Hillary Clinton Won't Second Guess President Obama's 'Very Hard Choice' On Bergdahl
— -- In an exclusive interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Hillary Clinton defended President Obama’s decision to swap five Taliban prisoners for U.S. solider Bowe Bergdahl, saying she won’t second guess him.
Sawyer asked Clinton whether the president made “a deal with the devil” by releasing the Taliban detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for Bergdahl.
“I think this was a very hard choice, which is why I think my book is aptly named,” Clinton said. “If you look at what the factors were going into the decision, of course there are competing interests and values. And one of our values is we bring everybody home off the battlefield the best we can. It doesn't matter how they ended up in a prisoner of war situation.”
The first piece of the interview with Clinton will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer,” and the full interview will air during a one-hour ABC News prime time special on Monday, June 9, at 9 p.m. ET. ABC’s Robin Roberts will follow up with Clinton’s first live interview, on Tuesday, June 10, on “Good Morning America.”
Since Bergdahl’s release last Saturday, the administration has faced a barrage of questions about how he fell into enemy hands in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter?” Sawyer asked the former Secretary of State and potential 2016 presidential candidate during her first televised interview ahead of the release of her new memoir, “Hard Choices,” which will be published on June 10.
“It doesn’t matter,” Clinton said. “We bring our people home.”
Clinton also suggested that questions about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance still need to be answered but emphasized that the Obama administration was right to focus first on his safe return.
