Madeleine Albright said Friday she regrets saying that there is a “special place in hell” for women who don’t help women when talking about Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.
Writing in the New York Times, Albright said, “I have spent much of my career as a diplomat. It is an occupation in which words and context matter a great deal. So one might assume I know better than to tell a large number of women to go to hell.”
The piece is called “My undiplomatic moment.”
“I absolutely believe what I said, that women should help one another, but this was the wrong context and the wrong time to use that line,” Albright said. “I did not mean to argue that women should support a particular candidate based solely on gender.”
Albright, who supports the Democrat Clinton for president, served as secretary of state under Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton.
Many took her remark to mean that any women who don’t support Hillary Clinton were somehow traitors to their gender.
“It is a phrase I first used almost 25 years ago, when I was the United States ambassador to the United Nations and worked closely with the six other female U.N. ambassadors. But this time, to my surprise, it went viral,” Albright wrote.
“If heaven were open only to those who agreed on politics, I imagine it would be largely unoccupied,” Albright said.
“But I understand that I came across as condemning those who disagree with my political preferences.”
