Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central, Huma, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Trevor. You have lived a
Speaker 1: life that is I mean just in proximity to action
Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, just just listening to this.
Speaker 1: You know when I was going through it again, it's
Speaker 1: it's you. You. You were buy somebody's side who was
Speaker 1: running for president twice. Um, you know you were somebody's side. Well,
Speaker 1: she was serving as Secretary of States as Senator of
Speaker 1: New York, and you had to wake that same person
Speaker 1: up from bed when she was first Lady. The person
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, of course, is Hillary Clinton. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about that first. How do you wake up a sleeping
Speaker 1: first lady. So, first of all, I'm thrilled to be
Speaker 1: with you today, and I, um, yes, when I walked
Speaker 1: into the White House, I was a twenty one year
Speaker 1: old intern. I didn't exactly know what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and there was very much at lease in the Clinton administration,
Speaker 1: the sink or swim attitudes. They kind of threw you
Speaker 1: into it. And so this was the midst of her
Speaker 1: Senate campaign. She was first Lady morning for the Senate,
Speaker 1: and one morning the White House says, well, she's not
Speaker 1: responding now as somebody who had followed all the rules.
Speaker 1: One of the first learned rules you learned the White
Speaker 1: House is failed a plan, plan to fail. And I
Speaker 1: had a plan. The plan was that she was going
Speaker 1: to wake up. So I didn't know how to wake
Speaker 1: her up. So I decided to march into the hallway.
Speaker 1: I tiptoe in the back. I knocked on the door
Speaker 1: and I say, Mrs Clinton. No response. So finally I
Speaker 1: opened the door, tiptoe in and shake her really hard.
Speaker 1: And not only did I wake her up, I woke
Speaker 1: up the leader of the free world. And the ghost
Speaker 1: of Lincoln in the entire house was alerted. And the
Speaker 1: funniest thing about the story is that she gets up,
Speaker 1: she gets in the chair to get her makeup done,
Speaker 1: and she turned to me and she says, Huma, next time,
Speaker 1: just knock louder. Yeah, that was a big jump from
Speaker 1: knock softly, shake yours like a big jump. I learned
Speaker 1: a lesson that day, and now I always knock louder.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna have to do it for
Speaker 1: a while, but that's a less just like incremental steps.
Speaker 1: The journey of we had a lot of fun that's
Speaker 1: for sure. It does sound like that. I mean you
Speaker 1: You've had a really interesting relationship with Hillary Clinton. Who
Speaker 1: is you know, in America, I mean a person who
Speaker 1: will go down in history and like, people will love her,
Speaker 1: people will hate her, people will talk about her. You've
Speaker 1: seen sides of her that nobody else will. And what
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed in your book is you talk about
Speaker 1: seeing those sides of Hillary, and you talk about how
Speaker 1: difficult it was for Hillary to navigate the journey of
Speaker 1: being perfect and like talking perfectly and looking perfect. It
Speaker 1: seems like there was no there was no way to
Speaker 1: win when you were doing that, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: create the perfect image of a Hillary Clinton, Like, where
Speaker 1: was this external pressure coming from? You know, Trevor, So
Speaker 1: much of it is hindsight. When we were in it
Speaker 1: in the moment, there was no perfect way to be
Speaker 1: And one of our challenges, I actually write in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight we even on the inside, we didn't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with some of the sexist and
Speaker 1: misogynistic comments, so we just laughed around along with it.
Speaker 1: We just assumed this was the price you paid for
Speaker 1: being in the game. So if you said she should
Speaker 1: wear brown we wear brown. If you said she should
Speaker 1: talk louder, okay, let's try to talk louder. And it
Speaker 1: was constantly shape shifting, if you will, responding to people's comments.
Speaker 1: But nothing was ever right. And I think was next
Speaker 1: level in that here we were and everybody had a
Speaker 1: different everyone had a different response. And I actually share
Speaker 1: a story in the book with a Hollywood director calls
Speaker 1: me and says, you know, I'm gonna give her some
Speaker 1: media training and I said, will give me an idea
Speaker 1: of who she should be like? And they said, well,
Speaker 1: her husband, And I said, excellent, anybody else President Obama
Speaker 1: both phenomenal communicators, you know, legendary communicators, both met and
Speaker 1: so we could never quite get it right. We kept trying,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's in part because we have
Speaker 1: a hard time seeing women in leadership, forget Commander in Chief, Trevor,
Speaker 1: just seeing women and leadership positions. And I agree with you,
Speaker 1: not everyone's going to necessarily agree with everything hillarys, but
Speaker 1: she is a historic figure for this country and the world,
Speaker 1: and she tried to pave the way forward. And she's
Speaker 1: got some cracks in that ceiling, and somebody's gonna step
Speaker 1: in those shoes. In a we have a vice president
Speaker 1: who stepped in the ship right right, who's also being
Speaker 1: criticized for how she laughs or how she doesn't laugh.
Speaker 1: You know, there seems to be a fine line that
Speaker 1: can like no one can really walk perfectly. Um. You
Speaker 1: you have faced a lot of that criticism. You have
Speaker 1: faced you know, I think a lot of extra scrutiny
Speaker 1: because you're not just a woman, but you're also a
Speaker 1: Muslim woman. You're a Muslim woman who's been working in
Speaker 1: American government for so long. Reading through the book, there
Speaker 1: were things I didn't know about you. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that you had your moments of you know,
Speaker 1: being the terrorists that people were talking about, actual you know,
Speaker 1: sitting members of Congress saying like, oh, there she is
Speaker 1: the member of this organization, the member. Do you think
Speaker 1: it got better or do you think it just you know,
Speaker 1: went underground for a little bit because you're seeing this,
Speaker 1: you know, with Lauren Bobert for instance, now coming and
Speaker 1: saying il har noma that you know, the backpack in
Speaker 1: the in the in the elevator. Do you think you've
Speaker 1: got better as a Muslim person working in government or
Speaker 1: do you think it just shifted. Maybe I actually think
Speaker 1: that what happened to me into that in twelve as
Speaker 1: you were referring where five Republican members of Congress suggested
Speaker 1: I was essentially a spy, not a patriot. I was
Speaker 1: that American, Trevor. That as I traveled to the world
Speaker 1: as a little girl, and we went everywhere from South
Speaker 1: Africa to London, to Paris to Asia. Every time we landed,
Speaker 1: I would turn to my mother and say, is in America? Yet? Why?
Speaker 1: Because to me, America wasn't just a place that you
Speaker 1: could go to movie theater things I didn't have back
Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia, or you could wear what you wanted.
Speaker 1: It was a feeling. It was a sense of choice
Speaker 1: and optimism and appreciation for, you know, those principles and values.
Speaker 1: So I've always walked to the great pride as an American.
Speaker 1: I do think when they accused me of being essentially
Speaker 1: a spy, it was unleashing. I think it was an appetizer,
Speaker 1: Trevor to what we were to face in when certainly
Speaker 1: Muslims and many brown people became the other. And I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying my kind of brown. Generally, if you're
Speaker 1: a person of color you were the other and the
Speaker 1: six they've been doing, and I think it unleashed I
Speaker 1: think Donald Trump unleashed permission to have this kind of
Speaker 1: dialogue and conversation. It's one of the many reasons I
Speaker 1: wrote this book is to explain to the country what
Speaker 1: it is to be an American Muslim. It's not just
Speaker 1: heart wrenching, but it's also really vulnerable. How you share
Speaker 1: your story. You know, your name really just rose to
Speaker 1: prominence in the country with the Anthony Weiner story, your
Speaker 1: ex husband. And I remember at the time, I mean
Speaker 1: I wasn't familiar with American politics, but the story was
Speaker 1: blowing up a lot of the women who I worked with.
Speaker 1: They were just like, oh, this is so shitty. Like,
Speaker 1: as women, we we have to deal with the ship
Speaker 1: that our men do. We have to bear their shame
Speaker 1: as well. And you, you, you really laid out elegantly
Speaker 1: and vulnerably in the book. But what was really surprising
Speaker 1: to me is at the end of the book you
Speaker 1: acknowledge and thank your ex husband. And I'd love to
Speaker 1: know why you did that and and if that was
Speaker 1: a true feeling that you had or if you thought, no,
Speaker 1: this is the high road that I need to take um.
Speaker 1: You know, I do acknowledge Anthony and end of the book,
Speaker 1: and the reason I do that is two things. The
Speaker 1: first is he gave me the single most important thing
Speaker 1: in my life, that's my little boy, UM. And he
Speaker 1: gave me that sense of feeling. I know what it
Speaker 1: is to be loved and if you read the book,
Speaker 1: to feel like the most special person in the room.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of experience with men, and
Speaker 1: before I met Anthony, and I wanted to be seen,
Speaker 1: not as even though I have a whole chapter in
Speaker 1: the book called Elephant in the Room and another one
Speaker 1: called Shame, Shame Go Away, even though I did live
Speaker 1: with a lot of shame and felt judged for much
Speaker 1: of my marriage. I try to make every decision that
Speaker 1: I thought was right for me and for my little boy.
Speaker 1: And I've actually been surprised by the number of people
Speaker 1: who read the book and read to the end, seeing
Speaker 1: how I made these decisions as a related to my marriage,
Speaker 1: saying okay, I understand now, I get it. And I
Speaker 1: think people who have in their life loved ones who
Speaker 1: deal with addiction or mental health challenges, they understand. For
Speaker 1: people who don't, it's harder, and so I'm really glad.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm very humbled to hear people understand it once
Speaker 1: they read the story and see that there is another side.
Speaker 1: There is hope and possibility and optimism. Well, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I think everybody does understand. I just
Speaker 1: think as human beings, it is easier for us to
Speaker 1: judge a situation that is happening outside of us, because
Speaker 1: when we're not in love, or when we don't love somebody,
Speaker 1: or we're not experiencing a negative thing with a loved one,
Speaker 1: the answer is obvious, you know, so you go, you
Speaker 1: should do this, you shouldn't do that. That's what it's
Speaker 1: like when we're watching a TV show. You know what
Speaker 1: all the characters should do, but you're you're the character
Speaker 1: and your own TV show, and then you never know
Speaker 1: what to do from episodes. That is so beautifully sad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could not agree more. And you're you're right when
Speaker 1: you're judging somebody else, if you're in that position, would
Speaker 1: you actually have the same thing. It's it's so easy
Speaker 1: because you're watching it, you know. That's that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me, Chrevor. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having Me Alright People. Huma's book both slash and
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