Fiona Hill

In which John Heilemann talks with Fiona Hill, the former national security official in Donald Trump's White House who made headlines with her testimony in the hearings over the Ukraine scandal that led to his first impeachment. Heilemann and Hill discuss her new memoir, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, including her reluctant decision to join the Trump administration, what she learned about his character, and his envious admiration for authoritarian leaders around the world and Vladimir Putin in particular; how Trump’s disregard for the rule of law and democratic norms led not only to his first impeachment but also his attempted coup in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election and culminating with the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6; and why it's no exaggeration to say that Trump is setting the stage for another attempt to subvert American democracy in 2024. Hill also discusses her unlikely journey from a working-class mining town in northeastern England to the rarified academic realm at Harvard, the inner sanctum of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and upper reaches of political and policy-making power inside the White House.