Fiona Hill: Putin and the Art of Manipulating Trump
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What insights does Fiona Hill provide about Trump's admiration for Putin?
Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show a former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council during part of Trump's first term. She's also a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council. Currently a senior fellow in foreign policy at Brookings. Her books include her memoir, There's Nothing for You Here, Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century. It's Fiona Hill. How are you doing?
I'm doing all right. Thanks, Tim. Glad to be with you.
I've been kind of a little bit of a Fiona Hill fangirl for like six years now, you know, not fully. So I'm not fully briefed on your whole story.
How did Fiona Hill's background influence her career in U.S. politics?
And so I thought, you know, in 2018, 19, in this period in Trump 1.0, these kind of characters emerged into our lives, you know, because people had to pay attention to things that normal people didn't pay attention to, you know, like what happened on national security briefing calls between Eastern European countries and presidential advisors. And so for a lot of those people, they kind of like, like you, they emerged from the ether. Like, how did you find yourself testifying in Donald Trump's first impeachment? I guess, could you give us like a little life story that landed you in that place?
Yeah, I certainly ask myself that, you know, many times. I'm also glad to say that we came out the ether rather than the primordial swamp, which everybody else, you know, kind of sort of accuses all of doing. I mean, look, I mean, you know, I started off life in a rather unexpected place. I mean, some of the people listening to this will know, you know, I started off in Northern England, daughter of a coal miner or a nurse while coal miner because all the mines closed down. My dad became a hospital porter. My mother, you know, was a midwife in, you know, one of those early batches of midwives trained by the National Health Service that kind of call the midwife from the BBC series.
That makes you feel like you're 300 years old to say that your mother was a midwife.
I feel 300 years old. I just turned 60. Oh, looking great for 60.
What was Fiona Hill's experience during Trump's first impeachment?
Well, thank you very much. When I look back at, you know, the little few pictures of my childhood, it certainly seems like it was in the 19th century, not the 20th, you know, it was like a totally a world away from this. But the whole point was, you know, thanks to expansion of education in the UK, you know, I get the education my parents never did. It's actually a great American story, actually, for people of my age in America as well, I guess. you know, kind of funding to go to school, to university. I decided to study Russian because it's the peak of the Cold War. And like many other people of my generation, you know, I was obsessed with the risks of nuclear Armageddon and thought, you know, we'd die in a ditch listening to sirens.
You know, various places were blown up in an exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. I decided to study Russian. I get a scholarship to study Russian. And then, you know, cut a long story short, I ended up getting a scholarship to the United States and, you know, amazingly to Harvard to study in what was then the Soviet Union program. And as soon as I duly got a master's in Soviet studies, the Soviet Union went up and left on me, collapsing into multiple parts. And I decided I'd study history.
Not great news for your career, but good for the world.
How does Fiona Hill analyze the impact of Russian interference in U.S. democracy?
Yeah, it was the ash heap of history. So I thought, well, history, I've got to retrain quickly, retool. My dad had gone from being a mind hospital porter. I didn't quite make the same transition, but I studied history. I ended up doing lots of various things around at Harvard. I get a job with Graham Allison, the famous Kennedy School of Government professor who's still going strong into his 80s and writing all kinds of things. I mean, somebody who many of our listeners are very familiar with. And it's, you know, working with Graham as, you know, one of his many assistants.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What insights does Fiona Hill provide about Trump's admiration for Putin?
0:13–0:53
2
How did Fiona Hill's background influence her career in U.S. politics?
0:53–2:07
3
What was Fiona Hill's experience during Trump's first impeachment?
2:07–3:17
4
How does Fiona Hill analyze the impact of Russian interference in U.S. democracy?
3:17–4:35
5
What are the implications of Trump's dealings with foreign leaders?
4:35–5:33
6
How does Fiona Hill view the current state of U.S.-Russia relations?
5:33–6:27
7
What role do backdoor deals play in Trump's administration?
6:27–7:38
8
What are the potential consequences of Trump's foreign policy decisions?
7:38–58:30
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Bulwark Daily
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