Hillary Clinton tells Stephen Colbert why she supports the Trump impeachment inquiry, zings Giuliani

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton on The Late Show

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show)

published 1 October 2019

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a rousing ovation on Monday's Late Show. "These are people who are big fans of the alternate timeline we're not living in," Stephen Colbert explained to Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea. He quickly got down to business. "We learned about the Trump-Ukraine call, the private server — is it time to, dare I say, lock him up?" he asked mischievously. "What do you make of it?"

"We have started an impeachment inquiry, which will look at the evidence, and I think that's exactly what should be done," Clinton said. With President Trump, "we've known for a long time that he was a corrupt businessman who cheated people, and we've known that he and his campaign asked for aid from Russia, we've known that. But to see him in the office of the president, putting his own personal and political interests ahead of the national security of our country, just pierced through whatever confusion or denial people had." She explained that impeachment was devised for just such a situation, where the president was subverting the Constitution and threatening the integrity of the next election, in this case by soliciting foreign help.

There's nothing normal about Trump's Ukraine muckracking, Clinton explained. If Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on Trump's call with Ukraine's president, he should have known what Trump was going to say, and when Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rival, he should have stepped in to clean that up. Regarding Trump's use of personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani as Ukraine envoy, "you know, presidents often use, as do secretaries of state, they might use an envoy or a special adviser to deliver a message," she said. "But again, it is supposed to be carefully thought through, and from what we've seen on television, carefully thinking through is not one of Rudy's strong points."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.