Fiona Hill

You know, this is a game.

And I just thought, this isn't a game.

And that's why I think that it, you know, kind of weakened because, I mean, again, on the outside, it weakened us, the whole process weakened us in the eyes of the world, because again, the United States was the gold standard.

And I do think, I mean, again, in the terms of the larger population, although a lot of people did actually see the system, you know, standing up, trying to do something to hold people accountable, there still was that element of circus and a big political game and people being careless with the country.

And stick it to the other side.

I agree.

I mean, there were people who I actually thought managed that, that made it about the country rather than about themselves.

But I guess there's no incentive to do that.

Yeah, there were others who did a lot of grandstanding.

Yeah.

And that's another problem of our political incentive structures, that the kind of sense of accountability and responsibility tends to be personal.

You know, people, whether people decide to do it or not, it's not institutional, if that makes sense.

We've had a kind of a breakdown of that kind of, that sense.

Now, I took an oath of office, and I'm assuming that most of them did too.

You know, I had to be sworn in, you know, when I took those positions.

I took that seriously, but I already took an oath of citizenship.

There's, you know, presumably you did too, you know, you kind of started to become an American citizen.

It's not something you take on lightly.

And, you know, that's why I felt this deep sense of responsibility all the time, which is why I went into the administration in the first place.

I mean, I got a lot of flack for it because, you know, I thought, well, look, I've been asked and there's a real issue here after the Russian interference and, you know, the whole influence operation in the 2016 elections.