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  5. Fiona Hill was called the 'c-word' by a Trump supporter and a White House staffer: book

Fiona Hill was called the 'c-word' by a Trump supporter and a White House staffer: book

Bryan Metzger,John Haltiwanger   

Fiona Hill was called the 'c-word' by a Trump supporter and a White House staffer: book
PoliticsPolitics2 min read
  • Fiona Hill said she faced intense misogynistic attacks while working on Trump's National Security Council.
  • A Trump supporter from Florida called Hill the c-word in a series of calls to both her office and home.
  • Hill says another woman in the White House also called her the c-word amid Hill's final week on the job.

Fiona Hill said that she often faced intensely misogynistic criticism as she sought to do her job as the top Russia advisor in the Trump White House, recounting being called the "c-word" at least twice during her time in the administration.

Hill, who served as the Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council before departing in July 2019, recounted the exchanges in her new memoir "There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century." Hill later served as a key witness during the House impeachment inquiry into Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

Hill said that she ended up in the crosshairs of Trump supporters in her first weeks on the job due to her position working on Russia issues amid scrutiny over Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. While Hill usually tried to engage with critics, the deluge became too much during the Trump years.

"My work on Russia had long made me a target for public and personal criticism," she wrote. "Since my debut in an American TV interview back at the Kennedy School in the 1990s, I had kept a file of letters and emails from people who took issue with something I said."

While she was working at the White House, "the personal attention reached new levels," Hill said.

"It was hard to ignore everything," Hill continued. "In keeping with the typical, crudely gendered vitriol that women in public life endure, I received frequent phone messages at work from a woman calling me by name and referring to me with an unprintable term- the notorious c-word."

Hill wrote that the NSC's security team eventually traced the number to Palm Beach, Florida, which was "home of some of President Trump's most ardent supporters." Eventually, that same caller started calling Hill's home, prompting her daughter to pick up the phone.

"I refused to explain to her what the c-word meant, although I eventually had to after Adam Entous retold the story in The New Yorker," Hill wrote, referring to a 2020 profile where the exchange is also noted.

Hill wrote that the language was unacceptable even to someone who grew up in the United Kingdom, like her. "Even in the pantheon of the swear words in the North East of England, a place where swearing is routine, using that word will get you into trouble," she said.

She was again called the c-word by a woman on the White House staff during her final week in the Trump administration in 2019.

"I learned that one of the women over in the West Wing, who liaised between the NSC and the Chief of Staff's Office, had now also called me the c-word," Hill wrote. "My crime was trying to push a set of policy issues during my last set of engagements at the G20 summit in Osaka.

"They didn't need anyone acting with autonomy," Hill added. "They just wanted staff to shut up and do whatever the president wanted."

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