Hillary Clinton accused Vladimir Putin of “manspreading” and acknowledged that their relationship has been “sour” for a while in her upcoming book, “What Happened.”
“President Obama once compared Vladimir Putin to a ‘bored kid at the back of the classroom.’ ‘He’s got that kind of slouch,’ Obama said. When I sat with Putin in meetings, he looked more like one of those guys on the subway who imperiously spreads their legs wide, encroaching on everyone else’s space, as if to say ‘I take what I want’ and ‘I have so little respect for you that I’m going to act as if I’m at home lounging in my bathrobe.’ They call it ‘manspreading.’ That was Putin,” Clinton wrote in an audio excerpt that was released Thursday on the “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.
Exclusive audio excerpt from Hillary Clinton’s new book, “What Happened.” https://t.co/LzBR1saDrY
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) September 8, 2017
Clinton went on to say that Putin was “perennially misunderstood and underestimated.”
She referred to former President George W. Bush, once saying he found Putin to be very “straighforward and trustworthy” after looking him straight in the eye and that he could grasp a sense of his soul. Clinton said her reaction was Putin was a former KGB agent and didn’t have a soul.
She then acknowledged they did not get along very well.
“Our relationship has been sour for a long time,” she wrote. “Putin doesn’t respect women and despises anyone who stands up to him, so I’m a double problem. After I criticized one of his policies, he told the press ‘It’s better not to argue with women,’ but went on to call me weak. ‘Maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman,’ he joked. Hilarious.”
“What Happened” will be released on Tuesday. The book recounts her journey during the 2016 campaign.
