Clinton: Trump doesn't just like Putin, 'he wants to be like Putin'

Hillary Clinton.
(Image credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump's admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin is deeper than it appears, Hillary Clinton said Thursday night on The Rachel Maddow Show.

Trump likes authoritarians, Clinton said while promoting her new book What Happened, and "he doesn't just like Putin, he wants to be like Putin. He wants to have that kind of power that is largely unaccountable, unchecked." Despite his many threats over time, she's not worried about Trump trying to drum up any charges against her "because I know there's nothing there," she said, although she also has "no doubt that if he got into serious political trouble, he'd try to gin something up about me or President Obama. We are his two favorite targets. I worry it is indicative of the kind of self image that he has, not only of himself but of what the president should be able to do, and that's why it's really imperative that the Republicans in Congress rein that in."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.