Fiona Hill

Yeah, we seem to not care.

It was just a game.

I don't think I would describe it in that way.

I think what I was was deeply disappointed by what I saw happening in the American political space.

I didn't expect it.

Look, I was a starry-eyed immigrant.

I came to the United States with all of these expectations of what the place would be.

I'd already been disabused of, you know, some of the, let's just say, rosy perspectives I had of the United States.

I'd been shocked by the depths of...

racial problems doesn't even sum up the problems we have in the United States.

I mean, I couldn't get my head around it when I first came.

I mean, I'd read about slavery in American history, but I hadn't fully fathomed, you know, really the kind of the way that it was ripping apart the United States.

I mean, I'd read Alexis Tocqueville and he'd commented on this and it obviously hadn't, you know, kind of changed to the way that one would have expect all this time, you know, from the 18th century onwards.

So that was kind of one thing that, you know, that I realized the civil rights movement and all of these, you know, acts of expansion of suffrage and everything else were imperfect at best.

You know, and I was born in 65, the same time as the Civil Rights Act.

It was a heck of a long way still to go.

So I wasn't, let's just say, you know, as starry-eyed about everything as I'd been before.

But I really saw an incredible competence and professionalism in, you know, the U.S.

government.

It was, you know, in the election system and the integrity of it.