Hillary Clinton says Albright ‘understood viscerally the value of freedom’

Hillary Clinton told CNN that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was “a great person and a wonderful friend to me and literally so many others” following the 84-year-old’s death from cancer this week.

“I knew that she was sick,” Clinton added, telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour she spoke with Albright over the phone “about two weeks ago” to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Until the very end, Christiane, she was strong, lucid, and very much of the same mind she always had been,” the former 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said.

“Based on her immigrant experience, first escaping from the Nazis and then escaping from Stalin’s Communists, she understood viscerally the value of freedom and all of the institutions and laws that undergird it,” Clinton also noted.

Clinton added that Albright had “clarity of voice — she had a way of cutting through all the mumbo jumbo to get to the heart of the matter.”

Albright was the first woman to serve as secretary of state when she took on the role in 1997. Clinton served as the third woman in that role from 2009 through 2013. 

Clinton also highlighted Albright’s ardent support for women and their accomplishments, including her well-known quote that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

“I regret that in the heat of the political campaign she got any pushback at all,” Clinton said of Albright’s support of her own presidential bid. “It is a strong and right statement that women should support and congratulate and applaud other women who are breaking barriers as she did.”

Clinton’s remarks were over the phone as she isolates to recover from a COVID-19 infection earlier this week.

Former President Bill Clinton told CBS on Thursday that he and his wife have “been more interested in Ukraine and Madeleine Albright than we have in her infection, because it just made her tired, but she was fully vaccinated, had her booster,” he added, noting that she was “feeling alright.”