially a precursor to further violence? Is this exaggerated in a historical sense?
HILL: He’s not exaggerating at all, because I mean, we all saw in real time what happened on January 6 on Capitol Hill, and General Milley was absolutely right. Any history student, but any observer even of American politics over the past decade, I mean, when have we ever seen something like this? We do not have. Not in our lifetime. We saw episodes, you know, especially during the civil rights movement and of course during Vietnam, where there were protests. But storm the United States Capitol? I mean, that’s exactly what you think of in historic revolutions. Storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, storming of the Winter Palace during the Russian Revolution to which General Milley alluded. And as he said, we have seen many historical episodes where there is violence, people ignore it. They think it’s just a passing event. Vice President Pence played it down, even though he was reportedly targeted. He was targeted. They wanted to lynch him. And then people brushed it off saying that nothing had happened here. And next time you get the real thing where people actually grab those major buildings. And I said that too in the book that it was, in fact, a dress rehearsal for something that could happen in the short term in 2022. 2024. We have election cycles here that will increase tensions. . And once people start talking about violence, once you cross the threshold, you’re in a danger zone.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But there are so many people who will look at the investigation that President Schiff is working on and say it’s just politics, it’s just a political message. They’re going to watch the violence – I’ve heard people tell me that on Capitol Hill and just say, it’s a riot. Some crazy people. Not the forerunner or a snap, as the general puts it, in the terms you are on right now. I mean, how do you respond to people who say you’re overreacting?
HILL: Well, people say that because they haven’t had any personal experience with these kinds of events. But I can certainly tell you that as an immigrant, as a person who arrived in the United States in 1989 in the context of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, I also know immigrants. like me who came from war zones, who came from places like the former Yugoslavia or places like Sri Lanka, which is torn by civil war and conflict. Afghanistan, Syria, you know, you name it. All the people I know who are immigrants look around and say, can’t people see this? We come from war-torn societies. All brands are here. So maybe, you know, Americans should talk to some of their neighbors who have come from elsewhere and who have come to the United States to escape this kind of event and ask them to tell them what their personal experience has been. .
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Fiona Hill, thank you for your analysis. We will return.
HILL: Thanks, MARGARET.
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