Hillary Clinton’s essay collection, titled What Happened, will be out on September 12, but MSNBC is already dishing on the Trump-related selections. The folks at Morning Joe have exclusive excerpts from the book, which were doled out throughout the broadcast, including a bit from the audiobook version in which Clinton calls Trump a “creep” for stalking her around the stage during one of the 2016 debates. Yes, that’s Clinton’s own voice telling viewers that her “skin crawled” when Trump was lurking behind her and “literally breathing down [her] neck.”
Clinton says What Happened is full of “moments from the campaign that I wish I could go back and do over,” like the time a 70-year-old man who’d bragged about sexually assaulting women insisted on shadowing her onstage despite the fact that she had the floor. She breaks it down Zack Morris-style:
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say, loudly and clearly, ‘Back up you creep.’
After a “lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off,” Clinton ultimately kept her composure and successfully ignored the mingling scents of Mystic Tan and entitlement. But she does seem to regret not calling Trump out sooner for these intimidation tactics that are known all too well to women, writing “Maybe I have over-learned the lesson of staying calm, biting my tongue, digging my fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to present a composed face to the world.”
Trump hasn’t weighed in on this meeting between two of his “enemies,” but that’s presumably because he’s still trying to figure out if he’s going to be “dynamic” today or “somber.” If it’s the latter, we’re only hours away from an all-caps tirade and dubious retweets.