Wonders if She Should Have Told Trump: ‘Back Up You Creep, Get Away From Me’
Hillary Clinton has just released excerpts of her new book on the 2016 presidential election in audio, and in one clip she says her “skin crawled” during last October’s second presidential debate when Donald Trump infamously followed closely behind her, almost stalking her, as she walked about the stage.
“My skin crawled,” Clinton says in her memoir, What Happened, as NBC News reports. “It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?'”
“Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up you creep, get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’â€
(Audio: Shorter version below, longer above.)
Clinton notes the timing of Trump’s stalking made his actions particularly creepy.
“It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me,” Clinton says in the audio. “Two days before the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage. No matter where I walked, he followed me closely. Staring at me. Making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable.”
Clinton says she still wonders if she should have chosen a different response to Trump’s creepy stalking.
“I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV. Maybe I have over-learned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist – smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.â€
And she says it’s been hard for her, knowing that by losing the election she let many people down.
“I knew that millions of people were counting on me and I couldn’t bear the idea of letting them down. But I did. I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.â€
The audio was premiered on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday.
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