Losing the 2016 election to President Donald Trump was like being defeated by a "corrupt human tornado" who has since become a "direct threat" to the United States' standing in the world, former Secretary of State and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton says in an interview being broadcast this coming Sunday.
"It was like applying for a job and getting 66 million letters of recommendation and losing to a corrupt human tornado," Clinton tells Jane Pauley in an interview scheduled to run on "CBS This Morning." "I know that he knows that this wasn't on the level. I don't know that we'll ever know what happened."
Clinton spoke with Pauley just hours before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, and she agreed there should be an inquiry into his actions concerning Ukraine, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, and his son Hunter warrant an inquiry.
"I don't care if you're for the [Democrats] or you're a Republican, when the president of the United States, who has taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, uses his position to in effect extort a foreign government for his political purposes. I think that is very much what the founders worried about in 'high crimes and misdemeanors," said Clinton.
Meanwhile, Clinton said she doesn't believe Trump will be re-elected, because she hopes the public and press understand how he "plays the game." She added that Biden is facing the same kind of actions that she had seen during her own election.
She also said it doesn't bother her that Trump continues, four years later, to call for her to be locked up.
"It doesn't kill me because he knows he's an illegitimate president," she told Pauley. "I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories, he knows that there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did."
Clinton recorded the interview with daughter Chelsea about a new book they have coming out.