The Full Transcript: Ben Rhodes and Samantha PowerBy SUSAN B. GLASSER
January 15, 2018
Susan Glasser: So, this is Susan Glasser, and welcome back to The Global POLITICO. Once again, our guests this week, we’re very lucky to have both Ambassador Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes joining us. An unlikely buddy movie pair, as it were. No, but seriously, this is such an interesting timing to have a movie, almost like a document from another era in our life.
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Glasser: Well, yes, actually, okay. So, Samantha, we might as well start with that, then, probably the most memorable scene to some people certainly—this incredible moment of election night in your big apartment in New York City, where you’re the ambassador to the United Nations. Tell us about that scene.
Power: Well, I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life, but none as immortalized as this one. I decided on election night to invite the 37 women ambassadors to the U.N., many of whom face struggles in their own foreign service, or at the U.N. of a kind that, as an American, I never did. And I thought what an amazing night for them. I mean, that’s what America represents to the world, when a glass ceiling is shattered in our country, it creates a whole new sense of possibility for people everywhere.
And so, I invited them. Most of them came, and we gathered with Madeleine Albright, our first woman secretary of state; Gloria Steinem, who is not only an icon here, of course, but all around the world, and we went through the same process, if you want to call it that, that so many people did at their election parties. As the host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be quite the blowout that it was anticipated to be, because I wanted to make sure that people had a chance to interact with Gloria Steinem, and one of—
Glasser: So, your concern was that actually that the evening was going to be over early.
Power: Too soon. I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment ... And then, it slowly dawning on us that not only was this going to be much closer than anybody anticipated, but that it was not going to end well.
Schadenboners, UP!!!
This kind of arrogant over-confidence is what comes of the MSM concocting biased polls and encouraging contempt for Trump.
