Topic

Topic overview

The topic of Jane Pauley’s interview “Hillary Clinton speaks” is Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 presidential election. The interview explores this topic by focusing on Clinton’s perspective on what happened, as it announces that she has “… spent the last 10 months trying to figure out why she isn’t President of the United States.” (ll. 10-11)

To explore the topic in detail, the interview looks at events during the campaign as well as what happened immediately afterwards. Pauley and Clinton discuss how Clinton felt in these situations: “Hillary Clinton: I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.” (l. 58)

Then the two talk about the reasons why Clinton lost the elections, suggesting a number of factors such as: being a woman running for a position traditionally held by men (ll. 61-64), being unable to appeal to certain categories of Americans (ll. 80-84), Russia’s involvement in the campaign (ll. 73-75), and Trump running the elections like a reality show (ll. 122-124).

The interview’s main points regarding the topic are summarised by Jane Pauley: “In the end, Hillary Rodham Clinton still seems gob-smacked by what happened. She dishes out blame and she accepts responsibility.” (ll. 119-120). This suggests that Clinton’s failure during the elections was caused by both Clinton’s own mistakes and a series of external factors.

Structure

“Hillary Clinton speaks” is not structured as a classical interview, but more ...