Well, here it is. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I don't mean to advertise it, it's been quite, welcome, Susan, first of all. Hi. It's wonder to have you here. Good evening, everyone. [ APPLAUSE ] I told you this crowd would like you. So congratulations, you've hit the New York Times best seller list. Thank you. So [ APPLAUSE ] A couple little hghlights from the book tour, we now know that Susan thinks she's a better tennis player than Barrack Obama. I don't just think. You don't, okay. [ LAUGH ] And how did you just But a much worse basket ball player. Okay, how did you discern the tennis? I mean really. I watched him play. Have you played him? I didn't need to play him .>> Okay. [ LAUGH ] And I guess another highlight of the book Tour so far, is a Twitter feed that ended when I last read it, with the words crickets. What was that all about? I'm minding my own business, walking off the stage after Bill Maher on Friday. And one of the producers comes up to me and says, the president just tweeted about you. And I said, Well, what did he say? I read the tweet and, yada yada. She's a disaster. She should shut up. Shouldn't talk about Syria. Blah, blah, blah. she was responsible. She was National Security Advisor when Obama didn't, you know, bomb Syria in 2013. I'm like, okay. So of course, I had to respond. [ LAUGH ] Of course you to did. We know you. Yeah So I said then why did you come up to me At the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2015, two years after this so called Red Line, and hug me when you never met me before, which was totally gross. [ LAUGH ] And whisper in my ear that I had been very unfairly treated over Benghazi and that I was doing a great job for the country. And he didn't respond. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Crickets, so it was fascinating reading your book because you grew up in such a kind of a powerhouse really. I mean, your father was an economist who went on to become Governor on the Federal Reserve. Your mom was so distinguished she was known as the mother of Pell Grants. But that to me that that two moments really stand out in your in your life. One is that the fact that your parents met at a Federal Reserve dinner [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] And the other one was a family friend Madeleine Albright, used to refer to you as little Susie Rice. Yeah, she's still- And you were bothered by that. I don't like it, I didn't like it. [ LAUGH ] I didn't like it when I was little, I- You didn't like that at all? No. Did I have I had wonderful parents. But they had come from very humble origins. Each of them. My mother was the daughter of immigrants who came from Jamaica to Portland, Maine in 1912. And my grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother was a maid. None of them. Neither of them had any education but they sent, All five of their kids to college. My [ APPLAUSE ] four uncles tour doctors one an optometrist, one a university president and then my mother was the youngest. And yes, she was the mother of Pell Grants about which I'm so proud. 80 million Americans have. Been able to attend college because of the Pell Grant Program. But for this audience it should be known that she sat on 11 major corporate boards [ APPLAUSE ] And was obviously one of the first African American women in that generation. To do so and was herself a corporate executive at the end of her career. And your childhood, it looks privileged from the outside you went to privilege school you ended up at Stanford Rhodes scholar, you know, you're not you're kind of that privilege or, that's Yeah, you're not exactly a loser, shall we say that it was you know. But you but your childhood was tough because your parents went through a very contentious divorce. And you write about that in your book and your I was wondering how that shaped you going forward? Well, I do this book is both very much a personal story, my family history my upbringing here in Washington, DC and 60s and 70s. My story is a mother and a daughter of aging parents at that time, my marriage all this stuff in addition to being a policy book, but I'm pretty raw in explaining what happened between my parents because is wonderful and accomplished as they were. They really had no business being married. And they went through a very violent, ugly separation. And when I was seven years old they were there about, until the time they physically separated in, when I was about ten. I lived in a household that was a tinderbox. And I'd try to be going asleep at night and there'd be screaming and yelling and stuff would be flying and I'd be awakened in the middle of the night and I had to come down the stairs and sort of spy on them. And if it looked like it was getting out of hand I'd have to intervene physically or If not physically try to hear both sides out and literally mediate. And that obviously was not what you would want ideally for a seven year old. But I felt that my little brother was two years behind me if I didn't do it, who was gonna do it and it was really scary. So what I got out of that was. One a realization that could overcome a really difficult and painful situation which was my life. And then the custody battle went on another five years they split in a very public way. And so I learnt you know even on my friendships initially suffered that I I could be resilient, that I could work on these things, that I could be still be a good student and then, inadvertently I learned some mediating skills, that came back to be useful. And you were described, and you were described by your tennis coach is fiercely competitive and a sore loser and, you kinda [ UNKNOWN ] to that. I do. I try to be a less a sore loser but I don't like to lose. No I like to win. Yeah, you're very competitive and athletic. I can see that. So again, Stanford, Rhodes scholar, you were in the Clinton administration Assistant Secretary of State and NSC staffer. We're just gonna flash forward only because the time is short as you pointed out, rightly backstage, you join the Obama administration you latched on with, with President Obama as a candidate instead of Hillary Clinton which was interesting piece in the book. But what's interesting about you, you were there with the Obama administration all those years. And there's one word that attached to you, like an ugly bug, Benghazi. How many here, raise your hand if you could actually explain what Benghazi was. Of course [ INAUDIBLE ] that's fascinating. That's fascinating. So and it affected your life and kept you from becoming Secretary of the State. September 11th 2012, correct? Is that the day right? Yes. Terrorist attack on a diplomatic attack compound in Benghazi Libya. Four Americans. Four Americans were killed. And you are sent out to talk about it on the Sunday talk shows, blaming it not as a terrorist attack but as a protest against a video, correct? You're not explaining it right. I'm not explaining right. [ LAUGH ] Explain it quickly, but let me get that Barbara, what's even astonishing about it is that your mother said, Why isn't Hillary Clinton going on? She said I smell a rat. And it turned out it really was something that hurt you. But go ahead and explain. Well you've got most of it. I went out on the five Sunday shows at the rquest of the White House when Secretary Clinton and probably a couple others had declined to go out. I said yes, not because that's how I intended to spend my weekend. I was taking my kids to Ohio State for a big 10 football game. That was my plan. But having been asked and feeling that I was part of a team and this was a moment of crisis, I wasn't thinking about myself. I was thinking about the mission and the mandate and I said yes. My mother who warned me on the Friday night before the Sunday not to go out, had an intuition even after just suffering a stroke, following her fourth or fifth cancer surgery that this was not likely to pan out well. I use the information that was provided to me and others by the intelligence community. That was our latest best information. It turned out to be wrong, in one critical respect. Which was that there was not a demonstration at our facility, in Ben Ghazi prior to the attack on our compound, and the loss of our four colleagues. But out of that I was branded liar. I was branded and competent and you know, in the middle of a campaign season and a political hot house and my main out of bag. Well, first of all, I don't know that it costs me the Secretary of State job. I withdrew My name from consideration. As one of at least two people that the president was considering. I did that- But you don't think it cost you the job. Well I did it because I didn't, I withdrew. What I mean to say is I don't know that President Obama would have decided to appoint me. So I can't say that I had it and I lost it. What I did do was decide To withdraw my name from consideration. Got it. And, you know, what did I learn? I learned a lot. One thing is listen to your mother. [ LAUGH ] You know. [ APPLAUSE ] And I remind my kids that, all the time, right? [ LAUGH ] Another is that in this hot house of political combat that the first person to go out in the crisis when inevitably the information is going to change, there is going to be attacked not just because of the message he or she can be but as a message But I also learned some other more personal lessons from the experience which have to do with being willing to ask other people for help. I'm not good inherently at asking for help. Directions okay, but big stuff harder for me. And had I been more willing to do that And I had I been more deliberate in cultivating allies in the press or whatever. I think I might have weathered that storm, would have still being a storm but weathered it a bit more smoothly. And just briefly, your daughter was affected by it? My daughter was and my mom actually. My mom, who could not turn off cable TV was tortured by seeing her daughter about him. She was proud very nicely, pilloried and maligned, particularly my integrity being maligned, and that was very painful and my daughter who was nine years old at the time, Unbeknownst to me and my husband, she was absorbing what was going on in the television. And she began to hallucinate and seeing images of men come out of walls. And and we were terrified, and we took her to children's hospital here in Washington for several weeks of tests to figure out, did she Have a brain tumor which is one concern. Was she experiencing psychosis or schizophrenia, a vision problem? And they finally ruled out all the worst case scenarios. And concluded that it was a stress reaction to what I was experiencing. And, you know, I include that in the book as personal as it is. With her permission, she's now a very healthy, happy thriving, almost 17 years- That's wonderful. So that's the good news. [ APPLAUSE ] But I include it because I want to make the point that whether you're on one side of the political spectrum or the other than this Pernicious politics of personal destruction that is so common here in Washington, is not cost free. It's not just the target who is affected. It's the people who love the target and work with the target and support him or her. And even innocents like a 9 year old kid who didn't sign up for this. Even if I did. We are out of time in 60 seconds. Tell us and you can't say the word Donald Trump. What worries you most on in the foreign policy landscape? Why can I say. They can't say it ?>> Okay, well, that's the truthful answer. [ APPLAUSE ] Honestly, I'm not being flipped. That is the truthful answer. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We have a commander in chief who's erratic, untruthful, and unpredictable. And that's not what you need in an American President. I could talk about Indian Pakistan could go to nuclear war. You could have a pandemic flu. Russia could take another bite out of Europe. We could have an invertant conflict with China. All those are real. But if you asked me, not my number one, it's what you ruled out. Susan, thank you for visiting with us. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ]

Most Powerful Women Summit 2019: Susan Rice on Tangle with Trump, New Book

Susan Rice on Tangle with Trump, New Book

Leadership

Susan Rice, Former U.S. National Security Advisor; Author, Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For

Interviewer: Nina Easton, Chair, MPW International, FORTUNE

Introduction: Alan Murray, Chief Executive Officer, FORTUNE