Hillary Clinton doesn’t just dislike Donald Trump—she wants everyone to know exactly why.
At the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, the former secretary of state accused Trump of having “betrayed human values,” the NATO alliance, and the entirety of the West while aspiring to Vladimir Putin’s model of “unaccountable power.” Czech Deputy Prime Minister Petr Macinka tried to diffuse the tension with a joke: “I think you really don’t like him.”
Clinton’s grim grin made clear she wasn’t laughing.
“That is absolutely true,” she shot back. “Not only do I not like him, I don’t like him because of what he’s doing to the United States and the world, and I think you should take a hard look at it if you think there’s something good that will come of that.”
Macinka, undeterred, launched into a defense of Trump’s reactionary politics. American policies, he argued, had gone “too far from the regular people” and “too far from reality” with what he described as “cancel culture,” “climate alarmism,” and “woke” ideology.
Clinton shook her head and snickered as Macinka ran through the standard MAGA grievance bingo card. But when he took a shot at the “gender revolution,” she couldn’t hold back.
“Which gender, women having their rights?” Clinton scoffed.
Macinka pivoted to attacking people who believe there are “more than two genders,” claiming everything he’d mentioned was evidence that the left had gone “too far.”
Clinton wasn’t having it. “Does that justify selling out the people of Ukraine who are on the front lines dying to save their freedom?”
“Can I finish my point? I’m sorry it makes you nervous,” Macinka snarked.
The exchange crystallized the growing rift between American progressives and European conservatives who’ve found common cause with Trump’s brand of right-wing populism. The Czech Republic, a NATO member that has historically been wary of Russian influence, now has a deputy prime minister defending the U.S. president who’s repeatedly questioned the alliance’s value and cozied up to Putin.
Clinton, for her part, seemed less interested in diplomatic niceties than in making her case directly. When Macinka’s quip about her obvious disdain for Trump drew laughs from the audience, she used it as an opening to make clear this isn’t personal grievance—it’s about what she sees as genuine damage to democratic institutions and Western alliances.
The full exchange, captured on video by Forbes, shows a 77-year-old former presidential candidate who’s clearly done pretending to be measured about the man who beat her in 2016.