Hillary Clinton tells Stephen Colbert what happened with 'manspreading' Vladimir Putin

Stephen Colbert began his interview with Hillary Clinton on Tuesday's Late Show with the title of the book she is out promoting: "What happened?" Clinton said it was painful trying to figure that out, but she thought it a worthwhile endeavor so that what happened in the 2016 election "doesn't happen again." She said she was as candid as she could be about the mistakes she made, but also dove into misogyny, voter suppression, the "unusual behavior" of former FBI Director James Comey, and the Russians. "I believe so strongly that they think they succeeded in messing with our democracy," Clinton said, and she thinks they did, too.

Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't just want Donald Trump to win, she said, he wanted to destabilize and undermine American democracy, divide the country, and wreck its faith in its intuitions. "I think that they believe they had a good outing in 2016," she said, "and I think they will be back in 2018 and 2020 unless we stop them." Clinton said she's been told Putin also had a personal grudge against her, but she doesn't take it personally, then she gave a brief psychoanalysis of Putin's anger issues, insecurities, and problems with women.

The fact that she was a female secretary of state and potential president did "seem to get him a bit agitated," she said, and he showed his discomfort with "manspreading" every time they met. She did find one topic that warmed him up, however.

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Colbert broke out the chardonnay for the second part of the interview. But first, Clinton tried to clear up some comments she made about the legitimacy of the election. "Nobody's talking about contesting the election, including me," she said, suggesting that if the various investigations find evidence of Trump's team colluding with Russia, people who don't appreciate that mobilize and vote, because the ballot box "is where we settle our political differences, and that's where it should be." You can watch what she felt Trump should have said at the U.N. instead of the "very dark, dangerous" speech he gave below. Peter Weber